The following post is by Tyler Sterns, from Reddit, an online story sharing site:
The New Hampshire Senate and House recently passed SB 106, a bill banning “synthetic drugs.” I co-authored this open letter to the NH legislature urging them to reconsider the bill. I urge all of you to contact your legislators (House& Senate) and tell them to kill this bill; feel free to send along this letter.
Link to the status of the bill.
The Letter
Members of the New Hampshire Legislature,
We have had a careful read-through of SB 106, which purports to ban synthetic drugs. We are writing to inform you that this bill, while well-intentioned, would result in unintended consequences that are not only absurd, but positively embarrassing to the State of New Hampshire.
First, as written, the bill would make certain household foods and flowers illegal, as there is no allowable minimum amount specified. Rye bread and Morning Glory seeds, for example, contains trace amounts of ergot alkaloids and related compounds; these precursors would be illegal, as would the bread and seeds that contain them.
Second, the bill would make numerous non-controlled FDA-approved medications illegal. The NSAID indomethacin, which is related to the over-the-counter pain medications ibuprofen and naproxen, would be banned. The FDA-approved anti-migraine pill methysergide would also become illegal. Interestingly, the antidepressant bupropion is specifically exempted, but the active form in the body, hydroxybupropion, appears to be forbidden.
Third, despite dozens of highly technical chemical names and hundreds of thousands of possible combinations, the bill fails to address a number of synthetic drugs of abuse. For example, cocaine derivatives such as dimethocaine are perfectly legal under this bill. The bill does not appear to address synthetic opiate narcotics at all; synthetic heroin, or designer versions of common drugs of abuse like Percocet, for example, appear legal under this bill as written.
Fourth, this bill would ban the use of these chemicals in non-human, pre-clinical research (e.g., in laboratory animals, or in cell cultures), giving New Hampshire a disadvantage in the high-tech pharma industry. For example, metergoline, a research chemical available from reputable chemical distributors, would be banned.
Lastly, the bill authorizes a single, unelected person – the Commissioner of Health and Human Services – to add chemicals to the list, with no input whatsoever from the Legislature. With 24 senators and 400 state reps unable to completely understand the complex chemistry in this bill, do we really expect the Commissioner to suddenly become an expert?
We urge the NH Legislature to take advantage of the Committee of Conference process to rectify or, preferably, kill this deeply flawed legislation.
Denis Goddard
B.S., Chemical Engineering, UW-Madison
Tyler Stearns
Doctor of Pharmacy
Additional Information
I did not include the following in the letter for the sake of brevity and clarity.
- 359-O:2(IV)(f) & (g) are the exact same passage. That is, in the process of copy-and-pasting, someone forgot to change “pyrazole.”
- The bill makes use of erroneous or out-dated terminology, including “allcylamido” (presumably “alkylamido”) and “FDA-approved research products” (perhaps referring to investigational new drug applications).
- Although the bill appears to be very specific in naming chemical structures, it is not entirely clear in many instances how a particular structure should be interpreted, leaving possible ambiguity in implementation of the statute.