David Higgins

Last night saw yet another head shop vandalised and destroyed. The attack on the store in Sligo town is just the latest in a series of attacks on these new businesses.

The Gardaí arrested two men shortly after the incident. These men are aged 21 and 31. We need to ask ourselves who is leading the charge against these shops. Is it angry vigilante citizens who cannot wait for the government to legislate? Or, is it rival drug dealers?

While much anger has been expressed about the establishment of these shops, I do not believe that ordinary citizens are taking the law into their own hands. People claim that these shops are having a negative impact on their lives and their towns, however it has hit no one else harder than ordinary Joe Druggy. He has been hit with a larger recession than anyone else in this country. Recessions are generally a time when countries experience a rise in drug use and drug related offences. In Ireland, the rise in head shops has taken business away from violent drug dealers.

Drug dealers are frustrated, so they are now retaliating by destroying head shops and making people unemployed in the process.

In my previous post Off with the Heads!?! I highlight the positive aspects of head shops. I argued that drug dealers would lose customers and I have now been proven correct. If drug dealers and criminal gangs could compete with head shops then they would have no reason to risk arrest and prosecution by attacking them!

Keeping these shops open keeps the drug dealers out of business!!!

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.