No limits on the high life but will smiles end in tears?

EXOTIC plants, brightly coloured pills, bongs and growing kits — the shelves on the Head Shop in Dublin’s Temple Bar are packed with everything the discerning drug user could possibly want.

They have bright green capsules, pills with smiley faces, something resembling blue and yellow potpourri. They have ones that make you high, ones that chill you out, ones that increase your testosterone level and ones that help you lose weight. And they are all entirely legal.

At 4pm on a Thursday afternoon the shop is packed, with a queue from the counter going out the door of the pokey store. It includes a group of well-dressed young women, an ageing hippy and a young man in a suit. They are all there for one thing: pills. Little red and yellow tablets that will give them the same effect as an ecstasy or speed pill they could buy from a dealer on the street. But in this shop they are not breaking the law.