TO SAY drugs are a major issue in this country is a massive understatement.

However with the emerging phenomenon of legal highs sweeping the nation, is Ireland about to see a serious number of addiction cases to substances that can be bought legally across head shop counters?

Benzylpiperazine (BZP) is a legal drug, at the moment, but the EU drugs agency in Lisbon announced that all EU members must ban BZP before March 2009. It’s now illegal in most EU countries but is, however, still being sold in Ireland. One of the reasons for the ban is because BZP is said to act as a substitute for MDMA, the banned substance found in ecstasy and speed.

On Thursday November 7, 22 head shops were raided by gardai nationwide in a search for illegal substances. A number of the substances confiscated will be tested to find out if ingredients in the drugs are illegal. If illegal traces are found, then the shop itself will be prosecuted, something head shop owners are not pleased about.

Dylan Murtagh, a former member of staff in the Nirvana head shop on Capel St who is opening his own Nirvana head shop in Mullingar soon, was there during the raids. He said that the “main problem was that there was no correspondence with us, they came in and raided our shop, a simple phone call to tell us that these things were illegal now and we would have taken them off the shelves”.

So what makes legal drugs different or safer than illegal ones? Graham Ryall, Community Drug Counsellor in the Rialto Community Drug Team, considers “the availability of drugs and the environment around them is one of the reasons people still use on the streets”. In other words, people were used to buying and using illegal drugs long before legal substances were available to buy in head shops. They were a lot more available than the ones in head shops because the shops have tended to cluster around city shopping districts, not residential areas.

As a person who has tried legal drugs before, Dylan says “Everything is addictive, of course you can overdo it but the drugs themselves aren’t addictive”. He also says that he has had both good and bad experiences when trying the drugs, but the good definitely out-weigh the bad. He insists he wouldn’t be the person he is today or had the experiences he has had if he had never tried them. When asked, he agrees that anyone can get addicted to a substance but may not necessarily seek counselling unless otherwise forced by gardai, because they may feel that they aren’t addicted. 

Ryall believes that it is mostly middle class people who opt to take legal drugs and it’s mostly seen “as a social scene and won’t result in a major problem in society”.

With that in mind, it’s reported that some side effects of BZP are psychosis, vomiting, headaches, nausea, anxiety, insomnia, mood swings, confusion, memory loss and convulsions. The drug may or may not be safe to its user but it is still up to the user to decide what they wish to spend their money on, they are legal after all. Advocates argue that people are safer walking into shops and buying their drugs legally over counters instead of down alleys.

Our government are putting their foot down when it comes to drugs. But these head shops are selling legal substances which as Dylan says are bought by all age groups. He has personally served several doctors and lawyers.

On the flip side, younger people are trying to buy the substances. But if legal substances get into the hands of someone under the age of 18, are these shops doing more damage than off-licenses that sell alcohol or tobacco to youngsters? Young people want what they can’t have, even if this means going about it in the wrong way. It seems the government can’t stop underage people taking these substances just like they can’t stop them from drinking and smoking.

Dylan insists that Nirvana never let any underage people buy the natural highs and even go as far as not letting them enter the shop. Its not only young people to whom they refuse entry. On the counter in the Capel St. store is a sign stating “Please don’t come in here and ask for ‘hash’. We do not sell this. Asking for it demeans us both”. Not many return after they make the mistake of missing the sign.

He refutes one point regarding the responsibilities head shops have towards their customers, “you can only give advice, if people mix the highs with stupid amounts of alcohol of course they’re going to suffer some serious side effects, nobody could blame the shops for that though”. Foolish use may be what will cause the government to take away something that many people enjoy and use correctly.

Most readers will have heard horror stories of people hurting themselves on both legal and illegal drugs, possibly most recently regarding the banning of ‘magic mushrooms’. The reclassification of BZP has come under similar circumstances. People still manage to get their hands on mushrooms so will it be that hard to get a supplier for BZP? Would it be safer if it remained regulated?

The Nirvana website describes legal drugs as “drug harm minimisation alternatives to enable people experience their desired effects in a safer atmosphere than in back-alleys from back-street dealers with god knows what thrown into the products”.

BZP is not the only legal drug people can buy here in Ireland. In Nirvana, there are over 700 products on sale. These include party pills, smoking blends, a number of different cannabis seeds which are “for collection purposes only”, and the controversial salvia divinorum.

Salvia is sold in several dosage options and users claim to have experienced vivid hallucinations. One Nirvana employee described the effects as being “like a heavy acid trip”. Although head shops claim they generally attempt to advise inexperienced users against the strongest options, one of the better known shops in the Dublin was still willing to sell the strongest form of salvia to a reporter from The Ballyfermot Press after he described himself as “completely clueless” to the effects. Food for thought.

The debate continues regarding these drugs and if they would be safer to society regulated or unregulated.