An emergency room doctor and researcher says prohibition is driving the rate that new synthetic drugs are evolving in Australia.
Synthetic drugs or “legal highs” can be packaged as party pills, herbal highs, bath salts or even plant food, but often contain new and untested chemicals designed to mimic the effects of drugs like cannabis, LSD and amphetamines.
To help stop people using synthetic drugs, the Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australian governments have put a blanket ban on possessing or selling substances other than alcohol, tobacco and food that have a psychoactive effect.
In other states and territories, only specific substances have been banned and new ones were regularly added to the list.
Dr David Caldicott, a researcher and emergency physician at Canberra’s Calvary Hospital, knows how deadly synthetic drugs can be.
He said he saw the impact of these new and increasingly unpredictable drugs on a regular basis.
“Young Australians who consume drugs don’t seem to have any sort of conception of moderation so we see a wide variety of novel products used in bizarre ways,” he said.
“A lot of the time we are ad-libbing our medical therapy – just trying to get people over an acute medical intoxication and keep them alive.”
Dr Caldicott said prohibition was driving the rate at which these substances were evolving.
“When one substance in Australia is banned, the legal process means that there’s plenty of time for another one to take its place,” he said.
Banning synthetic drugs won’t help, user says
Nick Wallis, a candidate for the Australian Sex Party, said he had tried a variety of traditional and new psychoactive drugs.
“I’ve noticed a lot of them don’t have as nice a high, so it’s not always very pleasant – not the kind of thing that you are always looking for,” he said.
“That said though, there are some that were kind of mildly pleasant.”
Despite that mixed review, Mr Wallis argued banning synthetic drugs would not help.
“We have extensive research on things like MDMA, on a lot of the traditional amphetamines,” he said.
“The unknown substances are essentially a guinea pig market [but] people are inherently attracted to risk.”
Attempt made at regulating growing market
Dr Chris Wilkins, from Massey University in New Zealand, said politicians there had taken a different approach by attempting to regulate the growing synthetic drug market.
“The ambition was to make the industry itself more responsible so if you gave the industry the opportunity to get products approved … they would become a more mature and responsible sector,” he said.
But that approach had not worked out exactly as planned.
Last July, some substances were given interim approval to be sold while testing procedures were being finalised.
However, 10 months later the interim laws were scrapped after a growing backlash from the public and local mayors who argued the drugs were damaging communities.
Dr Wilkins said politicians soon discovered the newly legalised synthetic drugs were much more popular than had been anticipated.
“The Ministry of Health have estimated the market was $140 million over just 10 months,” he said.
“Of course that industry is going to be interested in pursuing their perspective on how the market should be regulated, much like the alcohol and tobacco industry.”
Dr Wilkins said it was a high stakes game and other countries were watching closely.
“If they can get a similar regime rolled out in some bigger markets like Australia or Europe and the UK, then there’s going to be a lot of money to be made,” he said.