Too right it must be closed, the despicable people that do this need to be accounted for and punished accordingly.
Plasticbonder on
Why are there loopholes in the 1st place? Stuff like this make you wonder about the intellectual prowess of those drafting laws
Sea-Caterpillar-255 on
Poisoning people has been specifically illegal since 1861 (yes 1861). That includes where the purpose is simple “to annoy” though it distinguishes between life threatening and non life threatening poisonings.
So it’s already illegal.
And at best there is a pretence that lack of enforcement or lack of evidence is a deficiency of law. Or just a bunch of politicians trying to score points by outlawing something already illegal…
if someone put five ecstasy tablets into their son’s drink then this was murder / manslaughter at a minimum. They didn’t eat five ecstasy tablets themselves as they knew doing so would’ve made them intensely ill / also dead. They knew what they were doing. I am sure administering a fatal dose of class A drugs to someone without their knowledge is already against multiple laws.
Hard to tell what the headline is about though in terms of proposed legislation letting pranksters off the hook, probably not really enough substance there to talk about especially with a paywall. I assume that the headline / paywall combo is to get people talking about a non-scandal
But I did read what happened to their son. It would be really awful if the poor kid ate five ecstasy tablets by himself but the alternative is basically that he was murdered. There’s no ‘prank’ involved in putting 1g-1.5gs of MDMA in someone’s soft drink.
Glittering_Copy8907 on
This isn’t really a loophole – it’s a law which requires intent.
What is annoying is that it’s just a slight reword of an existing law, which is being done entirely for the sake of it and entirely for “feels”.
Essentially, very little is changing – spiking is illegal, and it remains illegal. The edge case mentioned doesn’t really exist, because the wording will remain similar:
> he new offence is committed if, unlawfully, a person administers a harmful substance to, or causes a harmful substance to be taken by, another person and the person does so with intent to injure, aggrieve or annoy the other person.
If you lack all those, but it still causes injury, then you have the usual offences against the person.
If you’ve spiked somebody without intending to injure, aggrieve or annoy, and no harm is done, then fundamentally what you have is an accident.
siredmundsnaillary on
Intent is a core part of English law.
This is like claiming there’s a loophole in our murder laws, because that too requires malicious intent.
SpiceSnizz on
Laws aside (i think spiking laws need to be stricter) something about this story doesnt add up…
Pills don’t dissolve well and mdma powder isn’t a nice fine powder like cocaine it’s crystally. 5 pills is like the equivalent of a full gram of mdma if not more. We used to put a small amount of mdma in our water bottles, shake it up and down it and even with 10% of what he took it tasted horrendous, that’s why the best way is to wrap it in a rizla and bomb it like a pill. It seems impossible to me that a sober person could have an entire gram in a soft drink and not taste anything weird, it would make your drink taste like industrial cleaner. Not to mention it would need to be shaken to stop it all settling at the bottom.
TurbulentGuru on
I’m ugly obese black and old so peanut won’t get that hard. Like. How is a old smelly guy like supposed to get some action without the spiking fashion? Fackkkk. Party poopers
8 commenti
Too right it must be closed, the despicable people that do this need to be accounted for and punished accordingly.
Why are there loopholes in the 1st place? Stuff like this make you wonder about the intellectual prowess of those drafting laws
Poisoning people has been specifically illegal since 1861 (yes 1861). That includes where the purpose is simple “to annoy” though it distinguishes between life threatening and non life threatening poisonings.
So it’s already illegal.
And at best there is a pretence that lack of enforcement or lack of evidence is a deficiency of law. Or just a bunch of politicians trying to score points by outlawing something already illegal…
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/crime-and-policing-bill-2025-factsheets/crime-and-policing-bill-spiking-factsheet-moj#:~:text=In%20Autumn%202021%2C%20the%20police,the%20circumstances%20of%20the%20case.
if someone put five ecstasy tablets into their son’s drink then this was murder / manslaughter at a minimum. They didn’t eat five ecstasy tablets themselves as they knew doing so would’ve made them intensely ill / also dead. They knew what they were doing. I am sure administering a fatal dose of class A drugs to someone without their knowledge is already against multiple laws.
Hard to tell what the headline is about though in terms of proposed legislation letting pranksters off the hook, probably not really enough substance there to talk about especially with a paywall. I assume that the headline / paywall combo is to get people talking about a non-scandal
But I did read what happened to their son. It would be really awful if the poor kid ate five ecstasy tablets by himself but the alternative is basically that he was murdered. There’s no ‘prank’ involved in putting 1g-1.5gs of MDMA in someone’s soft drink.
This isn’t really a loophole – it’s a law which requires intent.
What is annoying is that it’s just a slight reword of an existing law, which is being done entirely for the sake of it and entirely for “feels”.
Essentially, very little is changing – spiking is illegal, and it remains illegal. The edge case mentioned doesn’t really exist, because the wording will remain similar:
> he new offence is committed if, unlawfully, a person administers a harmful substance to, or causes a harmful substance to be taken by, another person and the person does so with intent to injure, aggrieve or annoy the other person.
If you lack all those, but it still causes injury, then you have the usual offences against the person.
If you’ve spiked somebody without intending to injure, aggrieve or annoy, and no harm is done, then fundamentally what you have is an accident.
Intent is a core part of English law.
This is like claiming there’s a loophole in our murder laws, because that too requires malicious intent.
Laws aside (i think spiking laws need to be stricter) something about this story doesnt add up…
Pills don’t dissolve well and mdma powder isn’t a nice fine powder like cocaine it’s crystally. 5 pills is like the equivalent of a full gram of mdma if not more. We used to put a small amount of mdma in our water bottles, shake it up and down it and even with 10% of what he took it tasted horrendous, that’s why the best way is to wrap it in a rizla and bomb it like a pill. It seems impossible to me that a sober person could have an entire gram in a soft drink and not taste anything weird, it would make your drink taste like industrial cleaner. Not to mention it would need to be shaken to stop it all settling at the bottom.
I’m ugly obese black and old so peanut won’t get that hard. Like. How is a old smelly guy like supposed to get some action without the spiking fashion? Fackkkk. Party poopers