David Higgins

This weekend’s opinion poll in the Sunday Business Post has seen Fianna Fáil gain 4% support since the previous poll which was taken before the budget. Fine Gael and Sinn Féin have loss 2% each.

What has Fianna Fáil done in the past few weeks to deserve 4% of the electorate swinging their way?

Well………nothing!

Unless you’re an alcoholic or a buyer of a new ’10 car you’ve no reason to change your vote to Fianna Fáil. And I doubt those two groups make up 4% of the electorate!

If anything there should be a drop in support for Fianna Fáil. They imposed a budget which hit the lowest paid in the public service and those on social welfare. Surely there were some votes to be lost from those two groups. Many of those votes were lost from previous budgets but this budget hit families by reducing child benefit and by imposing a carbon levy on fuels. This has impacted everyone and everyone is worse off because of the budget.

If people feel that they escaped the worse in budget ’10 then they are misinformed. The fact is that, there never should have been a savage budget like budget ’10 because if Fianna Fáil weren’t in power then this economic mess never would have occurred in the first place!!

People are being led to believe that they have to play their part and considering there’s a €22bn deficit that’s a fair message to send out. However, who created the €22bn hole?!?!?!?! Fianna F***ing Fáil that’s who!

The electorate in this country suffers from memory loss. We don’t remember the bad things that our politicians do and we’ve been led like sheep to the slaughter by FF governments who bought votes by excessive budgets like budget ’07, 6 months before polling day.

The voters of Ireland need to take a good hard look at Fianna Fáil and realise that they are not the best option on offer. I’m not going to do a Fine Gael plug here. I don’t need to! Even Labour would run a better government than Fianna Fáil!

So, both the government and the opposition want a crack down on head shops. For those of you who don’t know what they are, you should know because they’re everywhere these days.

They sell legal highs such as blow and Mephedrone which are all milder forms of drugs like cocaine and hash. The sensations are said to be less, however in some cases they have a long lasting effect which has drawn casual users to these shops.

Public Anger, expressed as usual through Joe Duffy has moved the majority of the country against the shops however we can’t simply view these shops as bad things, we have to look at the positives.

Jobs! Head shops provide employment and its simple as that. If one shop is opening every week then there’s one person coming off the dole queues every day (assuming that there’s an average of 7 working in the shop).

The next positive is that it removes business from the drug gangs and dealers. With countless gangland murders this month alone, it’s well known that the money that buys the guns is the money that we the people bought drugs with. If these people move from dealers to head shops then they remove the awkwardness of the dealer, they get it for cheaper and they still get the high they were looking for.

Sure, the dealers will still have their loyal business from addicts who buy heroin, but it’s the casual users with money who are keeping the drug gangs going. If we look beneath the surface, head shops can be a solution to gangland crime!

They also have a wider benefit to the economy. If the government were to regulate these shops properly then large VAT receipts could be gained and the legal highs could be liable to levies and tariffs, similar to tobacco and alcohol.

This government regulation must address other aspects before these shops can be welcomed though.

Firstly, they must ban all under 18s from entry to these shops.

Secondly, they must have similar regulations to sex shops. Advertising must be controlled to avoid attracting younger persons and to discourage further people taking up these drugs.

Thirdly we must see proper product control and traceability. We need to know, like any product where it came from and whether it’s safe or not!

If these measures can be met I don’t see why we can’t keep these shops open.