Calls for federal ban on synthetic drugs

Pressure is mounting on the federal government to introduce a permanent ban on synthetic drugs in Australia after the death of a Sydney teenager.

A temporary ban has been declared in NSW, after 17-year-old Sydney schoolboy Henry Kwan jumped to his death. He had taken a synthetic hallucinogen that mimics LSD.

Shops selling these substances will be targeted in a statewide crackdown this week, and could face major fines if they breach the ban.

But NSW Fair Trading Minister Anthony Roberts says federal government support will be “crucial” in ensuring the ban on synthetic drugs becomes permanent once it expires in 90 days’ time.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon said the federal government had the constitutional power to outlaw these drugs, and couldn’t pass off responsibility to the states.

“The fact that the NSW Minister for Fair Trading says the ban can only be temporary without the federal government being involved cries out for federal government action,” he said in a statement.

“For the Health Minister (Tanya Plibersek) to say this is for the states to sort out ignores the constitutional powers to outlaw these drugs.”

Senator Xenophon will next week move a resolution in the upper house calling on the government to act, promising to draft legislation if they failed to do so.

Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton said these substances posed a “serious public health issue”, and urged Ms Plibersek to immediately canvass all options available for permanently banning them.

“Getting these incredibly dangerous products off the streets should have been an absolute priority for the Health Minister,” he said.

Low-risk people benefit from heart drugs

People at low risk of a heart attack could still benefit from taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, researchers say.

Half of all heart attacks occur in patients with a low cardiovascular risk, and a large study has shown the risk of these events is reduced when patients take drugs to lower cholesterol, University of Sydney researchers say. The researchers, from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) at the university, have questioned whether Australian guidelines should be changed to allow more people access to cholesterol-lowering drugs. NHMRC deputy director Anthony Keech and research fellow Jordan Fulcher said the safest option to lower bad cholesterol levels was to eat well, exercise and lose weight if necessary. But there was also a role for cholesterol drugs, they wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia on Monday. However, expanding the use of the drugs to low-risk people could come at a significant cost.

The two main cholesterol drugs were in the top three most dispensed Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) medications in the 2010/11 financial year, the article said. Drugs targeting cholesterol were the most costly class of medication in the PBS. But the authors said there was now evidence that cholesterol-lowering drugs could help treat people at low risk of heart disease. ‘This new evidence must be urgently considered, with appropriate economic analyses, for incorporation into clinical and PBS guidelines,’ they wrote. The Heart Foundation’s clinical issues director, Dr Robert Grenfell, said more work was needed to reduce people’s heart attack risk by encouraging exercise and diet changes before giving them a pill in the absence of disease. ‘We’d be telling people who aren’t sick to take a pill for something they haven’t got,’ Dr Grenfell told AAP. ‘Active lifestyle and a healthy diet are the first steps. ‘All these things need to be done before we consider that a pill is the answer to this.’ Dr Grenfell said further research and an analysis of the cost and the benefits to patients were needed before cholesterol drugs were recommended to low-risk people.

5th Annual Men’s Health Conference

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