My feeling on the banning of things is quite simple: don’t do it, or at least have an exceedingly good reason for doing it.

Ban, for example, people building nuclear explosives. Ban street gangs having RPGs. Ban murderers from working with machine guns. That sort of thing.

What you don’t do is ban things because the press don’t like it; for me this holds for most narcotics, and doubly so for this Mephedrone stuff that has been so exercising the papers in the last few weeks.

The government’s chief drugs adviser has strongly indicated the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) will recommend mephedrone be banned.

Professor Les Iversen said he expected the panel would make a recommendation to the home secretary next Monday.

He said he believed mephedrone was “harmful” and hinted that it should be categorised as a Class B drug.

He believes it to be harmful? Well, that’s just dandy. It’s nice that he’s able to speak so definitively about a topic that he hasn’t actually got any evidence to back up.

But it’s OK, he’s meant to talk like that. It’s people jumping on the bandwagon like the Right Honourable Keith Vaz that really annoy me. Mr Vaz who knows so much about it that he could say this:

“We just think the delay is most unsatisfactory given the dangers that are inherent [in taking mephedrone]”

Inherent, you say? Based upon what? Pharmacological experience and evidence based studies? Or your own track record of talking shit and urging bans for no reason?

Grrr. Calls to ban things get me annoyed. They should clearly be banned for the good of my blood pressure…