UK is to follow example of Ireland, where 2010 ban on ‘new psychoactive substances’ succeeded in closing head shops but also led users to illegal street markets and dark web to buy designer drugs

Within months of moving to Letterkenny, Donegal, in Ireland, from south-east London with his family, 12-year-old Jimmy Guichard was playing the national sport of hurling for his school team, Saint Eunan’s college. Later, he played for his adopted county of Donegal. His mother, Karen Vandersypen, said that was the type of lad he was, sports mad, always training or out running.

But aged 20, her fit and healthy son suffered a heart attack and swelling of the brain, after trying a legal high. Within hours of buying Spice over the counter in a head shop in Chatham, Kent, Jimmy was on a life support machine, with severe brain damage. Vandersypen was forced to make the heartbreaking decision to turn the machine off.

“They kept saying, he’s not viable,” she said. “I said: ‘He’s 20 years old. He is fit and strong. How can this happen?’’’

A ban on new psychoactive substances (NPS), designer drugs or legal highs, has been in place in Ireland since 2010, brought in after fears that a head shop boom had sparked a rise in young users reporting to A&E departments with psychotic episodes. The ban made it illegal to export, import or sell the substances, which are designed to mimic the effects of already banned drugs, such as ecstasy, cocaine and cannabis.

Guichard was able to buy NPS in Kent, where his father lives, because up until last year, they were legal in the UK.

Since her son’s death, on 3 October 2013, Vandersypen has lobbied tirelessly to highlight the damage the substances can do and campaigned for the sale of them to be banned. She released a picture of her son as he lay dying as a warning to others. The year Jimmy died, there were 59 other deaths related to NPS in the UK – compared with 29 in 2011, according to Home Office figures.

But critics of the British government’s proposals to introduce a blanket bansay it will drive the market underground and that the proposals are too vaguely worded to be effective.

Two recent reports, from the Home Office and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction say the ban in Ireland has led users to illegal street markets and the dark web. Drug workers are concerned that users will turn to heroin and prescription drugs instead.

“We’re all aware that people who take drugs are going to get hold of them,” said Vandersypen. “But Jimmy’s was an opportunistic purchase. He went into that shop to buy a T-shirt. He wouldn’t have gone on the internet. It is vitally important that high street sales are stopped, to stop young kids getting hold of them.”

She is hoping for a UK-wide ban which will stop drug tourism or cross-border trading. Vandersypen knows of teenagers in her town who have travelled 40 miles by bus to Derry, in Northern Ireland, to buy NPS from a head shop and smuggle small amounts back. Last year, Derry and Strabane councils backed her calls to use environmental health and trading standards legislation to close them down.

It’s difficult to assess how successful the Irish ban has been. There has been no formal evaluation of the Irish psychoactive substances act and data on such drug use is scarce.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Karen Vandersypen with her son Jimmy, who suffered a heart attack and severe brain damage within hours of buying a legal high in a shop in Kent. Photograph: Patrick Bolger/Patrick Bolger Photography

The Garda says it did what it was designed to do: 102 head shops were shut virtually overnight. There is also evidence of less harmful use, a key aim of the law. The number of clients attending drug treatment services for problematic NPS use has declined, according to data from the Irish National Drug Treatment Reporting System (NDTRS). There were 220 such cases in 2012, down from 368 in 2011. A study by the Youth Drug and Alcohol Service in Dublin, to be published next week, will show that adolescents attending treatment for NPS use has fallen since the ban.



Some surveys, however, appear to show that NPS use in Ireland has increased. The European commission’s Eurobarometer survey found that NPS use in Ireland is the highest in the EU and that the use of legal highs among 16-24 year olds has risen. Asked whether they had used a legal high or NPS in the last year, 22% said yes in 2014, compared with 16% in 2011.

Full question: “New substances that imitate the effects of illicit drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine, etc. may now sometimes be available. They are sometimes called [INSERT ‘local name’ such as, ‘legal highs’, ‘research chemicals’] and can come in different form, for example herbal mixtures, powders, crystals or tablets. Have you ever used such substances?”

Tony Duffin, director of the Ana Liffey drug treatment and prevention project in Dublin, whose clients tend to be multiple drug users, is worried that harm has diminished in one population, but at the expense of another.

“By closing head shops, you reduce access and harm to the general population, the passing trade,” Duffin said. “But you are maximising harm to another, smaller group of people, who are now dealing with the black or criminal market.

“Our clients have a very big problem with drug debts and intimidation. If you are going to introduce a psychoactive substances act, you should be looking at reducing harm to all groups.”

Drug workers identify three types of NPS users: the passing trade, like Guichard, for whom the act has been deemed largely successful; regular recreational drug users; and Duffin’s clients, who are responding by accessing other markets.

However, drug and community workers in the rural communities of Monaghan and Cavan, have uncovered a flaw in the legislation which could have implications for the UK proposals. They are battling with the fallout caused by a new, and apparently highly addictive NPS called Clockwork Orange or The Joker, a synthetic cannabinoid which mimics cannabis. It is causing serious psychiatric problems and has been implicated in two deaths, one of which was a suicide, on the Mullaghmatt estate in Monaghan.

Tim Murphy, of Cavan and Monaghan Drug Awareness, said that the local Garda had said its hands were tied because police scientists were unable to prove the drug was technically psychoactive.

“It’s a very serious problem,” said Murphy. “We’ve had a couple of dozen referrals over the last 12 months, all male, all under 25. The active ingredient is similar to cannabis, but much more problematic. They are bouncing between us and mental health services, with delusions, hearing voices, suicidal ideation and compulsive patterns of use. We’ve had two deaths and some near misses.”

The drug is believed to have been bought legally in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.

To bring a prosecution under the act, a drug must be forensically tested and proved to be psychoactive. “If the lab tests can’t demonstrate that it is a psychoactive substance, they should look at other evidence, such as A&E admissions and GP reports,” Murphy said.

So far, only five prosecutions have been brought under the Irish act.

DS Brian Roberts, of the Garda’s drug unit, said he was confident that the act had done it’s job. “Although the psychoactive substances act was hugely effective in shutting down the head shop industry in Ireland, one particular substance has appeared in some areas just south of the border which is so new in chemistry that reporting on its psychoactive properties has proven temporarily difficult.”

He said it was due to a lack of research papers around the substance, a synthetic cannabinoid, but added that 400 substances are now controlled. “It is now intended to control this particular substance under the misuse of drugs act.”

The low level of prosecutions is due to the huge success in shutting down head shops, making prosecutions unnecessary, he said. Most drug offences, including those involving NPS, are prosecuted under the misuse of drugs act.

Roberts expressed scepticism over the Eurobarometer survey, as it is based on a sample of just 500. But he said: “Without question the prevalence of these substances would be higher if the ban had not been brought in. The illicit market continues but it’s a much more marginal industry compared to the multi-million euro head shop industry.”

Johnny Connolly, a criminologist at the Health Research Board, said it is impossible to know the law’s impact on NPS prevalence, because they don’t know what would have happened had head shops stayed open.

Connolly said the new and emerging markets – more than 400 NPS have been identified –presents a huge challenge for health services.

“People are making choices from their bedrooms … it requires a complete re-assessment of harm reduction … Passing the law is the easy bit ... now we have to focus on the consequences.”