Brussels, 05/07/2011 (Agence Europe) - Psychoactive substances are a danger to health and should be subject to EU control or a Union-wide ban, as national bans unlikely to be successful, stated EPP MEPs Oana Antonescu (Romania) and Bogus³aw Sonik (Poland) at a hearing organised by their group on 29 June.
Every year new psychoactive substances are developed to imitate the effects of banned drugs such as cocaine, heroin, marijuana and ecstasy. Europol and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs identified 13 substances in 2008, 24 in 2009 and 41 in 2010. Currently sales of these drugs, available online or from “dreamshops” which sell so-called ethno-botanical plants, are worth tens of millions of euro. These substances are not yet banned as illegal narcotics and, despite attempts to control them, their use among young people is growing. As a result hospitalisations are on the increase as a result of the secondary effects of these drugs (nausea, dizziness, hallucinations). “Many children are taken to hospital in very serious conditions. We need strong measures. Member states cannot manage this problem alone”, said Antonescu. Her colleague Sonik noted that the Council had, at the start of the year, called on the Commission to carry out an evaluation of the 2005 directive on exchanging information, risk assessment and control of new psychoactive substances and said that the Polish Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers intended to take this issue forward to bring about a Europe-wide policy.
Of the 41 new substances identified last year, most have been banned or controlled but, with the speed at which illegal laboratories, often located in South-East Asia, can develop new compounds, the authorities are having difficulty keeping pace. The European Monitoring Centre has called, then, for national authorities to obtain samples of the new compounds so they can be analysed and their composition determined in order to stay ahead of suppliers. Antonescu said that “it may be more effective to find legal options to ban or control these substances. We need a different approach. It is not necessarily the case that these substances have to be banned one by one: banning a group or a family of substances could prove more effective in resolving the problem.”
The Commission is due to propose new measures in the autumn to tackle these hallucinogenic substances. Those who took part in the hearing hoped that the Commission would heed their call as urgent action is needed, they said, especially to protect Europe's young people. (I.L./transl.rt)