Poisons Centre calls surge over legal highs.

According to poisons information officers, since February the number of calls to the centre has increased dramatically, from about four calls a month to about 20 this month and last month.

The calls relate to legal drugs which mimic the effects of cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis, but of which little is known about their chemical make-up.

Officers at the centre said they have about 100 of the products which have been tested by gardaí on their database.

According to a spokesman for the centre, it is difficult to be certain what is in the products, as the names often change.

With a ban on a range of the legal highs set to be implemented in June, officers say they will be once again in the dark as to the chemical structure of any new drugs which may appear.

"It will be like when BZP was banned, we will be starting all over again," the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, a new Irish-based company is selling pure mephedrone online. Needalift.com is the latest venture to take advantage of the legal high market.

Its website states it will deliver anywhere in the country and can cater for orders in excess of one kilogramme.

While there are several sites of its kind advertising mephedrone for sale in Britain, this is the first of its kind in Ireland.

Websites like this essentially bypass head shops and are generally run by people buying the product pure and in bulk from China, South America or eastern European countries, who then post it out to customers

Marketed as "the best plant feeder available", prices range from €20 for 1g, €70 for 5g and €125 for 10g.

Further enquiries by the Irish Examiner revealed larger orders of up to 250g can be bought with a few days’ notice.

And more than 1kg can be bought by shipment from Britain.

All orders are paid for in advance by Alertpay or bank transfer.

"We don’t meet up for collections or pickups for security reasons," the anonymous email reply stated.

"If you had some other method of delivery in mind we could probably look into it but this has been working fine so far," it said

Source: Jennifer Hough, The Irish Examiner, 29/03/2010