Court papers from the trial revealed that the Metropolitan police investigated the company, however, and when approached by BuzzFeed News, a spokesperson for the Met said: “Detectives made various enquiries into [name of site], however, there was no evidence of criminality.”

When someone has been found buying GBL for human consumption, therefore, because the existing legislation allows companies to self-regulate and only outlaws knowingly selling it for such purposes, there is little that can be done.

This was not what was hoped when the law was implemented.

The explanatory document to accompany the legislation advises that while it removes “any onus from industry” to prove intent of use, the class C categorisation will “support the message” that GBL is “harmful and not safe, and should help deter use as well as the overt sale and promotion of these substances for human use”.

It continues: “There is also an expectation that legitimate sellers of GBL will self-regulate and be more circumspect with their sales and use labelling or other warning devices on their products to inform the public that these products are not for human ingestion.” Some sites do carry warnings but do not verify how their products will be used. Many do not give public health information.

There are other sites believed to be swindling clients. One seller warns its customers of “unscrupulous websites that are only out to defraud people”. The site states this after informing its potential customers that GBL is “transformed in the body … into GHB”, which is also used as a chemsex drug. It advises not to buy GBL from any company based in the Netherlands, which it alleges is a hotbed of companies “stealing money from people” trying to buy it.

MP Crispin Blunt — a Conservative former justice minister and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform — told BuzzFeed News that if GHB and GBL were regulated rather than criminalised, the government could implement harm-reduction methods. For example, he said: “Why not dilute by a factor of 10? That would mean you’d be much less likely to get an accidental overdose.”

Blunt called for “the whole question of the prohibition of narcotic drugs to be put before a royal commission who then need to assess what the costs and benefits of prohibition” are.