Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Curran. I acknowledge his excellent work in his capacity as Minister of State with responsible for drugs strategy at the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. He is an excellent communicator. Communication is a key word when debating head shops. It is important to communicate the message as clearly as possible to the authorities and the young people who are victims of these shops as to how dangerous they are to young and vulnerable people.

It used to take approximately 20 years for an idea that started in America to get as far as mainland Europe and to our closest neighbour, England. Getting to us might have taken a little longer. It is hard to believe it took more than 40 years for the concept of head shops to reach our shores. The first head shops sprung up in the United States of America among the student population during the 1960s. I first became aware of such shops towards the latter part of 2008 when it was brought to my attention by a council colleague that such a shop was proposed to open in Cavan town. In November 2008 I raised on the Adjournment the difficulties with these head shops, having researched them quite extensively. On that occasion I raised in particular the problem the so-called party pill, BZP, was causing. I was glad to have been in a position to report at the beginning of April last year that on 31 March 2009 the Minister for Health and Children added BZP to the list of proscribed drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1997.

During research into these products and shops, I was horrified at the advertisements that appeared on the websites. Incidentally they are very shrewd people. A new shop opens almost on a weekly basis. As Senator O'Reilly will be aware one recently opened in Monaghan. The head shop in Cavan has been in existence for more than a year and a half and does a thriving trade. It is shocking to read what is advertised on the websites. For instance one website advertises the sale of pipes, bongs, vaporisers, scales, grinders and room odourisers. Why would one need these? It advertises legal highs and herbal highs, and products such as "Berry Mashed", and asks the user to "have a blissfully stoned night". Another product is "Diablo XXX", which is described as being "by far the strongest pill" and it contains 500 mg of an illegal component. Another product is "E-Blast" and is described as follows:

Like a lightning bolt of pure energy straight to your brain, E-Blast pills are guaranteed to make your jaw clench, your hair stand on end and your feet to want to hit the dance floor. Take that feeling you get when the moon is full, you're looking good and feeling good and out for a night of carnage, you know, the kind of night where colours seem brighter, music sounds better and you feel unstoppable.

That seems very similar to another pill known as Ecstasy and is not a harmless pill by any stretch of the imagination.

These shops are focused on young and vulnerable people. The main reason they have sprung up is that there is a market for them. They are flouting the law by getting away with selling almost illegal substances that have been changed. Perhaps a component or two will have been changed. I understand the difficulty the Government has and the Minister of State in particular in banning these substances outright. As Senator Healy Eames and other speakers have indicated, BZP, which was banned, is now available under another name since there was a slight alteration in its make-up.

We need to look closely at the planning regulations given that new shops are opening almost every week. We apply very strict conditions to a person who proposes to open a takeaway shop in a town. Such shops must open and close at certain times while head shops can remain open 24 hours a day. In other words, young people are being restricted in their purchase of a burger or fish and chips, yet at any time of the day or night they can buy these illegal substances which cause so much harm.

I welcome this debate and thank colleagues for allowing it to be an all-party motion. As I proposed recently on the Order of Business, we should form an all-party focus group to look specifically at these shops so as to inform the Minister and the Department of Health and Children on the best ways possible to address this problem, using the expertise in the House, legal and otherwise. We should formulate an all-party focus group to concentrate on this issue because as others have said, there is only one way to deal with these shops and that is to close them as soon as possible. I commend Ms Kenny, who was mentioned, and the parents throughout the country who are waging campaigns against these shops.