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This is fucking HORRIFIC.

UK Secretary Uses Emergency Powers To Criminalize Possession Of Puberty Blockerswww.erininthemorning.com On May 31st, letters went out from NHS England to parents of trans youth stating that they must immediately stop taking puberty blockers, and that possession will be considered a crime.

"On May 31, NHS England sent a letter to every patient on the waiting list for puberty blockers, stating that possession will be considered a crime. The letter [...] also mandates transgender youth who obtained their puberty blockers through private doctors must discontinue their medication."

What a godawful and pointless cruelty 🤦🏻‍♀️

cis kids with precocious puberty are exempt, i’m sure?

Cis kids don't get shoved on a twenty year waiting list for healthcare

Those with prescriptions, trans or precocious puberty, are exempt.

Cursed island.

can emergency powers even be used to criminalize things? idk how the UK works but in the US only a congressional vote can criminalize things, a presidential order can put a halt to criminalization or make something be finable, but anything with jailtime requires congress

Did you read the article

the article doesnt answer the question tho, it merely says what was done, it doesnt answer if what was done is even legal to begin with. take America for example, governors try to do things all the time that get struck down by the courts because they don't actually have the power to do it.

put simpler: my question is, is there a chance the courts strike down this emergency order? because as an American i dont see how emergency powers can be used to criminalize things, doesnt seem legal

I dunno man it's like it's a whole different system of laws

Yes our courts can challenge this stuff. I seem to remember there is a challenge being put together for this. Fingers crossed.

this is not true btw, the DEA and FDA have broad authority to administratively schedule (criminalize) substances under the CSA. congress can override with specific legislation but the power typically rests with the executive branch.

however the specific scenario here (legal for cis kids with precocious puberty, illegal for trans kids) has no precedent in the US. “off-label” prescriptions are entirely legal, even for controlled substances.

that said, the DEA can revoke a prescriber’s authority to prescribe controlled substances, bringing this back to prosecutorial discretion. individual states also have their own controlled substance programs, i.e. Alabama could decide to ban a substance entirely absent federal action.

this is because congress already passed laws regarding criminalization of schedule classes. this isn't comparable to this situation since the emergency power used here isnt changing the identification of the drugs used at all

So fucked up. The piece of shit is only doing this to throw red meat to its base. Throwing literal children under the bus. Scum of the earth

Doesn't this make the UK currently worse than even the worst US state?

they’re worse on a lot of stuff. they made marijuana a more of a crime by changing its class. They’re worse on trans. they are no better on racism and immigration than America may be worse. The UK is going backwards faster than the United States.

Wait, they made it MORE of a crime‽ jfc

yep they had a plan to send people applying for asylum to Rwanda and their parliament approved it. It’s only at the last minute when he wanted to be reelected that Rishi Sunak dropped it.

He didn’t drop it at all, that gives him too much credit. I think he realised it was going to be completely infeasible - that only a tiny number of flights would happen. And called the election before his racist base could find out they’d thrown £millions at basically nothing.

the entire idea was shocking to me … the cruelty of it 😟

I reckon we will be replacing our right wing horror show government with a centrist government pretty soon. That’s what millions of us are holding on to. Economically, Brexit ruined this country except for oligarchs & headbangers who attend Florida think tank conferences. We’re not having it

The centrist government will slow or maybe even halt the decline. I have my doubts that it will make much, if any, progress towards reversing it.

That may be so Pray it turns out better than we hope. Aligning with the EU again would help

We really need to rejoin the single market but, yes, realigning in baby steps (rejoining by stealth) is the best we can hope for.

I agree

I understand that’s horrible for the people that didn’t support Brexit but that is how it ended up. It’s like you have your own MAGA MBGA? movement. …

Oh yes. Watch the Reform Party in future years - Nigel Farage owns it as a company. He who stirred up Brexit & who just *loves* Trump It’s likely to become a far right coalition of lost Conservatives, fascists & insanely rich people

last election here winners were Flemish Separatists. They were kept out of power by many other parties uniting. It’s everywhere. Netherlands too

It’s more than horrible We know Russian propaganda was used to pass false information about Brexit around the country. The economic fall out of imposing a border with our nearest, biggest trade bloc (the EU) has been appalling

the continent of Europe is the UK’s most logical trading partner. I used to order a lot of stuff from the UK now I can’t order anything from there because it’s €30 to get it inspected and then I’m charged a higher rate of tax making small everyday items completely unaffordable.

Brexit was a disaster for the UK … it won’t be an easy path back. There is some anger and bitterness towards the UK over how your representatives behaved. Very rude.. they even threw a 2 finger salute on the way out! they are not just gonna open the door here for you.

yeah, they've been worse on trans stuff for a while. things are really in flux in the States though, it's hard to know which way it'll head

It moves both ways in the US. Red states are getting worse while many blue states are explicitly setting trans rights into law.

Gosh you'd almost think there was an election coming up and the party who are in danger of losing power wanted to stir up culture war issues....

But, like, the same culture wars they've been continuously fighting to their own great detriment...

we're in active campaigning now and trans panic is all they've got so we have 6 weeks of it dialed up to 11

the funny part is, every poll shows the vast majority of brits actually support trans people, so them doing this actually hurts their vote rather than helps, idk what crack they are smoking

They're trying to find cracks to break away some people who support trans rights. In the US they figured out saying "it's men playing in women's sports, they're cheating!" seemed to matter more to a lot of Americans than the other things they had tried before.

Unlikely to affect either way tbh as it rates so low down on most peoples priorities but it will please the extreme loonies who run the party and most of the media.

Unmitigated cruelty

I don't have the words...horrific doesn't begin to describe how fucked up it is to rip necessary medication out of the hands of children. They're on those meds because doctors believe they need them. The people trying to penalize them for that are sick in the head.

the cruelty is the fucking point isnt it