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Influx of deadly synthetic drugs sets off alarm bells

Influx of deadly synthetic drugs sets off alarm bells

Rory Callinan, Investigative journalist, The Age


Academics and law enforcement officers have expressed growing alarm about the tide of synthetic drugs that have claimed five lives, including three students, in 14 months.
Amid a proliferation of drugs designed by sophisticated overseas laboratories to mimic LSD, cannabis and methamphetamines, one academic forecasts worse is to come.

Law officials also point out the difficulties in outlawing the drugs when laboratories regularly change the chemical composition to avoid bans.
The acting chief executive of the Australian Crime Commission, Paul Jevtovic, says: ''The reality is we can't keep up. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction has found that, since 2011, we are seeing a new drug in this category every week.''

Governments, including Victoria's, have been trying to outlaw the trade by banning any substance designed to mimic the effects of illicit drugs.

Legislation before Parliament would ban a wide range of substances designed to mimic the effects of ecstasy, LSD, cocaine and cannabis.
In December, the Victorian government also banned sale of the synthetic cannabinoid Marley after five people were taken to hospital after using it.

At the time health experts repeated concerns about legislative efforts that focus on the chemical composition of the synthetic drugs. This followed the death of five people in Australia in the past 14 months blamed on synthetic drugs.

The NSW drug squad head, Detective Superintendent Nick Bingham,says strategies are working, citing figures from Newcastle, where callouts to psychotic episodes fell from nearly 30 a month to just two after a particularly potent drug was banned.

But authorities admit drugs are constantly being developed to get around the legislation.
The drugs are usually made in legal laboratories in China, with Guangdong a hub where chemists are asked to ''tweak'' or change the chemical structure to get around bans.

Judicial authorities say the laws have yet to be tested in higher courts, with several cases to be tried this year. The risks posed by new drugs are flagged by an emergency medicine doctor and synthetic drug researcher, David Caldicott.

''It has been a wild, unrestrained evolution that kind of came out of left field,'' Dr Caldicott says.
''I get concerned because the rate of change is so fast that something big and ugly is just around the corner.
''Purely banning material, people always find a way around it. We need to be more clever and nimble.''
Comment:

A good balanced view of the issues faced.
The answers are nos tso easy for our society to face.

If companies are not testing for K2 Spice as well as other drugs they are facing serious safety issues for these undetected substances.

MediNat Australia supplies a large range of devices for the detection of drugs, including K2 Spice in many of its variations.

Graham
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