Drug awareness line received 60,000 texts in three months

A NEW drug awareness textline has received more than 60,000 messages from young people looking for more information about drugs.

Crosscare’s Drug Awareness Programme (DAP) launched the confidential SMS text service on April 1 with the aim of providing young people with basic facts on drugs which they hope will help them make informed choices regarding their own individual use.

The service, the first of its kind, is totally free and DAP guarantees confidentiality. The person texts the name of the drug to 50100 and the service will then send back specific information on that type of drug as well as the ways it affects people.

DAP spokesman Michael McDonagh said: “When the service was first launched, it was forecast it would receive 10,000 messages in the first six months. We received that number in the first two weeks.”

The organisation has noticed from the messages the massive growth in the number of people wanting to try salvia. Salvia is a rare form of sage which contains Salvinorin A, a powerful psychoactive chemical.

“We have had 1,000 queries about it in the last month and a half,” said Mr McDonagh.

It can be smoked, drank in tea or eaten and has powerful hallucinogenic effects depending on the amount taken and the person’s make-up, he said.

It is banned in Australia and Italy and its distribution is controlled in other countries, but he said it is legal to sell it here.

“It is one of the loophole drugs that has slipped through the law. It replaced magic mushrooms on the shelves almost the next day after the mushrooms were banned,” said Mr McDonagh.

“It is hard to tell what the long-term effects of it are going to be because it is relatively new on the market. Anecdotal evidence that we have so far, however, suggests that it is having a lot stronger effects than mushrooms although we do not know if that is because people are using too strong doses.”