Legislation to ban sale of ‘legal highs’
Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said his department would give gardaí the power to prosecute outlets known as head shops from having the potentially dangerous substances on sale.
In Britain, a ban on mephedrone was introduced yesterday after the stimulant was linked to a string of deaths of young people.
There have been a spate of petrol bomb and arson attacks on premises selling substances like mephedrone across Ireland, including one in Dundalk yesterday.
Mr Ahern said: “I am concerned about head shops. We are putting in place focused operations to deal with that. I am concerned about what can happen to communities.”
He said as soon as the authorities banned a substance like mephedrone, something else came up.
Mr Ahern added: “We are looking to ban particular items. We are also going to look at the criminal justice area to see can we change the law in order to deal with that from a criminal justice point of view.”
There has been much public hostility to head shops.
The suspected arson in Dundalk is the fifth such incident. There have been similar arson attacks on other such businesses in Dublin, and pipe bomb attacks in Athlone and Letterkenny.
The Cabinet decided last month to outlaw a range of substances sold in head shops. The ban will come into effect in June as a three-month notice period is legally required to implement it.
Mephedrone and its related compounds are now class B substances in Britain after measures were rushed through parliament in Westminster.
The Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) had recommended a ban, saying the substance was “likely to be harmful” despite incomplete research.
But the leading medical journal The Lancet has questioned the ban, saying it had been rushed and politics had been allowed to “contaminate” science.
Mephedrone, also known as Meow Meow, Bubbles and MCAT, is derived from cathinone, a compound found in a plant called Khat. The laboratory-produced drug has a similar effect to amphetamines, Ecstasy or cocaine. But it also causes nausea, palpitations and vomiting.
The drug has been linked to a number of deaths but there has been no conclusive scientific proof yet that it has been responsible for any of them on its own.
