Four arguments against closing headshops

The last major discussion about ‘legal drugs’ in Ireland occurred around the time the government banned magic mushrooms after the death of two young men in separate incidents, one from a toxic reaction, the other jumping from a  balcony at a party. The mushrooms were banned outright by the health minister, and thus the headshops’ main product was taken off the shelves.  Since then, people who sought legal alternatives to drugs such as ecstasy, cannabis, hallucinogens and cocaine have been able to buy products in headshops which use a mix of legal chemicals or herbs to mimic the effects of these drugs, other, more exotic, but less powerful drugs are also available; natural herbs that are smoked or prepared in a tea. The shops also sell ‘drug paraphernalia’ such as pipes, bongs, grow lamps, cannabis seeds, cocaine spoons and the ubiquitous Bob Marley t-shirts.

Where's your head at?

Three years ago there was one headshop in Galway with one more about to open, at the time I remember sitting in an editorial meeting of a student newspaper where we debated ‘reviewing’ the products, letting the readers know about the drugs and their effects from an angle of finding out how safe they were. That review never happened, there was an ‘unofficial’ review written by a columnist the following year, and as I now look back on the review of the six best selling products, three of them are no longer available in the headshops, one of them, BZP is now a controlled substance.

The latest media meltdown regarding the headshops has been boiling over for the past four weeks due to dedicated (one sided) coverage on Liveline with Joe Duffy. On the radio call-in show, we have heard from distraught parents and callers who range from ill-informed hysterics (“They’re smoking hemp and giving it to kids.”) to genuinely worried parents of young adults whose children have taken a liking to these ‘legal highs’ in an unhealthy way. In the past two weeks, the same number of headshops have burned down in Dublin, with arson suspected in both cases as a direct result of the media hysteria, one of the suspected motives is that the shops were burned down by Dublin drug dealers who were angry at the loss of customers preferring to buy legal drugs from a shop rather illegal ones than from arsonists. There’s no doubt that these shops do a brisk trade, there is a constant stream of customers to the (now five) headshops in Galway, with one new one on average opening up every year. The estimated half a million euro in cash that was apparently found in one of the burned down buildings is the only evidence needed of the profits these shops are making, with the reactionary moral majority arguing for the shop’s closure citing this as a factor.

There are four counter-arguments that nobody seems to be talking about in the debate about the headshops that should really be a t the top of the agenda:

1. Media bias. This, to me, is the most striking thing about the situation. Obviously the more the headshop story gets reported, the more fuel that is added (no pun intended) to the prohibitionists’ argument, thus causing further outrage and further news to report. Last week’s march through Castlebar by a hundred or so people shouting slogans calling for the local headshop to be closed down makes great news, but it clouds the real issue, that prohibition doesn’t work and that regulation is the best way forward.

2. Regulation and profits. The huge profits that these shops are making isn’t falling from the sky, lots of people go to these shops, mostly young people, mostly people who don’t vote and mostly people who don’t listen to Joe Duffy it seems. Any of the headshops I’m aware of operate a strict, yet voluntary on their part, over 18s sales policy and are very careful to make you make the best decision possible when buying products, ensuring you know what you’re doing, have a good time and will come back. This is a business after all, and like every other free-market enterprise, the customer comes first, if the products don’t work or cause a bad reaction, the customer won’t come back and profits will drop. If the shops are regulated by the government instead of closed down, the products can be taxed even more than they are, stricter regulations can be put on the shops and who they sell whilst helping to ensure these products aren’t abused At the moment, there’s nothing stopping the shops selling to kids except their own moral compass’. Nobody seems to be taking into account the jobs that this industry creates, from the people actually working in the dozens of shops around the country, to the people who deliver the products, to the hippies who carve wooden bongs to sell them to the shops. Up to five hundred people’s jobs would probably be indirectly affected if an across the board closure was to take place, not to mention the loss in tax earnings.

3. Stopping real crime. If the assertions that the headshops that have been supposedly burned down were fire bombed by drugs gangs, then surely this proves that the headshops are catering to casual drug users who would otherwise rely on criminals to supply them with pills or cannabis, they have tried the headshop products, found them satisfactory and have not gone back to the dealers. Real crime prevention in action without one extra hour of Garda overtime. The half a million euro in cash found in the headshop is a half million euro that is not under the floorboards of a drug dealer.

4. Basic civil liberties and common sense. The ‘war on drugs’ being fought in almost every developed country is being lost. The criminals are winning by a huge margin and a huge amount of money and time is being wasted by European governments trying to police and unstoppable market. Drugs will be taken by large numbers of people whether we like the idea or not, money spent on drug education instead of policing is the only way to change that. If I know that, then surely the lawmakers know also. The banning of headshops in Ireland, if it is to go ahead, will not stop the people wanting to get high getting high, you don’t outlaw sweets by shutting down sweetshops. The parents who ring into Joe Duffy to tell tales of woe about their sons taking a fistful of pills every morning will find they have a new set of problems once the shops close down, little Johnny will start sniffing glue or drinking bottles of Vodka. He isn’t overindulging in legal highs because the headshops are forcing them on him, it’s because he lives in small town Ireland, it’s because he’s bored or because he has other problems that aren’t being addressed. That’s not even mentioning that a huge majority of the people who buy these products are law abiding citizens who have experience no ill effects or negative experiences from using these drugs and are willing to fork out 20 to 60 euro at a time in order to buy recreational drugs from a safe environment rather than a carpark behind a cinema, these people’s rights are being railroaded by the uninformed moral majority, not to mention their health being put at risk and a possible criminal conviction being laid against them in the future and the government are once again ready to ignore this by pandering to reactionary arguments instead of being brave enough to have a real debate about the wider issues in society that have lead us to the current situation.

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