Amsterdam’s Night Mayor Calls Out the UK’s Policy on Club Drugs

After the recent scare with Superman pills (PMMA), Amsterdam’s Night Mayor, Mirik Milan, has had enough of the drug policies of UK clubs. The catalyst? There was no warning from the government when the Superman pills hit the scene.

Having been Night Mayor (Amsterdam’s ambassador of club & night life culture) since 2012, Milan took the dispute to City Hall and discussed the changes at Fabric, as well as pointing out several issues with the current approach to dealing with drug use:

 

If you look at drugs as being a problem just for dance music or for nightclub owners then you’re looking at it wrong. Drug use is something which sits in society and which you will not take out by having sniffer dogs at the door…

Strongly of the opinion that serious harm is completely avoidable even one death is too many, the Night Mayor suggests that the focus switch from damage prevention to damage limitation. A major part of this is making sure that club security and the authorities know what to do in the event of an overdose or other drug-related incident. To strengthen his position on the subject, Milan cited Holland and Switzerland as countries who had their policies in order:

 In Holland, when one of these pills was brought to the testing station, big warning signs went out to all the clubs and the media and, as of yet, nobody has died because of these pills in Holland…In Switzerland, you can test on location at festivals, and the last person to die in Switzerland due to taking drugs at an event was 7 years ago. It’s not like they’re just drinking schnapps in the woods in the hills in Switzerland, so if you look at it from a damage limitation perspective, it works.”

What do you all think? Should American night clubs’ drug policies start to look more like this?

[Source: MixMag]