NEW LAWS banning head shops could be introduced “fairly quickly” subject to all-party agreement, Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Pat Carey said yesterday.
Head shops which sell so-called legal highs were an “insidious and pernicious development” and his personal inclination was to close them down completely, he said.
Mr Carey said an interdepartmental group was trying to come up with a “water-tight” piece of legislation that could not be challenged in the courts.
“It would be dead easy for us to come up with something very quickly and I know as soon as it would appear in the first hearing of a court, it would be struck down,” he said.
“So what we are trying to do is use whatever measures are there, that are open to the local authorities, to the gardaí and to others and then also to bring in a piece of legislation. I think we could do it fairly quickly if the all-party agreement for it is there, to close them down.”
In the meantime, a list of named substances would be banned in June, once approved by the European Commission. He said gardaí were also making it “more and more difficult” for head shops to operate.
When Mr Carey was previously a minister of State with responsibility for drugs, a group of head shop operators asked him to consider self-regulation. “I said ‘go away’ because they are highly organised . . . and they do need to be policed.”
He was speaking at the launch of guidelines for peer support groups that help families living with drug use. They were commissioned by the Family Support Network, which works to improve the situation of families coping with drug use in the home. It has more than 80 member groups around the State.
Its co-ordinator Sadie Grace said drug abuse was now all over the State so “it’s important to have a set of guidelines that the more rural groups can refer to”.
While many families at the launch had experienced their children’s addiction to drugs, concerns about head shops were a recurring theme at the meeting.
Earlier this week, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture Seán Connick told Hot Press magazine he was keeping an open-mind about head shops. “Whether or not we need to ban them, I don’t know yet, but I am open to a wider debate on it,” he said.
Yesterday, Mr Carey promised his “unstinting resolve and commitment” to the issue of drug use. He said he gave a “personal guarantee and the guarantee of the Government that we are determined to ensure that the National Drugs Strategy, in all its manifestations, all aspects of it, are implemented”.
Asked if a junior minister should be appointed to deal solely with the drugs issue, Mr Carey said he, as a Government Minister, was at every Cabinet meeting whereas a junior minister was not.
