Herbal High “Ban” Perversely Boosted Sales
Posted in Legal Highs by Shanti Babba on September 30th, 2009 at 10:04 am
So it’s over a month since the Government announced its upcoming ban on some of the legal herbal highs. At the time, we figured that this would cause a massive surge of interest in some of the products that we sell – and we were right. In fact, on the day that the news broke, our website nearly went down under the weight of visitors and enquiries.
Comparing the week before and after in terms of sales figures we saw more or less a doubling in interest and traffic to our website overall, and the soon-to-be-banned substances trebled their sales in some cases.
Obviously in the short term this is great news for us. We’ve got more customers than before and stocks of (currently) legal highs are flying off the shelves. In the longer term however we’re going to suffer a bit as some of products will be illegal from the end of this year and we’ll lose something from our revenue stream.
Overall, we think this is a foolish move on the part of the Government. People have been using substances found in nature to experience a bit of pleasure since the beginning of recorded history – and that includes things as diverse as alcohol made from wheat and yeast, through to the Psylocybin family of mushrooms (the so-called “magic mushrooms.”)
Clearly, people like getting high.
As our understanding of the chemical processes behind these effects have grown so people have started to develop more effective ways to deliver the relevant chemicals.
Since the Misuse of Drugs Act in 1971, so many things that were once a perfectly legal lifestyle choice have become illegal. And it is during this time that they have become a problem. Coincidence? We think not. We think that banned substances carry more notoriety and social cachet – a reputation, if you like. If there are dangers associated with them, taking them out of legal and regulatory frameworks only serves to increase those dangers. A reputable company might be willing to ensure that its products have a certain quality. A gangland drugs overlord has other concerns and no scruples about what he sells to his unwitting customers.
By banning these substances, the government is merely making the Prohibition mistake all over again. Some of the herbal highs you can buy legally and safely today, you will have to buy illegally and unsafely tomorrow.
And the worst of it is that until this ban was announced, hardly anyone even knew about these substances.
