Eros: Minister’s Drug Ban Sends Millions into Black Market

AUSTRALIA—The Eros Association issued the following announcement Monday in the wake of new drug bans issued by NSW Minister for Fair Trade, Anthony Roberts: Bans on herbal and synthetic smoking mixtures due to come into effect in NSW tomorrow, have caused most shops carrying the products to empty their shelves over the weekend. However, Eros Association Coordinator Robbie Swan said that the NSW Fair Trading Minister’s failure to provide the industry with a buy-back scheme or even a means of legally disposing of the products was now responsible for most of them ending up on the NSW black market. “This scheme has been ill-considered and executed in haste to try and maximize political gain and a ‘tough-on-drugs’ strategy, rather than trying to do something positive about drug abuse”, he said. “By giving the industry only a few days notice of impending million dollar fines for stocking these products, they gave it no choice but to get rid of them as quickly as possible”.  He said that by publishing a list of the 30 newly-banned products for everyone to see, the Minister had simply handed organized crime groups a new menu that would be copied by every suburban drug dealer in the state and given to their customers.  “If the Minister’s statements were even half true that the herbal smoking products could cause death and insanity, then they were in the same league as firearms”, she said. “When John Howard instituted a ban on guns he also put in place a buy-back scheme so they wouldn’t be sold to organised crime gangs. It’s not hard to follow the logic and common sense in this”.  Mr. Swan said a quick ring around his members (20 percent of the entire NSW market share) estimated that the government’s failures on buy-back and illegal product listing had added millions of dollars to the wealth of the NSW black market. “Of course many of the products that were in the shops may well have been legal – we will never know because the government denied the industry the right to prove their legality and their safety.” He called on the Minister to respond to the drug crisis with appropriate strategies that also addressed the majority of submissions to the NSW Parliamentary Enquiry into Synthetics. The majority rejected prohibition and supported government regulation to ensure safety in the recreational drug industry. For more information about the Eros Association, go here.