1971 Misuse Of Drugs Act Report

The issue for my major project is going to be centred on the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, and exploring how it is argued by many people that the laws are too outdated for the current era. I first came up with the idea when I was at Boomtown Festival in August 2017. As I was covering the festival for a magazine, I was sent all of the press releases including one about the introduction of a drug-testing tent. Set up by a charity named ‘The Loop’, festival goers were able to anonymously drop off a sample of their drugs to be tested and return in a few hours to see what their sample was and have a short chat with a drugs councillor. This sparked my ideas, as this is one of the first times that I have ever seen a harm reduction approach to recreational

When I got home from the festival I began to research the work that ‘The Loop’ had been doing and why they set up a testing facility. From my research, I discovered that deaths from ecstasy were at an all time high in the UK, as opposed to countries such as Portugal who have a harm reduction approach to recreational drug use whose deaths were at an all time low from the drug. I then began to think about how lack of education of recreational drug use has lead to rising issues in the UK with addictions. A recent study found that the “UK makes up 22% of global sales of the highly addictive anti-anxiety drug [Xanax] on the dark web” Marsh 2018. Although this can be prescribed through private doctors, this Class C drug is on the rise as more young people are misusing the drug for recreational purposes and are ignorant to the risks of addiction the drug carries with it. Again, this could be down to the lack of education about the drug. At this current day and age, illegalisation of recreational drugs is not preventing

When drug-testing charity, The Loop, was established in 2013, it began to raise questions as to if the laws needed changing. Providing harm reduction advice and information, welfare and support and drug testing, The Loop are trying to promote the idea that knowledge is the best weapon against the harm from drugs and information can mean the difference between life and death.

For this reason, this package is going to be based around the people reforming for changes in the law; educating people on the substances they are taking. The objective of this package will hopefully be to encourage drug takers to be more inclined to test their substances before consuming them and raise awareness that drug testing is