No poppers for you (in the UK)

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January 21, 2016 | Sex & Society

No poppers for you (in the UK)

On April Fool's Day, 2016, the sale of poppers in the United Kingdom will cease. A bill to ban "legal highs" will almost certainly pass its third reading later this month, and an attempt to amend the bill failed yesterday.

Some British politicians fought against the ban of alkyl nitrites. Crispin Blunt, an openly gay Conservative MP, admitted he used poppers on a regular basis.

"I use poppers," Blunt said. "I out myself as a poppers user. And would be directly affected by this legislation. And I was astonished to find that it’s proposed they be banned and, frankly, so were very many gay men."

"There are sometimes that something is proposed which becomes personal to you and you realize the government is about to do something fantastically stupid and in those circumstances one has a duty to speak up," he added.

Mike Freer, another gay Conservative MP, tried a different tact, arguing that poppers could treat adder bites. (Because snakes are a real problem in the UK!)

Mike Penning, the Minister for State for Policing and Justice, promised that the government would look into placing them on an exemption list before the summer recess; however, the ban will go into effect once the law has passed third reading until said review could take place.

"This is an important bill. It’s not perfect. It has some minor, I say minor, amendments that need to be addressed but in 2014 there were 129 deaths that psychoactive substances were implicated in," he said.

It has been estimated that almost one-third of gay and bi men in the country use poppers to enhance sex. And after the bill passes you can still own a bottle of poppers, but you can't bring it into the country or share it with a lover or sell it in a store.

Legal highs exempted from the law: alcohol, tobacco, nicotine and, thank God, nutmeg.