Warning legal high addicts will clog system Moves to ban legal highs are being welcomed, amid warnings a wave of former addicts will burden health services as they come off the drugs.
"In a month's time we'll see a lot of desperate and depressed people seeking help or trying to find alternative ways of getting their kick.
"It will put a burden on the system, there'll be a lot of underground dealing, but hopefully the next group coming through will avoid the mistakes of their peers," toxicologist Dr Leo Schep, of the National Poisons Centre, warned yesterday.
But the drugs did need to be banned, he said.
The centre was getting an increasing number of calls over the past month with progressively worse reactions to the drugs, including people vomiting blood, he said. "You have to bite the bullet."
On Sunday Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne announced the Government would introduce legislation to remove the synthetic drugs from sale within three weeks until they could be proven low-risk.
Industry spokesman Grant Hall of The Star Trust said it was "completely taken by surprise" by the announcement, learning of it via media.
He labelled it political posturing and said the ban would result in blackmarket sales and remove any existing controls.
"If someone drinks a bottle of vodka and dies do we ban vodka? No. But if someone smokes a joint of synthetic cannabis and then vomits, it's front-page news calling for a full ban because of the ‘harm' it caused."
Under the Psychoactive Substances Act, introduced in July last year, licensed retailers can sell drugs deemed to pose a low risk of harm.
Massey University researcher Dr Chris Wilkins said there was little data or research on the health risks or social impacts of legal highs.
There were still unanswered questions on how the regulations would be implemented and how a testing regime would work.
"It's not as easy as people think it's going to be to identify low-risk products because people have different vulnerabilities and sensitivities to different things."
Prime Minister John Key conceded it had been a "mistake" for the Health Ministry to list the small number of products still available as having a low level of risk.
"The health department gave the advice that 41 of these products were safe, and had not previously demonstrated concern," he said.
"So they were given a waiver but I think in hindsight that was a mistake. They should have taken the ultra-conservative view and said all of them were off until they could go through the full regime and prove that there was no harm."
Key also admitted another problem with the legal-high legislation, saying he was not prepared to authorise testing the drugs on rabbits and likely dogs.
"We now need to go back to step one and say if there's a testing regime how is all that going to work."
He said he might be comfortable with the use of rodents, prompting Labour leader David Cunliffe to scoff about whether Key was comfortable with testing on cute animals with fluffy tails but not those with long skinny ones.
- © Fairfax NZ News
They won't legalise/decriminalise cannabis, but they will let the largely untested synthetic pot etc go on the market. Then there are the predictable health problems, of which they were warned...Oh and it's an election year, we had better ban this shit quick smart...
These guys are priceless....
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This all remains to be seen. I thought it would have been legal 30 years ago in all the states. D'OH! Glad I didn't bet on it. 
You talkin' to me? It's a little pipe, not a bong. Good guess though. Real cosmic timing too Fred... 
