UK Secretary Uses Emergency Powers To Criminalize Possession Of Puberty Blockers

UK Secretary Uses Emergency Powers To Criminalize Possession Of Puberty Blockers
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.

ERIN REED
MAY 31, 2024

On May 31, NHS England sent a letter to every patient on the waiting list for puberty blockers, stating that possession of such blockers will be considered a crime. The letter follows an edict issued by Conservative Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Victoria Mary Atkins and also mandates that transgender youth who obtained their puberty blockers through private doctors must discontinue their medication. This letter and edict mean that the United Kingdom now has some of the harshest policies targeting transgender youth of any liberal democracy in the world.

On May 29th, Atkins announced on twitter, “Today I have taken bold action to protect children following the Cass Review, using emergency powers to ban puberty blockers for new treatments of gender dysphoria from private clinics and for all purposes from overseas prescribers into Great Britain.” Following the announcement, she linked to an edict declaring an “emergency prohibition” on puberty blockers in England, Wales, and Scotland.

The prohibition relies on a decades-old law that allows for the emergency prohibition of medications without the need for a full legislative process; no vote was taken on the edict, and the order was issued just before parliament dissolved for the general election, meaning it could not be overturned. According to UK-based advocate Trans Safety Now, the last and only time such powers were used was in response to deaths among users of an herb found in some Chinese medicine in 1999. Jo Maugham, who leads the Good Law Project, stated about the use of these powers, “It is breathtaking that thousands or tens of thousands of loving families are going to be criminalized by a law made by a Minister, never approved by Parliament, subject to no consultation and the media is not reporting it."

On Friday, following the announcement, Lee Hurley of Trans Writes released a copy of a letter sent to families on the NHS waiting list for puberty blockers. The letter indicates that those receiving puberty blockers from the NHS can continue taking them. However, given the enormous wait lists, a substantial number of families opted to get their puberty blockers through private practitioners registered in the European Economic Area or Switzerland—a fully legal practice in the United Kingdom. For those receiving their care through those systems, the letter states, “You will need to stop taking GnRH analogues unless you are newly prescribed them by a UK-registered doctor, nurse, or pharmacist. These medications can be safely stopped and you do not need to be weaned off.”

Link to tweet

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Critically, the edict does not only target providers; it also targets patients and their families. The letter states, “It will also be a criminal offence to possess these medicines, where the individual had reasonable cause to know that the medicine had been sold or supplied in breach of the ban.”

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