Synthetic cannabis and other legal highs to be banned in NSW under Fair Trading laws

[Torsten]

In order to respond more quickly to new 'legal highs' hitting the NSW marketplace the government has decided to use Fair Trading laws to impose immediate 90 day bans on products, giving the drug laws time to catch up.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/barry-ofarrells-bid-to-ban-a-rash-of-legal-drugs/story-fni0cx12-1226655093369

THE state government will seek permanent bans on synthetic drugs in a statewide blitz on the so-called "legal highs".

The Sunday Telegraph can reveal Fair Trading Minister Anthony Roberts is moving to outlaw the lethal substances, which provide similar effects to drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin.

Fair Trading officers late last week targeted outlets in Kings Cross, Darlinghurst and Newcastle selling a range of manufactured products known as Smokin' Slurry, Slappa, Venom, Black Widow and Kronic.

The drugs have been linked to a rise in hospital admissions for psychosis and were brought to light following the death of a Central Coast man last year, who injected himself with a substance mimicking heroin.

Mr Roberts said interim bans on the products - lasting 90 days - would be brought in as early as this week, and permanent bans were the next step. However they required the support of the federal government.

"This is a whole of government response and as Minister for Fair Trading, I am moving to protect the community from dangerous and potentially deadly synthetic drugs," Mr Roberts said. "Fair Trading officers are undertaking surveillance of the marketplace, examining the types of synthetic drugs being sold, with a view to banning the dangerous products identified.

"New and different substances regularly appear on the drug market and it is challenging for governments to deal with this constantly changing environment, with it requiring action at both state and federal levels - but we are determined to do all we can."

Police and hospitals have reported increasing volumes of people suffering psychotic episodes as a result of synthetic highs while the commander of the drug squad has labelled them "lethal".

Last October Central Coast truck driver Glenn Punch died two days after injecting a synthetic drug purchased from a sex shop. He had gone into a state of psychosis and was seen running around naked, before attacking a security guard and then falling into cardiac arrest.

It's understood the bans will include targeting "like substances", which closes a loophole that saw manufacturers tweak the chemical make-up of the drugs to skirt the rules. The NSW synthetic drug industry is worth about $200 million.

[bullit]

is this good?? my old mate a very heavy smoker for 20 years tried sum kronic , this boy was fucked!!!! short of breath, anxiety, and just not ''normal'' for 2 days

[Torsten]

prohibition is never good. it always fails to achieve what it sets out to do.

regulation, education, controlled supply, safety testing and similar processes are what saves lives.

oh, and what you describe is what happens to me when I smoke real pot. all of it carries risks, but prohibition always increases those risks.

[bullit]

i am the same with pot, was the legal high smoke ever ''safety tested''??

[altenate]

Is there any source of info that actually records deaths due to taking of a substance? Legal highs, or other?

I understand there have been a few ecstasy deaths due to bad reactions over the years ,others mentioned recently due to bad acid ( which I find it hard to believe it was actually LSD & not a nbom type of drug) & now all these deaths due to synthetic cannabis etc. od's from opiates are in there own class of deaths! So not taking that into consideration.

Interested in deaths figures due to actual taking of the substance & not due to misadventure!

There must be an accurate recording somewhere?

[AndyAmine.]

So there are synthetic opiates being sold in the Aus market as well?
I thought I would have heard about it but then I haven't kept my finger on the pulse of the RC market for a long time.

[Thelema]

There are hard-to-find variants of fentanyl on the marketplace, never heard of them in Oz tho'.

I wonder if these guys are going to target natural products too?

[bullit]

fentanyl yuk!!

[Scarecrow]

pop quiz

people are finding chemical substitutes, to marijuana because we made it illegal! these chemical substitutes are more damaging and less documented than the plant they are meant to substitute, but gives similar effects!

what can we do about this mess???

OBVIOUSLY, the solution is to:
a ) ban them also! that ought to learn 'em good!
b ) not ban marijuana, and stop driving people towards finding shitty chemical substitutes for a plant


HINT: one of these options makes you a fuckwit.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Scarecrow

[coolname]

scarecrow i want to be a politician when i grow up, so i choose option A ofcourse. we cant have people making decisions for themselves

[Anodyne]

It wasn't fentanyl - the article is wrong to refer to a substance "mimicking heroin". There are illicit synthetic opioids out there, but I think the amount of blackmarket fentanyl/fentanyl-derivatives in Australia would be totally eclipsed by other classes of synthetic drugs. Glenn Punch, the Central Coast guy they refer to (original article here) apparently had a heart attack after a two-day "bath salts" binge. I think the particular product he took was supposed to be alpha-PVP. "Yuk" indeed.

[Mycot]

Ahem. These are no more "shitty chemical substitutes" for a plant than LSD is a "shitty chemical substitute" for a plant.

[AndyAmine.]

I disagree Mycot, I feel that isnt a very good example.
LSD is quite a safe drug in terms of LD50 and toxicity etc, where most of the synthetic 'noids and stimulants are a quite harmful to the body/mind and more likely to cause a physically damaging overdose.

[etherealdrifter]

I'm in the camp that allows freedom to choose.

Personally, i'm not a fan of the current,legal,synthetics(although proper lsd has to be made synthetically right )........ but i totally am for freedom to choose what path you wanna go exploring down.

Every humanoid has different needs.

I come at it from this angle - the first rule of travelling is to have a trusted guide to return you whence you came from right? At the very least to have a melways or a map right?

That way you can go exploring new sights and sounds but be able to return to base camp safely.

Taking away our basic right to choose our way is the problem i have with all this pa lava not the synthetics themselves.

ugghhh.............i feel like this argument has been shitting me for the past 25 years.

Education -as always - seems to be the basic tenet that gets swept under the carpet in all this furore

over what is right and wrong.

meh.

[Mycot]

I disagree Mycot, I feel that isnt a very good example.

LSD is quite a safe drug in terms of LD50 and toxicity etc, where most of the synthetic 'noids and stimulants are a quite harmful to the body/mind and more likely to cause a physically damaging overdose.

Most ? There has been extremly little research done on noids. Next to none whatsoever. Toxicity studies have not been done and little other research is being done or will be done in our current climate. So we really know little about what does what because a certain amount of the time we don't even know exactly what compound we have.

Many peeps are casting a really broad net of toxicity on compounds some of which there has been done no reseach on whatsoever.

Many may be totally safe if we are to go by assumptions. Not only safe but also new areas for research and exploration.

[AndyAmine.]

Ermm, isnt that what I was just said?

[Mycot]

No

[trucha]

At least some of the synthetic cannabinoid agonists appear to be bad news for lungs.

Torsten's comments about smoking good pot having similar results have merit but there is a difference worth being aware of. Check out the tarry deposits from weed inside of a pipe and compare to the *plastic*like deposits left by some of the "synthetic cannabis" products. Its no surprise they are more difficult to cough back out.

Shortness of breath and other respiratory issues are being fairly widely reported by heavy smokers of those products and THAT really needs a bit more awareness.

I don't believe any substance needs restriction, we just need better public education.

[bullit]

well they r banned now in nsw !!

[Mycot]

Banning things because you don't know anything about them isn't smart.

Plastic on the lungs is as much urban myth as anything else. There have been little if any real studies ever really done on this linking particular compounds with particular effects.

And which niods supposedly has this effect.

Is it he CP series, or the HU compounds, or is it the flouridated compounds that are creating plastic.

Perhaps compounds that have basic structures that don't occur in nature are the problem.

What about the indole series, are they good ?

What about structurally simple compounds based on the structure of anandamide.

Not all things ought to be swept under the same carpet or be talked about in the same breath any more than narcotics and cannabis ought to be. And precision in naming exactly the precise chemical compound one is making claims of toxicity for would be a nice start..

This legislation is way premature, being based on the principle that these things are not sold at the bottle-o..

[AndyAmine.]

I hear youTrucha.

It has to be remembered that these are synthetic compounds but its easy for people to forget that when smoking something one links with cannabis which the body tolerates much, much better.

The plastic/resin like nature of 018 for example is obvious to anyone who has smoked enough of it.
(I use 018 as an example because it was very common and by plastic I mean something with plastic/resin like properties)

One only had to stoke a stem after it had been blocked and it came out as hydrophobic putty totally unlike cannabis resin and the inside of a glass bong turned white with the same material that can be wiped off with the finger and rolled into a ball of water resistant putty.

If one smoked 018 on it own the residue had to be literally scraped off the teeth like a soft poly resin and when it was lit on fire black pieces of burnt plastic like carbon floated around in the air in the same fashion as when plastic is lit on fire.

So all this adds up to being pretty bad for the lungs when used heavily for prolonged periods.

When a lot of it is smoked this resin sticks to the inside of the lungs and stays stuck until smoking is stopped and then it comes off in rubber like sheets.

The main problem is that its non-soluble in polar solvents such as saliva and mucous ie: inside the human body and thats not a good thing when its going into your lungs.

Edited June 10, 2013 by AndyAmine.

[bullit]

soo after reading ya post andy i think yeah fuk this shit ban it?? what happened to the good old days.. if ya wanna try a smoke go and c your brother or ya mates bro even ya fuken dad 4 the good stuff lol!!! oi i got told by my bro if i didnt hit the bucket he would hit me, the bucket was way better option happy dayz!!!

[Mycot]

Andy's probably got a constitution thats just perculiar to himself.

Like this ban mentality. Lets ramp up the pseudo-drug war.

[AndyAmine.]

It comes down to moderation like anything else I guess. The use I was refering to was very heavy.

I think some of the safer ones could have a place but they need more human saftey testing done and they need to have tighter restrictions on them for quality, age and max ammount available etc.

Personaly I would prefer to see both cannabis decriminalised AND some of the safer compounds available.

[AndyAmine.]

What are you talking about Mycot?
I really dont follow you at all? Does anyone else, perhaps someone can tell me what Im missing?

Edited June 10, 2013 by AndyAmine.