@Nigboat 458051 wrote:

What would happen if a police officer stopped and searched you and found legal highs such as MXE

Depends completely on the cop. official advice (which you can find on a boring 70 page report on the ACMD website) is to arrest on suspicion of posession of a controlled substance and bail the suspect whilst its tested.

Some cops might ignore it but this is rare, more common is that they do arrest folk on suspicion. They may be offered the chance of accepting a class B caution simply to get them processed quicker and to not have to return to a Police station maybe some miles away at their own expense, with a warning from the cop that “you have no proof that its what is actually on the label”.

As some vendors are still selling illegal cathinones in this manner the cops are within their rights to do this, and if someone is over 18 and already has a criminal record for drugs it might work out less hassle as the alternative is to go to open Court where the case and the defendants name/address is reported in the “local” papers, which compared with the 1990s are no longer local, and are archived for years (making a mockery of the rehabilitaiton of offenders act as a private ciitzen can set up thier own unregulated “CRB” service simply using google!)

They can (and will) still confiscate the stuff on health and safety laws, same as if a youth was found with a bottle of caustic soda or sulphuric acid and was suspected of planning using it to harm others or even themselves. The fact that most of these RC’s have to be labelled Xn to comply with safety laws allows them to do this, and even if the stuff is “legal” and someone is released without charge they are unlikely to get their substance back (it will usually go to the CSI lot to be tested. back in the day it wasn’t uncommon for the bobby to nick it for themselves but increasingly they are randomly drug tested..)