The Tories are still allergic to experts – just look at their laughing gas ban | Owen Jones

A minority of users will be arbitrarily criminalised – in the words of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, which represents former police officers, for “possessing substances which have a lower harm rate than ‘legal’ highs such as alcohol”.

Because of an institutionally racist criminal justice system, those targeted will be disproportionately Black, their future job prospects damaged for enjoying a quick high from a balloon.

The most notorious example, of course, was the US prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s, which led to a quadrupling of deaths from “poisoned liquor”, while handing criminal gangs a monopoly over supply of a hugely profitable industry: robbery, theft and homicide soared as a consequence.

Banning drugs does not make them go away: it just means more harmful forms circulate, people with problematic relationships don’t get help and criminal gangs are handed a profitable trade.

Its review was clear: nitrous oxide should remain under the Psychoactive Substances Act, which prevents it from being sold for recreational purposes, but the health and social harms did not justify criminalising possession.

Yet what hope when the two biggest parties stick their fingers up at the experts: the last Labour government fired Prof David Nutt, its chief drug adviser, when he correctly argued that ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.