How natural are Irish highs?

Our intrepid reporter Debbie Tierney examines what exactly goes into the most popular form of relaxation in Ireland.

Car tyres, animal excrement, beeswax, turpentine, milk powder, ketamine (horse tranquiliser), boot polish, henna, pine resin, aspirin, ground coffee, barbiturates, glues and dyes. These are just some of the contaminants thought to be found within the low grade cannabis, commonly referred to as ‘soap bar’ hash.

Risks faced by young people using huge amounts of poor-quality cannabis to get high are being
overlooked, because of focus being placed on links between full strength cannabis and users suffering
mental health problems, according to a Scottish drugs forum.

While analysis is being carried out regularly on the harmful effects of smoking full strength cannabis, hardly any has been conducted on the effects of contaminated soap bar, the most popular type of cannabis smoked in Ireland and the UK over the last two decades.

A recent research study by the Edinburgh University Cannabis Resin Impurity Study Project (Crisp) discovered soap bar to be between 80 and 90 percent impure. Because most batches of the drug only containing up to 10 percent cannabis resin the remaining 90 percent could be made up of any number of lethal mixtures.

Anti-prohibition cannabis activist, Sean Scott feels there should be more research conducted into soap bar, “Recent press articles have highlighted herbal cannabis how strong it is and how it is causing
severe mental health problems amongst young people.”

“Yet herbal cannabis is not a drug commonly used by most ordinary young people – they are opting for soapbar because they can’t afford the higher quality and more expensive herbal cannabis, which costs between €120 and €160 per ounce compared to between €40 to €60 for soapbar resin.”

Probably the most arresting aspect of the current debate surrounding cannabis legislation is that it somewhat misses the point. Of all the media hype devoted to the drug, hardly any article space has mentioned the danger of smoking potentially poisonous cannabis.

A spokesperson from the Garda press office said on the matter, “Cannabis in whatever form is a controlled drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 and possession is an offence. As with all illegal drugs there is no quality control involved in their production and they may contain many other substances. An Garda Siochana is only concerned with the legal implications of possession.”

One major argument used by those who favour the decriminalisation of cannabis is that prohibition does more harm than good. Within the illicit drug market, these drugs are in the hands of unscrupulous dealers, who cut these substances with potentially lethal contaminants, to bulk out the product and increase profits.

It has become widespread knowledge that people will expect class A drugs to contain impurities but few suspect that cannabis could be turned into a toxic time bomb. Recently the media highlighted dealer’s methods of increasing the weight of herbal cannabis by spraying it with glass particles. This caused a legion of cannabis smokers to log on to activist forums to educate themselves on the dangers of smoking this possibly fatal strain of herbal cannabis.

When a national urgent warning was sent out across the UK to all health practitioners concerning the contamination, the Irish government followed suit. This in turn educated the Irish public of the harmful effects of this contaminated form of herbal marijuana resulting in users refusing to buy or smoke it.

Sean Scott thinks the same awareness should be deployed to the contamination of “soap bar” cannabis, “We are the least drug educated country in Europe, and awareness is the key issue here. Everyone else in Europe knows what poison soap bar is and refuse to smoke it. We are the only country ignorant enough, for there still to be a market here.”

In a recent study published by the National Advisory Committee on Drugs (NACD), revealed cannabis use to be the most common form of drug abuse in Ireland with 23 percent  of all adults reporting to ever having used it, with lifetime use, up from 17.4 percent in 2002/3 to 21.9 percent in 2006/07.

Mairead Lyons Director of NACD said, “It [cannabis] is not something that is routinely analysed, there is a lot of effort put into other substances because, I suppose, there is a lot more that’s visible with them, but we would always feel that purity analysis of all illegal drugs is important.”

Perhaps people may only start to take action against contaminated cannabis when we start to see the casualties of decades of diesel, vinyl and glue inhalation. Similarly, it may take serious illness or death before the dangers of smoking soap bar become widely apparent.

Comments

[Someone from the UK]

Thank goodness that someone in the media is addressing this huge problem, with all it's possible severe health implications in a cool, rational manner.

Well done!

[Brendan Khan]

So this is your government trying to protect you...deisel has to be worse for people than canna! Why not allow low potency/unpoisoned herbal canna to be sold to adults at a low (but still taxed) price? This would cause the bottom to fall out of the market for other more harmful versions.

Canna will be smoked by all who want it regardless, prohibitionists are only fooling themselves...

[Someone from the UK]

Thank goodness that someone in the media is addressing this huge problem, with all it's possible severe health implications in a cool, rational manner.

Well done!

[Donal]

Great article! A very important issue that many people don't think enough about.

Between 120/160 per Oz? Its far more than that. In fact, two-three times that at deal price. Which is also quite ridiculous. A stupid ammount of money to be spending on just a plant- not a plant, a weed that coulod grow almost anywhere.