The UK Poppers ‘Ban’ and the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016: New Legal Frontiers in the Homonormative Imagination, SLSA Conference 2017, Newcastle upon Tyne, Professor Chris Ashford (Northumbria University)

1. TheUK Poppers‘Ban’andthe
PsychoactiveSubstancesAct2016:
NewLegalFrontiersinthe
HomonormativeImagination
Professor Chris Ashford, Northumbria University
@lawandsexuality

2. FutureSex,
QueerSex –
The New
Frontier
 ‘I came to understand that sexuality had very little to do with the
sex you actually had. A straight woman who hooked up with
people she met online in her search for a boyfriend was not
different, in behavior, from the gay man who made a public
declaration about looking for noncommittal sex […]A futuristic
sex was not going to be a new kind of historically unrecognizable
sex, just a different way of talking about it.’
 EmilyWitt, Future Sex, 2016, 202.

3. TheUK
Poppers ‘Ban’
 Law/Government contemplating/discovering ‘gay sex’
 The legislature talking about ‘gay sex’
 Putting the sex back into sexuality?
 A moment of queer legal resistance?

4. The problem?
‘Legal-highs’
Surrey Country Council Flickr account
(accessed 2/4/17) (original taken March
26 2015)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/surreyn
ews/with/16369754343/

5. The problem?
’Chemsex’: crystal methamphetamine (aka crystal, meth,Tina), GHB
(aka G), and mephedrone.

6. Poppers
 Alkyl Nitrates: Amyl
Nitrate/Isopropanol Nitrate
 1970s – widespread party use
 1980s – HIV/AIDS – Kaposi
Sarcoma (KS)
 ‘Room Odoriser’/’Aromas’
 - short lived hit/’high’
 Muscle relaxant – anal
sex/fisting
 Enhance orgasm

7. Psychoactive
Substances
Act 2016
 2Meaning of “psychoactive substance” etc
 (1)In this Act “psychoactive substance” means any substance
which—
 (a)is capable of producing a psychoactive effect in a person who
consumes it, and
 (b)is not an exempted substance (see section 3).
 (2)For the purposes of this Act a substance produces a
psychoactive effect in a person if, by stimulating or depressing the
person’s central nervous system, it affects the person’s mental
functioning or emotional state; and references to a substance’s
psychoactive effects are to be read accordingly.
 (3)For the purposes of this Act a person consumes a substance if
the person causes or allows the substance, or fumes given off by
the substance, to enter the person’s body in any way.

8. Psychoactive
Substances
Act 2016 –
Exemptions
(Schedule 1)
 Controlled drugs (within the
meaning of the Misuse of
Drugs Act 1971)
 Medicinal products
 Alcohol
 Nicotine and tobacco
products
 Caffeine
 Food (includes drink)

9. Parallel
processes
 ‘Gay rights’ campaigners (Inc. Stonewall): Campaigning for
Poppers to be excluded from the legislation/Parliamentary debate
 Debate between Government and the Advisory Council on the
Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) as to whether Poppers are a
‘psychoactive substance’

10. ACMD
 March 2016, Karen Bradley (HO Minister) wrote to ACMD
indicating they agreed with ACMD advice and therefore could not
exclude Poppers from PSA as don’t fall within it in the first place.
 Parliament passed a ban that could have encompassed Poppers.

11. Was it theSun
wot lost it?
21 Jan 2016

14. A
Parliamentary
Kerfuffle
 Home Affairs Committee - exemption
 BurnhamAmendment
 Defeated: 309 votes to 228
 SNPAmendment (less publicity, also defeated)
 Lobbying - NationalAIDSTrust, Stonewall, Millivres Prowler
and Boyz magazine - Mike Freer (came out during Marriage (Same
Sex Couples)Act passing.
 Passed with ‘a review’ of Poppers
 Bradley: ‘the evidence-gathering stage of the review has begun.
The Government are considering the next steps to ensure that the
health and relationship benefits of poppers, and their risks, are
fully assessed in an open and transparent manner.’ (Feb 2016)

15. David
Burrowes –
Gov position
 ‘We will have the benefit of a 30-month review, where we will be
able to look at the impact of the legislation.We need to ensure
that it gets on to the statute book so that it can arm the police to
get out there and find the people whom we really want to focus
on. I cannot believe that those with poppers will be the main
focus.We can ask that question in 30 months’ time to, I hope,
reassure ourselves.This debate will help with that, and perhaps
the Minister will give us some reassurance as well.
 How will this be dealt with practically and properly? I hasten to
say that those who consume poppers have not so much to fear;
it is the people who shift the new psychoactive substances
around in bulk who are causing menace. I look forward to the
Minister’s response, in which I hope he will outline the evidence
that the Home Office has received about the harm caused
by poppers, because he has expressed real concern to the
Committee about such harm.’

16. Blunt (2nd
reading)
 Sometimes a measure is proposed that becomes personal to
oneself and one realises that the Government are about to do
something fantastically stupid. In such circumstances, one has a
duty to speak up. I use poppers—I out myself as a popper user—
and would be directly affected by the Bill. I am astonished by the
proposal to ban them, as are very many other gay men. It simply
serves to bring the whole law into disrepute. If this drug—which I
use and which has, as the Opposition spokesman, the hon.
Member forWest Ham (Lyn Brown), said in her extremely good
speech, been used for decades—is banned, respect for the law will
fly out of the window.

17. Where would
we be without
theACMD
intervention?
 Poppers would have been found to fall within the meaning of PSA
2016.
 Men using Poppers would be committing a criminal offence
 Those supplying would be committing a criminal offence (Saunas,
sex stores, mates)
 Many men would choose between having anal sex/fisting and
adhering to the law.
 OR – would the review have led to an exemption having
established a psychoactive effect?
 We’ll never know, but this process was not needed for alcohol or
caffeine – normative values in play.

18. Still some
confusion?
Twitter as
Guardian?
 Crawley Police, May 2016
(ACMD letter March 2016)

19. Concluding
thoughts
@lawandsexuality
 A legislative ‘near miss’?
 Did this reveal ‘normative’ assumptions in lawmaking?
 A moment of queer resistance?
 Does this tell us about the law’s relationship with queer sex?