Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 3, subsection (1), between lines 35 and 36, to insert the following:

""Authority" refers to An tÚdarás Rialála um Shubstaintí Neamhleigheasacha Sícighníomhacha translated into English as the Non-Medicinal Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority;".

I have a number of amendments. With regard to amendments Nos. 1 and 2, I submitted two versions of amendments that in some ways have the same effect. This was in anticipation of one being ruled out of order for imposing a charge on the Exchequer. I am thankful that, on this occasion, this has not happened.

In legislation I put together earlier this year, I suggested that I do not believe the Minister's approach to psychoactive substances will produce the desired result, that is, ensure the poisons currently being sold in head shops will no longer be on sale and that the profiteering of head shops will be put to an end.

I suggested in my legislation that we set up an authority, using expertise already available to the State, that would decide whether products on sale are poisonous and can be regulated and licensed in a specific format determined by the legislation. Some of my suggestions are replicated in amendment No. 7, which outlines the role and functions of a body I call the "Non-Medicinal Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority". The amendment outlines what the functions of the authority should be.

I suggest this mechanism as the current mechanism of banning of substances has failed because it takes too long. One should bear in mind the rate at which new products are being produced. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction has suggested and proven that new products are coming on the market at a rate of one per fortnight. The legislation the Minister has proposed is not capable of dealing with that. If one obliged the people who wish to sell the products to fund the proposed authority that would investigate those products, it would have the desired effect of taking the vast majority of the products currently sold in head shops off the shelves. They are poisonous and induce in those ingesting or injecting them a psychoactive experience. We have received communications from doctors, nurses and drugs workers throughout the country attestingto the products' effects, particularly on young people. I refer to those presenting in hospitals with various psychoses and other medical problems caused by ingesting one or several of the substances in question or by mixing them with legal drugs such as alcohol or certain pharmaceuticals.

When approaching this matter, I considered how the Irish Medicines Board works and the degree to which products for human consumption are tested before being put on the market. In this case, the motive is profit, not medicinal. Since the products are supposedly for recreational purposes, the onus is on those who wish to sell them to pay for the research. This would have the effect of limiting, if not totally removing, these products from public sale. It would also allow such a body to place restrictions on advertising and give it power over where shops can be located. It would be required to support An Garda Síochána and the Customs and Excise so that they could know what products are entering the market.

A flaw in the Bill is that it places an onus on Garda superintendents to have the expertise to identify products. Under the Bill, the Garda must use a civil procedure to force shop owners and those behind the counter to stop selling. In a system in which the products would be properly identified, calling on the requisite expertise would be easier than giving the work to the Forensic Science Laboratory, which is already under considerable pressure dealing with other illegal drugs. Taking the Minister's route will add to the pressure, as a significant range of substances would need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. If head shop owners or others who are first served with a notice and subsequently with a prohibition order challenge them, the forensic lab will be called on to prove that the product being referred to as a psychoactive substance is just that.

Questions arise around the identification of products. They do not have the same consistency and their packaging is changed regularly. We know of warehouses and factories in this city that have repackaged some of this material. What was Snow one day might not be Snow the next. Major issues will arise in respect of whether a court can proceed with a prohibition order against a product that is not defined or licensed. Unless a superintendent purchases the product, identifies its consistencies and ingredients and repeats the exercise at a later date to have a prohibition order applied, the case will fail. However, it would be key if an authority comprising people from the Irish Medicines Board, the Food Safety Authority, the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland, the Garda, the alcohol and drug research unit of the Health Research Board and the National Advisory Committee on Drugs, NACD, could be put in place and its collective expertise relied upon prior to the application of any prohibition, notice or order. In anticipation of my amendment being refused for incurring a cost on the State, even though what I have suggested would be self-funding, I have recommended that these functions could, at a minimum, be performed by the NACD.

Other Deputies are eager to contribute and time is limited, so I will not speak for long. It is crazy that we have 80 amendments and only 80 minutes in which to deal with them. Psychoactive substances pose a significant issue, one we should have been addressing on a greater scale in recent years and months. We on this side of the House awaited the Minister's legislation with baited breath. If we had a proper Committee Stage, we could have teased out the vast number of problems that will arise from the Bill.

The head shop industry is lucrative. One shop owner boasted to party members outside his premises that he had a turnover of €20,000 per week. We all know the case of one owner who just happened to have €500,000 in cash in a safe in his building when it burned down. Regrettably, the money did not burn with it and the owner managed to get it back. Some of the characters involved in the industry are unscrupulous and I guarantee the Minister that all of that money was pumped back into it and into the poor unfortunates purchasing Snow, Blow, mephedrone, WHACK and so on. While picketing outside some of those shops, I saw the unfortunate characters abusing these drugs. Some are long-term abusers of other illegal drugs like heroin and cocain and are supplementing therm with products purchased in head shops. No rules or regulations prevent these people from going into those shops.

People in the drug rehabilitation field have significant concerns about the industry's effects. For this reason, I will not oppose the Bill. I welcome it, but I have problems with its formulation. In many ways, I wish it well because I will not have the opportunity to table a Bill of my own, but I have concerns and I do not want to tell people in one or two years' time that I told them so because of legal challenges to the mechanism being introduced by the Minister. He and I received the legal opinion of Garrett Sheehan and Partners, which was supplied to us on behalf of the head shops. I do not agree with that office's reasoning, but I agree that the offences cannot be vague. According to Garrett Sheehan and Partners, if what constitutes offending ingredients is vague and uncertain, the trial of an alleged offence based on these ingredients is not in due course of law. The legal opinion supplies a number of quotes on the question of vagueness. The definitions in the Bill are vague. Similarly, using civil remedies instead of criminal sanctions is as wrong now as it was in the case of ASBOs. The usage level of ASBOs since their introduction shows that gardaí shy away from using civil law in such a way because of uncertainty regarding the legal footing.

I have major concerns about the Bill.

As I said, amendments Nos. 1 to 4, inclusive, and 7 to 9, inclusive, outline a mechanism for ensuring we have a body in the State which can react quickly to new products and can give expert advice to members of An Garda Síochána and the Customs and Excise. It could give advice to the Government too, if there is need for additional legislation to close loopholes behind which the people behind head shops hide at the moment. Some of these people have successfully taken court cases to find loopholes in terms of other activities within the State. I do not want to come back to the Dáil in a couple of months after this Bill has failed the test of the courts.

Obviously, the Attorney General's advice is to the effect that the Bill is constitutional and that it will stand the test of time in terms of dealing with the scourge that is in our society. I am concerned too that steps have not been taken by the State in the past four years to deal properly with educational aspects, to advise the public and young people in particular about the dangers of head shops and their products. I have had quite a number of replies from the Minister in terms of this, that and the other which were promised, but have not come to fruition, including the pledge of more support programmes in schools such as Walk Tall and others. He appears to forget regarding the Walk Tall programme in schools that the supports have been withdrawn. Another programme which he said he would rely on in the rolling out of advice to teachers, etc., the newly formed professional development for teachers, was to provide support on a regional basis. I have been informed that there is no drug-specific focus to that at all. It is a question of clutching at straws.

The same is true in relation to the special personnel involved in health education. Staff there have been reduced in 2009. Hopefully the Government's promised rollout of an education and publicity campaign will happen within weeks, as I was told last week, and that not only will there be a legislative attack on head shops, but education and rehabilitation will also be addressed through various campaigns.

See this speech in context