Wed, 06 Jul 2005

Bad Trip for Online Drug Peddlers

Think about this:

Thanks to their novelty, most research chemicals are not specifically listed as controlled substances under U.S. drug laws. Many site operators and customers believed, erroneously, that this made the drugs legal, or at least left them in a gray area that would protect them from prosecution.

However, under the Federal Analogue Act the possession and supply of substances "substantially similar" in effect or chemical structure to controlled drugs is illegal.

Isn't this just a bureaucratic way of saying "If it feels good, it's illegal!"? I'd never heard of the Federal Analogue Act, but imagine the broader ramifications if this kind of legislation covered other areas of the law: a knife can have a "substantially similar" effect to an assault rifle, if the target ends up wounded or dead - so would knives be covered by the Brady Act? Bicycles have "substantially similar" effects to automobiles (they're transportation), so could we someday be getting license plates (and paying excise taxes) on bicycles?

This strikes me as the kind of vague, nebulous statute that the Founding Fathers found so offensive when issuing from the English Parliament in 1776 - but today, we're doing it to ourselves.

Operators of a handful of websites that sold experimental psychedelic drugs similar to LSD and mescaline can now look forward to life in prison. By David McCandless.

(link) [Wired News]

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