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A submitted article from one of our members, which we gladly add to the web site. 

We may or not may not agree 100% with the opinion expressed here, but as a member of LCI, the person who wrote this has the right to be heard. 

HEAD SHOP MANIA !   

If you , like me, are sick and tired of hearing about legal highs and head shops in the news then you can stop reading this article here and now. 

If , however, you would like to read a straightforward update on where we stand now and how this affects marijuana legalization, then welcome aboard. 

First things first. Legal highs and head shops are not a new phenomenon. This particular writer distinctly remembers buying legal highs in the summer of 2007 containing BZP. 

BZP was of course outlawed by Mary Harney ( March 2009 ),  which had the knock on affect of shed loads of a legal substance being transfromed, effectly overnight, into illegal substances. 

These shed loads of legal highs were not dumped or destroyed. Rather, they made their way into the black market, where they were sold on as ecstacy and used as cuting agents in any powdered drug you can think of. This kind of action is a good representation of the current governments' policy on drugs which effectively boils down to : "Drugs are bad Mmmm kay ?" ( unless of course , they're alcohol and nicotine, which the masses have taken to fairly well over the years, and are integrated into society supplying government with tax money and lining the pockets of big business.) 

The "knee-jerk" response of the government is something that happens week in, week out in irish politics. Leaving that aside for a moment, what is really evident to me is that, in the corridors of power, there is a sheer and utter ignorance on behalf of policy makers. The line on BZP ( and now mephedrone ) is that if they don't know anything about it, they will ban it (after the media have stirred up a fuss of course). The head shop industry is booming in Ireland, a representation of the fact, that yes, people like taking drugs. What people don't like to do, i think it's fair to say, is break the law. Therefore, what the government are doing in this regard is pushing the head shop customers back to the street dealers, who don't pay taxes, and more worryingly, support a criminal ladder which, when traced back a few steps, ends up at gangsters with guns, prostitution , human trafficking and various other black market and illegal activities. Just like the great force of globalisation, so too have criminals become globalised. Their fingers are in every pie, and where the government persist in creating laws that open up new markets, the criminal fraternity will simply roll up their sleeves, get stuck in and make a fortune in cold hard cash while they're at it. 

But back to the PR game. What's important in all of this discussion is the following : It is not important what you believe or what you know. What is important is what the general population believe. These are the people who will vote in elections, they are the 'concerned parents' ( such as these fine people : http://www.npc.ie/npc/page.aspx?pageid=29 ) who will put pressure on head shops to close, regardless of strict over 18 policies or not. They are the people who read the news papers and accept what they are being told. 

Someone knew how to play the PR game very , very well. The burning down of Nirvana on capel St was splashed across every major media oulet on the island. All of a sudden, it was all eyes on the head shops.(I understand that Joe duffy had been discussing the issue as far back as january. Prime Time also put out a special on head shops before this. But here, I will take the fire as a "ramping up" point in terms of media coverage) The half a million euro in cash found in the shop didn't help either. For any skeptics reading this article, bear in mind that Jim bellamy was the first person to open a sex shop in Ireland, aswell as being a headshop pioneer. As I said previously, business is booming.  

The fire had multiple knock on effects. Most notable was the extensive media coverage with people from Donegal to Kerry and back hearing about the shops and what they sold. People who had never seen a head shop before, let alone been inside of one, or even knew anyone who had ever been in one before.  

There were however, more subtle knock on effects. A grow shop ( Just to be clear: purveyors of equipment for growing. NO seeds. NO legal highs. NO skins. NO bongs. ) close to the former Nirvana premises was raided soon after the fire by 12 members of Irelands' finest : The Drugs Squad. These 12 fine gentlemen tore the shop apart, damaging the trade of a business that was ( and is )  100% legal. Ignorance prevails yet again. 

Another subtle effect was an increase in customers for head shops. That's correct ladies and gentlemen. There is no such thing as bad publicity. This writer was standing at a hatch at his local head shop ,at approximately 6:30 one friday evening having purchased some high quality rolling papers, chatting amicably to the gentlemen that worked there when the following occurred :  

A man in his early twenties, and 2 women of about the same age, all dressed up for a night out in the city approached the hatch. The first thing the large, well built young man said to the attendee was: "Do you have any of that , eh, whatchamicallit, eh, mephedrone?" - "Yes, we have products that contain mephedrone." - "eh, alright, how much would you need for 3 people?" - "It's not for human consumption mate" - "Alright then, sure give us 2 packs of the one with the most mephedrone in it". 

Clearly a first timer, when he had left, I asked the shop worker if the current media attention had effected business at all. "It's twice as busy mate. We're already sold out of our most popular smoking brands and most popular party pills, and it's only friday." 

And then, another fire. the happy hippy shop on north king street. I wasn't even aware of its' existence until the fire. Less damage here admittedly, but it still gave your local friendly TD , Joe costello the footing to come out and say that head shops should be banned : "It certainly seems too much of a coincidence that there has been two such fires within days, and there is a real concern that these shops are being targeted, and there is a worry that not enough action is being taken either to stop the selling of these products or to protect people living near head shops who could be hurt in a fire”. WOAH. not only is it bad enough that people are off their heads on plant food but you could be caught up in a blaze ! Talk about negative publicity !  

Anyway, the smoke has now cleared from the head shops and one thing is certain. The government are to ban the products rather than the shops. The list has not yet been finalised, but it is likely to include cannabinoid derivatives & mephedrone . The chief pharmacist from the HSE is currently "working on it". Meanwhile, Fine Gael are calling for head shops to pay a licence costing €100,000 per annum. Personally, I would love to see how they justify this figure, other than just pulling it out of the sky to discourage head shops popping up in every rural TD's backyard. 

Where do we go from here ?  

Well, good question. As soon as the government get through their archaic system of passing laws and deciding what to do, new substances that are outside the remit of the misuse of drugs act will be popping up in a head store near you. Admittedly there might be a small window where the criminals will see a rise in trade. Now that the public have got news that these substances are to be banned  they can sleep safe at night in the knowledge that their sons and daughters in college in Dublin, can't get easy access to any sort of mind altering substances. Until the next ones start appearing and they make headlines again. And on and on we go on this roundabout of government ban, new substance appears, government ban, etc... 

The silver lining in all of this is that maybe, just maybe, the powers that be will see the errors of their ways and legalise the all natural , non-synthetic drugs from mother earth. With the amount of head shops in place, there's already a distribution network in place. In a time of recession, the phenomenal impact this would have on the economy as a whole and the empowerment to people to earn some extra cash for themselves cannot be understated. But, if you're reading this, you already know all this. Remember people:  What you know or believe does not matter !  

Keep the faith !