CHAPTER 28: Other Harmful Substances

In the United Kingdom, illicit psychoactive substances were once described in legislation as dangerous drugs or even as poisons. It is therefore sensible to regard what are now called controlled drugs as belonging to a spectrum of harmful substances, where ‘harm’ can refer to the individual or to society at large. The other principal groups of harmful substances are: drug precursors; volatile solvents and gases; ‘social drugs’; medicines; chemical weapons and their precursors; true poisons; and miscellaneous chemical entities. And there is overlap between these different groups, for example: many controlled drugs and some drug precursors are active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs); some controlled drugs are precursors to an API; nicotine is a poison, an API and a constituent of tobacco; formic acid and hydrochloric acid are poisons and precursors/reagents used in illicit drug synthesis; acetone is a solvent and an explosives precursor, the broad group of ‘organophosphates’ are found as insecticidal poisons, dangerous substances and chemical weapons; and cutting agents (drug diluents and adulterants) are often APIs, but are also used in the manufacture of illicit drugs. There has been discussion in some countries of the need to consolidate different types of legislation by means of an all-encompassing ‘Harmful Substances Act’.