As Malta’s bureaucratic process gets to grips with legislating against mephedrone, the active ingredient in the party drug miaow miaow, we are already falling behind in the fight against emergent drugs.
On Thursday, this newspaper published a front page story regarding the emergence of a new drug – which we are not naming as it has not yet hit the local market – which is being sold as a replacement for miaow miaow.
The companies which produce these drugs know exactly what they are doing. Governments around the world are legislating against the active ingredients in drugs – such as mephedrone in the case of miaow miaow. But as the long laborious process takes its course, manufacturers of these new chemical based synthetic drugs have launched a new drug – marketed as bath salts. Foreign newspapers have claimed it is three times as strong as cocaine while parents have told stories of their offspring becoming psychotic and jumping into the sea fully clothed in the dead of night. The people who sell the new drug know its potency – they warn clients to only put a little bit of ‘salts’ in the bath to make sure that they know their body tolerance.
The people who sell this drug have merely changed the active ingredient. This time, the compound is based on calcium/potassium iodate. Suffice to say, there is no legislation against the substance. And the worst thing about it is that the ingredients in some of these compounds are found in various household goods.
The police have expressed hope that the government will pass the legislation through as soon as possible. But they are facing an uphill battle. Legal experts we are not, however, one wonders whether it would be possible to introduce a law similar to the one about using an unlicensed weapon. Let us explain. When a person commits a crime, and for example reaches for a pencil to stab someone, the law allows for that pencil to be classified as a sharp and pointed weapon.
What if the use of a substance – bath salts, fertiliser – whatever form a drug may be marketed under, can be classified as a dangerous drug if it is abused. It is a thought.
Assistant Police Commissioner Neil Harrison, interviewed in this newspaper a few weeks back, said he hoped that the government would push legislation through at the earliest opportunity. We back that call. But we also have to point out that this is going to be an uphill battle. For decades, there were no new drugs on the market. Those available were LSD, cocaine, heroin and cannabis. That all changed with the advent of ecstasy. Within 10 years a whole new wave of drugs began to emerge. MMDMA, MDPV, mephedrone, iodate… the list goes on and on and we do not even know just how much of what is out there on the streets.
It is indeed a growing problem and it is one which we share with the rest of the world. Perhaps this is an issue which is too big for individual governments to handle. Perhaps it could be a case which needs a global effort to stop the production of these drugs at source. It is getting more and more dangerous, especially when cowboy companies are putting chemical compounds out there at a faster rate than we can legislate against. What is especially worrying is that youngsters today think absolutely nothing of shoving an untried, untested and unknown substance up their nose and into their brain. Quite frankly, it is shocking.