Mr. Tim Murphy:

As far as the Garda is concerned, I believe that samples have been seized and sent away in earnest. My information, after a couple of queries, going back to November 2014 is that the results coming back from the laboratories stated it was not a controlled drug, which I believe may be answering a different question from the one being asked. Again, one can see how, despite the Garda taking a problem seriously, it is unable to bring a successful prosecution. I think Mr. Kelly outlines the age profile well. Predominantly, we are seeing young males between the ages of 18 to 25, all presenting with serious mental health-type symptoms such as paranoia, suicidal ideation or depression. The difficulty for us as a support service is they often are so affected that they are unable to engage with counselling in any meaningful way and what they probably actually require in many cases is inpatient treatment and for the symptoms to be managed symptomatically by mental health services in an acute setting before they would be able to engage with addiction support services in a structured way.

As for the range of substances extant, I believe a Home Office report was issued in 2013, which I think has been well summarised by an organisation called Drugwatch, which published an article in 2014. Its findings were that there were more than 80 different synthetic cannabinoids available on the European market at that time and that there was potential to make hundreds more by relatively easy manipulation of the production process.

In respect of the mental health services response, the difficulties go back to the A Vision for Change document, which clearly stated that stand-alone addiction problems should be outside the mental health services. In my opinion, the presenting symptoms are so serious - as Mr. Kelly noted, in many cases we are dealing with psychosis and serious suicidal ideation - that there must be at least a short-term response, probably in an inpatient setting. Without going into detail, in one case with which we are dealing, we have someone who has been referred to our service. The person ended up being admitted to acute psychiatric services on an inpatient basis, only to be released within a few days when the symptoms had abated somewhat. However, because the person does not appear to be past that critical withdrawal period, and these substances are highly unusual in that there appears to be a withdrawal syndrome, the person turns to alternatives very quickly and is constantly bouncing back into the accident and emergency units, the general practitioner and those kinds of services. We have also had recent uncorroborated reports, although I have seen availability of the Internet, that the products may be becoming available in vaporiser form for e-cigarettes.

That would be another particularly worrying development if it becomes widespread.