FG warns on new head shop drugs

FINE GAEL has said urgent legislation is needed to ensure no new drugs could be sold in head shops without the approval of food or medicine authorities.

Health spokesman Dr James Reilly made the call after he showed an Oireachtas Committee on Health a head shop product containing a cocaine substitute not covered in the ban on legal highs introduced suddenly on May 11.

“I warned at the time of the Government’s ban on certain head shop substances that new substances would quickly come along to replace them,” said Dr O’Reilly.

“A concerned citizen was able to purchase a new ‘bath salt’ product, Amplified, in a head shop in Malahide.

“I have contacted the National Poisons Information Centre in Beaumont Hospital, who confirmed that this is a cocaine substitute which is not on the banned list.”

The substance is understood to be Dimethocaine, a local anaesthetic with slight stimulant properties that some studies show to be nearly as potent as cocaine.

Mr Reilly said he very much welcomed the ban introduced in May but said the Government must recognise the need to counteract the arrival of new products on to head shop shelves.

“We must legislate so that no substance for human consumption should be sold across any counter unless it has been approved by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland or the Irish Medicine Board.”

He strongly criticised the Government’s decision to delay the ban until it had gone through a three-month notification period with the European Commission. He said the declaration order that was produced banning the substances was both “tardy and incomplete”.

Addressing the committee, Marita Kinsella, chief pharmacist with the Department of Health, said drafting the ban was a “complicated process”.

She said around 200 individual substances were included in the ban and that the “vast majority” of substances causing concerns in head shops were now controlled.

Ms Kinsella said the Minister for Health and Children Mary Harney had already said she would keep matters under review and that if individuals were “circumventing” the order, additional substances would be brought under control.

The Irish Examiner reported last month that the National Advisory Committee on Drugs was working with the Department of Health on a second ban, which they hoped would bring in up to 50 other chemicals.

Ms Kinsella told Dr Reilly that products sold as legal highs fell outside food and medicine laws and therefore could not be regulated by the Food Safety Authority or the Irish Medicines Board. She said the legal advice was that they had to notify the European Commission. She said the Government made a second application requesting the ban be introduced urgently, which the Commission agreed to on May 10.

She said that, according to gardaí, 36 of the 102 head shops were operating as of Monday, the same figure given by gardaí on May 13.

Alice O’Flynn of the HSE told the committee a delayed national awareness campaign on now illegal highs would start at the end of June.