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Drug users should be 'wary of legal highs'


00:02 AEST Tue Aug 28 2012 NINEMSN
Drug users are being urged to be wary of buying harmful "legal high" stimulants over the internet.

Mephedrone - a drug also known as "miaow miaow" and bath salts - is banned in most parts of Australia.
Kronic, a synthetic cannabis, is also illegal.

But other drugs, known as "legal highs", are still available through many of Australia's 100 internet retailers, the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) says.

NDARC director Professor Michael Farrell said users needed to beware of the substances they are buying online, which are often sold under various misleading names.

"They don't know what they're buying. What they think they're buying may be something different," he told AAP.

"Just because it's not illegal doesn't mean it's not harmful."

Prof Farrell is among 22 experts who will address NDARC's annual drug symposium on Tuesday at the University of NSW.

The Sydney conference is discussing ways of keeping pace with the escalating availability of synthetic drugs on the internet and the challenges law makers face.

Dr Lucy Burns, NDARC's head of drug monitoring, said internet drug retailers often made slight changes to the properties of a banned substance to make it technically legal.

"Our laws have to keep trying to stay one step ahead," she said.

Dr Burns said the ingredients in many legal and illegal drugs were a mystery.
"There's no testing procedure," she said, adding many of these substances were known to trigger psychosis, depression, anxiety and cardiac problems.

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