Bill aims to tackle difficulty over head shop drug sales

FAR-REACHING legislation to ban the sale and distribution of mind-altering and hallucinatory drugs by head shops is to be introduced by the Government before the summer.

The Criminal Justice (Psychotropic Substances) Bill, which is expected to be brought to Cabinet next week by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern, will impose heavy fines and prison sentences of up to five years.

This will be in addition to moves already announced by Minister for Health Mary Harney to expand the list of banned substances under the terms of the existing Misuse of Drugs Act.

Mr Ahern’s legislation is intended to overcome a major difficulty whereby the composition of synthetic drugs can be altered as a way of circumventing the legal ban.

His legislation is based on the United Nations definition of psychotropic drugs as producing “central nervous system stimulation or depression, resulting in hallucinations or disturbances in motor function or thinking or behaviour or perception or mood”.

An Garda Síochána will be empowered to go to the District Court to seek an order for closure of a particular head shop for the offence of “knowing or being reckless” as to whether psychotropic substances would be used for human consumption.

By applying to the District Court they would be following a civil rather than criminal procedure and the proof required would be on the “balance of probabilities” rather than “beyond reasonable doubt”.

A Government source said it was the practice of head shops to seek to protect themselves from legal sanction by labelling certain items as “not for human consumption”.

However, the Bill provides that a court can take the probability into account that the owner of the shop was or should have been aware that the substance was likely to be consumed by humans.

Head shop owners will have the right of appeal to the Circuit Court but the onus will be on the shop to prove that the materials it was selling were not, in reality, for human consumption.

A Government source cited the example of certain so-called “bath salts” which he said were in fact psychotropic substances sold in greater quantities and at much higher prices in head shops than the ordinary product of that name available from supermarkets.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said the time has come to tackle the head shops up-front through tough new legislation.

This will have a two-pronged approach: involving outlawing the substances on sale and giving gardaí new powers to apply to the courts to shut shops, Mr Ahern said.