Only criminals will benefit from ban on head shop drugs.

Shane O’Connor said last year’s ban on legal high BZP, which mimics the effects of ecstasy, gave drug gangs a new bestseller, and outlawing new legal highs would do the same thing: "95% of what’s being sold as ecstasy in Ireland now is actually BZP, though not necessarily the pure unadulterated substance you were able to get in the head shops prior to the ban.

"Nowadays, BZP is like any other illegal drug in that it’s cut with God knows what to give the various people in the supply chain a bigger profit," he said in an interview published in today’s Hot Press .

"The Government has turned a relatively safe substance — 26 million BZP pills sold in New Zealand and no fatalities — into something that’s now completely unpredictable as to what’s in it. I don’t see that being advantageous to anyone but those criminals."

New Zealand was the first country where party pill BZP flourished, and was eventually banned. It is, however, only classified as a Class D drug, recognising it as a "low-risk substance".

During the debate on whether or not to ban it, a Green party MP in New Zealand argued that people would continue to use the pill but would no longer be assured of what they were taking. He also said there was no guarantee that scheduling a substance as a controlled substance under the Misuse Of Drugs Act reduces the availability or potential risk of harm from a drug.

Mr O’Connor, who owns a head shop in Temple Bar, maintains the demand for recreational substances will never go away, and chemists will always be able to tweak formulas in order to produce new drugs.

"What we can do is bring in regulation for head shops; introduce Class D monitoring; and make the products we sell as safe as possible," he said.

"The New Zealand medical profession and government acknowledged that there had been a reduction in both cocaine and metamphetamine use and addiction as a result of BZP being legally available there . . . the BBC carried a report the other day saying that proper MDMA ecstasy has all but disappeared in the UK because, even though they’re more expensive, people prefer to buy the legal alternatives. That’s hundreds of thousands of people who’ve been taken out of the criminal loop. You can get rid of demand for illegal substances by giving people a legal version."

Source: Jennifer Hough, The Irish Examiner, 28/01/2010