Community leaders have every right to be concerned at the suggestion retailers are preparing for the return of pyschoactive legal highs within their areas.
The Otago Daily Times has been told more Dunedin dairies are selling small quantities of legal, non psychoactive products in anticipation of a psychoactive product being approved for sale.
The move comes as the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority prepares to start issuing retail licences from November, allowing the sale of any psychoactive product that makes it through the approval process.
A rigorous and expensive testing process is needed before the products make it through to the shelves, and they have not been tested on animals. Also, it is unlikely they have been tested on humans, especially the target market of young adults willing to spend about $25 to experience the mind altering effects.
In May last year, the Government passed under urgency an emergency law banning party pills and synthetic cannabis and, at the same time, warning of heavy penalties for selling, making or possessing synthetic drugs after all remaining products were stripped from shelves. Officials estimated at the time the industry was making about $140 million a year.
The Ministry of Health warned that between 150 and 200 people had developed a dependence on legal highs and would require withdrawal management.
It became something of a nightmare for parents of teenagers who had become dependent on the substances to get through each day. Tragic stories were posted throughout New Zealand as these young people sank further into such a state. The only recourse was for parents to try to spirit them away to a safer environment.
It seems incomprehensible society again faces the prospect of these destructive substances being sold across the counters of our dairies and other retail stores.
Reports of sales of existing non psychoactive products having similar effects to those banned last year are a call to action for community leaders.
The difference is the end of last year's interim licensing regime means products imported from overseas no longer have to list the ingredients on their packets. Even the National Poisons Centre agrees no one knows what is in them.
But, in a positive development, calls to the centre have substantially reduced since the products were banned last year. Whether that will continue remains to be seen, but this is not the time to back off.
Clutha Mayor Bryan Cadogan, who works extensively with young people to get them into paid work, says only a boycott of retailers prepared to sell the substances can put an end to the scourge of legal highs.
The Dunedin City Council is working through the process of applying exclusion zones around the city and Mr Cadogan says the Clutha district is following suit.
One of the problem areas is likely to be Queenstown which attracts young people winter and summer for outdoor pursuits and seasonal work.
A mixture of alcohol and those pyschoactive substances could be lethal. When the legal highs were last on the market, no retailer in Clutha sold them but their damaging effects were still felt in the district.
Mr Cadogan says the Government has relinquished responsibility by passing on the problem to councils. It is up to society as a whole to deal with the problem.
What Mr Cadogan proposes is radical and will be difficult to enforce, but there is a chance it will work.
He is asking for individuals to take their business away from stores that sell, or plan to sell, psychoactive products. But suppliers should also be part of the process. They needed to decide if they wanted their brand associated with an enterprise prepared to sell damaging substances to some of the most vulnerable members of society.
No one should go into a shop and buy an ice cream knowing in one corner there are also products being sold that are messing up the lives of some in their community.
Everyone has a responsibility to get pro active and say they will not tolerate the substances in our communities. It is time to act.
