Keith Vaz: Oops

Well this is awkward.

Bet The Sun are FEWMING they didn't get this.

Remember: Sex, especially gay sex and sex work, is wrong!

Even though no law has been broken, and it's hard to see how this story is in the 'public interest'.

PS Keith speaks out on poppers (via Hansard).

Poppers Ban: A Massive Cock Up

The 'unworkable' Psychoactive Substances Act is mired in new confusion just days after Tory ministers admitted it wouldn't include poppers.

Tory ministers have been forced to delay their legal highs crackdown - after apparently admitting they're not ready to enforce it.

Critics blasted the move as a "shambolic U-turn" today as it plunged the Psychoactive Substances Act into new confusion.

A letter from a police force showed the original April 6 date to enforce the law has now been pushed back until at least May 1.

It is another blow just days after Tory ministers admitted the Act could not cover poppers - despite previously insisting the sex aids would be banned.

Campaigners say there is still confusion around exactly what the far-reaching Act will prohibit.

It outlaws all substances that "directly stimulate or depress the central nervous system", so is having to specifically exclude caffiene.

But as the row over poppers showed, experts are split on how some drugs affect the nervous system.

Today the Lib Dems called on Home Secretary Theresa May to ditch the law - despite the Queen approving it just two months ago.

Home Affairs spokesman Alistair Carmichael said: "While better late than never this shambolic U-turn will have caused untold confusion particularly amongst the police.

"The Psychoactive Substances Act is unworkable and lacks a clear evidence-base, something the Liberal Democrats have been saying from the start.

"Finally the Home Office is catching up but rather than postponing its implementation the Home Secretary should just admit she got it wrong and bin the legislation...

Mirror.

Don't say I didn't warn you...

Poppers: The War Against Pleasure

Why is the government so anti-pleasure, particularly for gay men? Much of the drive to ban legal highs has come from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a rightwing thinktank that has consistently misled the public and government about the harms of legal highs. These claims have been refuted by DrugScience.

Much of the pressure to ban legal highs has come from the Centre for Social Justice, a right-wing thinktank

One of CSJ’s main attacks is on what it calls the “loosening” of laws on moral values in the past decades, leading to the erosion of the family. The acceptance of homosexuality is one of its main concerns. It is hard not to conclude that the government shares this opinion and that the poppers ban is in fact an attempt to deter – or even punish – men who enjoy having sex with men.

This is the conspiracy theory explanation, but we must also consider that the government is confused. It may think nitric oxide is the same as nitrous oxide. Confidence in its reasoning is not encouraged by the fact that at the first reading of the psychoactive substances bill, government spokespeople several times referred to a ban on nitrates, which are fertilisers, not nitrites.

Whatever the reasoning behind the popper ban, it is fundamentally flawed. Poppers should be removed from the psychoactive substances bill, though it would be much more honest to scrap the whole legislation as it is so lacking in justification and logic.

David Nutt, The Guardian.

Newsflash! Poppers Stay Legal In Tory U-turn, Mirror.

Poppers: Fighting The Law With Pedantry

Poppers should not be banned under the blanket prohibition of legal highs due to come into effect next month because they are relatively harmless and not a psychoactive substance, the government’s top advisers have said.

The proposed ban on poppers – alkyl nitrites– sparked an outcry in the gay community. Poppers are especially popular among gay men, and used to prepare for sex and enhance sexual pleasure.

The former Conservative justice minister Crispin Blunt said he used the drug and denounced the move as “fantastically stupid”.

Due to come into force next month, the Psychoactive Substances Act will criminalise the sale of the drug, but not those who buy it. But the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has now written to the home secretary, Theresa May, telling her that poppers do not have a direct effect on the brain and so “do not fall within the scope of the current definition of a psychoactive substance” in the new law banning legal highs.

“The ACMD’s consensus view is that a psychoactive substance has a direct action on the brain and that substances having peripheral effects, such as those caused by alkyl nitrites, do not directly stimulate or depress the central nervous system.”

Guardian.

Good to see Attitude writing in defence of this chemsexy fun.

Fagburn said this looked likely to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions last year.

Interesting to see what actually happens.

PS The Guardian profile John Addy

Poppers Ban: The Fightback Begins

The UK's biggest poppers manufacturer has vowed to fight the legal high ban on the product he has made for 35 years.

John Addy, 67, manufacturers two millions of bottles of the recreational drug every year, but has kept a low profile.

He has now decided to speak out to fight parliamentary plans to ban its sale.

Mr Addy says he decided to talk after gay Tory MP Crispin Blunt, a former prisons minister, gained nationwide attention by admitting in a Commons debate that he used poppers – a drug that enjoys legendary popularity with gay men.

He says the chemicals are sniffed to gain a brief ‘head rush’ and can be used used to facilitate sex.

Mr Addy used to run the gay nightclub Gemini in Huddersfield and has a background in chemistry.

He said he was worried about the possibility of the drug being banned when a new bill – the Psychoactive Substances Bill – comes into force on April 1.

After then sex shop proprietors will face up to seven years’ jail for selling them, reports the Examiner...

Mirror.  

Older readers may recall John used to write a most odd 'celebrity gossip' column in the early days of Gay Times.

His nickname was 'Me And', due to his love of name-dropping.

Here she is, on the left, back in the day with some top showbiz pals...

Rod Liddle: Eeeeeuw

From the current issue of Private Eye.

Rod Liddle: Blunt, And To The Point

A year or so back my friend and colleague Hugo Rifkind wrote a very good piece in which he argued that the issues concerning gay rights should not be resolved simply by an elongated ‘eeeeuw’. In other words, heterosexual distaste at the practices of homosexuals should not determine general policy towards this minority. A good point and well made and I agreed with much of it. But it shouldn’t stop the rest of us going ‘eeeeuw’ from time to time, nonetheless.

So, Crispin Blunt MP feels hurt because laws proscribing amyl nitrate (or ‘poppers’) would criminalise the entire gay community. A jar of poppers and a tube of ‘lube’ are always found in the bedside drawer of a gay man, we are told. I would have thought that the requirement for amyl nitrate to relax the sphincter muscle and lube to accommodate entry was God’s way of telling you that what you’re about to do is unnatural and perverse. Or your body’s way of telling you – your call. So eeeeuw. Amyl nitrate is very bad for you – so ban it. Crispin and others can always use a jemmy instead.

The Specator blog - this is Mr Liddle's post in full, by the way.

Civilisation is man's triumph over nature, Rod.

Update: Government launches review of poppers law after outcry over ban, Pink News.

Poppers: Want Some More?

Slightly OTT Independent article that looks sounds like it was written after a trip to Prowler Soho and a good Google.

The author quotes academic, Lucy Robinson; “If you trace the bottle of amyl [a type of alkyl nitrite] through late 20th-century history, you trace the legacies of gay culture on popular culture in the 20th century."

Eh?

He also cites Ian Young's The Stonewall Experiment seeingly oblivious to how the book claimed that poppers cause Aids!

PS Independent News also report that police in Birmingham have been siezing poppers and other legal highs from shops and venues before a ban has become law.

Update: The tabloids are going big with this; Elvis Snelson died after taking a legal high at Manchester Pride.

Crispin Blunt: The Problem

The problem with wanting politics to be more reflective of real life is that it inevitably leads to a bald, middle-aged man explaining to the House of Commons how party drugs help him to enjoy anal sex.

“I out myself as a popper user,” Crispin Blunt, the chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, declared yesterday.

Fifty years ago such a statement would have indicated an appreciation of modern philosophy. Any politician who confessed to enjoying a hit of Popper was probably referring to one of Sir Karl’s critiques of teleological historicism. Those who were into the heavy stuff would take a snifter of Bertrand Russell as well.

Today, though, poppers are a chemical product popular on the club scene that have, as Keith Vaz explained, “a beneficial ... effect in enabling anal sex”. You learn something new every day. Or I do, anyway, being very innocent. I’m with Lyn Brown, Labour’s drugs spokeswoman, who said that until she took on the brief she thought poppers were “the little things with the string that we had at parties”... 

The Times sketch.

The piece is titled 'Crispin Blunt relaxes into role of raconteur of gay lifestyle'.

Ho ho ho!

Poppers: Tee Hee Hee

Wonder how many readers know who Crispin Blunt is and what poppers are?

Blunt must have known much of the media would treat his speech like sniggering schoolboys, so for once we could say someone's been (quite) brave.

Can you think of another politician who's said; 'I take drugs and I enjoy it?'

PS And a defence of poppers on Guardian online - yet to see one article speaking out against the whole legal highs bill.

Poppers: Blunt

Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, a former prisons minister, says he is a user of the popper recreational drug and that a proposed ban on its supply would be "fantastically stupid".
 

Respect for the law among users would "go out of the window" if there was a ban, he told MPs during a debate on the government's Psychoactive Substances Bill.

BBC News.

Legalise all drugs, not just the ones that help old gay Tories get bumfucked.

Everyone should be soveriegn over their own body!

But how refreshing for a Tory politician to be candid about liking sex and drugs.

PS Will Attitude be publishing a multi-page exposé of this chemsex menace????

Gay Star News: Suicide Is Painless

Why does Gay Star News publish such utter horse shit?

Poppers Ban: Gobsmacked!

NB After a certain someone (ie me, obvs) pointed out this headline was stupid - I am prepared to wager £1 million and/or my virginity that nobody will be jailed for buying poppers - it was changed as if by magic to read 'selling'. The original title can still be seen in the URL

Surprised GSN and other gay media don't support a ban on this DEADLY CHEMSEX CRAZE!

                                *****************************

Selling poppers in the UK could land you in jail for seven years, according to new legislation being enacted by the Government.

Home Office Minister Mike Penning has reportedly said he is insistent that amyl nitrates, widely used in the British LGBTI community, must come under new legislation that bans ‘legal highs’.

Lawmakers are banning the drug under a ‘blanket ban’ on the production, distribution, sale and supply of psychoactive substances. This ban will cover many substances including laughing gas, salvia and vanilla sky, but alcohol, nicotine and caffeine are exempt.

The possession with an intent to supply poppers is seven years in prison.

Gay rights activists, as well as a committee looking over the bill, argued poppers are ‘not seen to be capable of having harmful effects sufficient to constitute a societal problem’.

David Bridle, managing editor at London gay scene magazine Boyz,* said at a meeting held last night (9 November) with the minister, LGBTI activists and the National AIDS Trust that it made sense for poppers to be regulated under current sex shop licensing and therefore continuing to be available to over 18 gay men as the sex tool they have been for over 30 years.

‘The minister was unmoved, even after I explained our Boyz readers and others in the gay community were “gobsmacked” this Conservative government (of equal marriage and other pro-gay policies) was banning poppers,’ he said...

Gay Star News.

Have to say I'm GOBSMACKED that this ridiculous bill hasn't collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions already.

* David Bridle is also an LGBTory.

Update: Let's ask Dr Chris!

Gay Marriage: This Ad Is Unticking All My Boxes!

Sorry BuzzFeed News, you lost me after 'gay republican soldier who wants to get married'.

But if anyone needs proof of how the gay movement has been hijacked by the gay right...

PS And how lobotomised would you have to be to care about 'Benjy the 'gay bull' may be bisexual', or 'Key West gets rainbow crossings'? FFS.

PPS And this week's Fagburn Award For Services To Clueless Thickitude goes to this moron at the Spectator blog who wonders if the legal highs blanket ban outlaws poppers will the Tories lose the 'gay vote'!!!

Drugs: Ban Everything!

Even by the standards of modern legislation, the psychoactive substances bill is startlingly inane. It seems to ban any substance which can cause a mental or emotional reaction. As must be obvious, that's almost everything in the world. Did this taste remind you of your mother's cooking? It's a psychoactive substance. Did it bring you a moment of happiness? It's a psychoactive substance. The government is about to ban almost everything...

Ian Dunt on politics.co.uk on a spectacularly dumb piece of tabloid-friendly populist drivel.

Where will it leave, say, poppers?

It's so ill thought-out surely the legislation will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions?

What stupid idea will they come up with next?

Oh, mandatory age and ID Checks if you want to watch porn!

PS Vice clarifies that it's all based on a load of bollocks...

You know those legal highs that the government is about to ban en masse because they kill two people per week? They don't kill two people per week, or anything close.

Wednesday's Queen's speech, the first airing of a fully Tory parliamentary programme since 1996, included an unprecedented blanket ban on selling new psychoactive substances.

The announcement was met with various responses. Most importantly, a briefly-amusingVine of the Queen set to an Avicii 2011 Trance Energy lightshow drop. But alsowarnings that the ban turns centuries of British legal tradition on its head, and plenty ofTwitter users saying that the 97 deaths from legal highs in 2012 pales in comparison to the thousands of deaths linked to booze.

But for anyone with even a fleeting interest in the issue, the pertinent response should have been: Why is everyone in this story about banning legal highs talking about 97 deaths, when that figure is largely composed of drugs that were not legal at the time people died from taking them?

The dramatic "97 deaths" figure has travelled well, being quoted by the BBC, the Press Association and the Daily Mail, among others. While yesterday was bad news for the guys selling Bob Marley weed grinders and "Adihash" T-shirts, it was very good news for a right-wing think tank founded by Iain Duncan Smith called the Centre for Social Justice, or CSJ

The CSJ has a strong evangelical Christian bent and is extremely influential in the Tory party. They have been pushing for a blanket ban for a while, so for them yesterday's news was a major victory. The think tank's lead man on legal highs, Rupert Oldham-Reid,hailed the proposed law in an article for Conservative Home, quoting everyone's favourite figure for legal high deaths, or something close to it. "Most tragically, in the last Parliament, the number of deaths associated with 'legal highs' has gone from one per month to over two per week," he wrote. The influence of the CSJ was also seen in a BBC piece published earlier this week, which declared: "Research from the Centre for Social Justice showed that there were 97 recorded deaths from legal highs in the UK in 2012."

Except there obviously weren't...

Daily Star: How Very Interesting

The TV and music mogul, 54, was twice caught sniffing a mystery substance while at work.

It was assumed he was inhaling “poppers’’, used as a sex enhancer by the gay community.

Fellow judge Amanda Holden, 43, who spied him having a sniff, said: “I asked him if they were poppers.”

And a worker on X Factor USA thought the same.

But new dad Cowell has laughed off the suggestion he uses anything to enhance his sexual stamina.

He explained the “drugs’’ are smelling salts which he uses to clear his head.

Cowell said: “If I’ve got a headache it’s good for it.

"I need them for long days."

Daily Star.

Well if this isn't front page news, I don't know what is...

Drugs: Just Say "Dunno"

'Moves to criminalise the new wave of synthetic drugs, known as legal highs, appear to have backfired after it emerged that mephedrone is now more popular among clubbers than when it was not banned.
Confirmation comes in a survey of London club-goers carried out by researchers at Lancaster University and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS foundation trust. Published on Monday in the Journal of Substance Use, it assesses the impact of the classification of mephedrone as a class B drug.
'The survey builds on earlier work, conducted one evening in July 2010, three months after the drug was made illegal, which found the popularity of mephedrone had surpassed that of all other drugs, with 27% of people questioned in two gay-friendly south London dance clubs reporting that they had or were going to take it that night.
'The results of the follow-up study, conducted at the same two clubs in July 2011, found mephedrone had become even more popular. On the night the study was conducted, 41% of club-goers said they had taken or intended to take mephedrone that night.
'Gay club-goers are seen as "early adopters" of psychoactive drugs so the researchers claim the findings are likely to have implications for the wider population in the future..."

The Observer. 
Whilst I'd agree with the main thrust of this that drugs prohibition is pointless, this is pretty daft.
As the survey was conducted at two pretty hardcore gay clubs in Vauxhall thinking it could tell you anything about drug use among clubgoers in general is somewhat fanciful, to say the least.
Gay men often take different drugs to straights and in markedly differently ways.
Have poppers caught on with straight people?
How many gay men at the clubs were on GHB - has that caught on yet?
I could go on...

Update: Here's a summary of the survey's other findings - GHB was the second most popular drug amongst the bumders of Vauxhall that night.