Is the Head Shop Hysteria Justified?
The Irish media has declared open season on head shops, but are the new generation of legal highs they’re selling as dangerous as is being made out?
Stuart Clark, 10 Feb 2010
“Legal but lethal: The drug snorted by school kids”, “Sinister new drug on our streets: Mephedrone turns users violent” and “Drugs made my son take his life”.
Those are some of the headlines that have appeared in Irish and British papers over the past fortnight as the media officially declared war on legal highs and the head shops that sell them.
The Joe Duffy and Matt Cooper radio shows have both covered the subject with considerable gusto; the January 26 edition of Prime Time was devoted to “The booming trade in legal highs”; and the same day found the Mullingar Park Hotel hosting an “Exploring the Legal Highs of Head Shops” conference, which brought together National Drugs Strategy Minister John Curran T.D., and the ten Regional Drugs Task Forces that work regionally to co-ordinate a response to substance misuse.
Hot Press wanted to interview two of the keynote speakers, but neither the Head of the Alcohol and Drug Research Unit, Jean Long nor the Chairperson of the National Advisory Committee on Drugs, Dr. Des Corrigan were available to talk to us. Which may or may not have something to do with the fact that, in the past, Hot Press has published articles which were broadly supportive of the rights of legal high users, and the harm reduction role the substances involved could play if properly tested and regulated.
It’s a point we put in February 2008 to Minister Curran’s predecessor Pat Carey. His view was that, “The likely harm to public health of synthetic substances needs to be clearly established. And on the basis of that, the health authorities must then take a decision about what controls, if any, you need to have around them. People require guidance rather than a knee-jerk reaction saying, ‘It’s a hallucinogenic-type drug, it has likely side-effects, so therefore we’ll ban it.’ Whether it’s alcohol, BZP or whatever, if people are inclined to get involved they need to know the consequences. There’s such a thing as personal responsibility. We can’t have a complete nanny state. At the end of the day people must have enough information to take their own decisions.”
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