Health behind move to ban "families" of new synthetic drugs

Wednesday 02 July 2014

Jersey’s Health Minister says she hopes the Island will soon be able to stop playing “catch up” if a ban is introduced to stop the people who make former "legal high" drugs altering the ingredients and putting potentially lethal drugs back on the streets.

At a British-Irish Council meeting in Dublin on the misuse of drugs and alcohol Deputy Anne Pryke explained how Jersey is working to ban the drugs.

Earlier this week, Police and customs made one of their biggest seizures of the drugs, taking almost a kilo of mephedrone off the streets. Two men in their 20s, one local and one from Liverpool, have been charged with possession of the class B drug and appeared in court on Monday.

Deputy Pryke said that the authorities were rising to the challenge of dealing with the issue.

She said: “I have taken the opportunity to inform the Council of the successful Jersey approach in moving quickly to ban emerging and harmful new psychoactive substances, as well as sharing information about ‘A Parent’s Guide to Drugs’, which has recently been updated and circulated through Jersey schools.

“We now await the outcome of a review being led by UK Minister of State for Crime Prevention, Norman Baker, in which it is proposed to ban ‘families’ of drugs rather than individual compounds. This approach will allow us to be more proactive rather than continually playing catch-up due to the rapid changes being made to these dangerous and harmful psychoactive substances.

The council ministers all agreed that they need to work together and that quick and proactive action needs to be taken to control the harm caused by the drugs.

The council also talked about the misuse of prescription drugs and how Jersey has recently moved to classify Tramadol as a class C drug because of a big increase in the number of people taking it and new evidence about its misuse and the harm it can do.

The Director of the Island’s Alcohol & Drug Service Michael Gafoor and the Head of Health Improvement Martin Knight also attended the meeting in Ireland.