I do not think that putting them on the exempted list means that anybody should draw the conclusion that they are harmless. They obviously have an effect of some sort on individuals; otherwise, my constituent would not have, as he reports to me, 32% repeat orders for many of these substances. I take the hon.
Gentleman’s point. However, in relation to cholinergics, the National Academy of Sciences has said that choline is a dietary requirement, as I mentioned, and the Food and Drug Administration has recommended 425 milligrams of choline intake a day. With regard to racetams, oxiracetam, for example, has been shown to improve step-down, retention and acquisition performance in research carried out on rats, I believe, and was supported in a paper in “Behavioural Brain Research” in 1996. I have various other references citing good research carried out into these drugs; some, I admit, have not had so much research into them.
The purpose of amendment 1 is to make sure that the law of unintended consequences does not apply to this Bill. The Minister needs to reassure my constituent, and the many organisations such as online companies and health food shops that sell these substances, that either they do not fall within the ambit of this Bill, and that therefore they need not concern themselves about falling foul of it, or, if he thinks that these substances need more research, to tell us what needs to be done. I expect, at the bare minimum, that he will undertake to review the products that I have listed in the amendment and to let us know, after discussions with the ACMD, what he intends to do. I hope that he will be able either to add these products to the exempted list or to let us know that the Bill does not apply to them. If it does not, he needs to reassure my constituent by letting me know the timescales within which he will investigate these products and perhaps others that might be brought to his attention.