The Andrews Labor Government\u2019s crackdown on dangerous drugs continues with a new blanket ban on synthetic drugs coming into effect today.<\/p>\n
While many of these substances were previously available for purchase over the counter, anyone peddling these substances now faces tough penalties,\u00a0 including up to two years in prison or more than $38,000 in fines.<\/p>\n
The Labor Government introduced new laws earlier this year to ban these\u00a0 mind-altering drugs, which have been linked to increased hospital emergency admissions and a number of deaths in the past few years.<\/p>\n
Synthetic drugs are designed to mimic the effects of illicit drugs like\u00a0 cannabis and ecstasy, while trying to avoid existing drug control \u00a0measures.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organisation has indicated the harmful effects of synthetic drugs can include seizures, heart problems, withdrawal symptoms \u00a0and addictions and blood-borne diseases.<\/p>\n
The state-wide ban means it\u2019s illegal to produce, sell or promote any substances that have a psychoactive effect, regardless of their chemical\u00a0 make-up.\u00a0 The new laws also give police the power to search and seize any \u00a0psychoactive drugs, in the same way police can search for any illicit drug.<\/p>\n
The Labor Government has also stepped up its fight on ice dealers with new \u00a0laws that reduce the amount of ice required for commercial trafficking offences also commencing today.\u00a0 These ice reforms are mirrored by the changes to heroin trafficking quantities that were announced yesterday, as a part of the Drug \u00a0Rehabilitation Plan.<\/p>\n
Large commercial traffickable quantities for ice have been cut from 750g\u00a0 to 500g of pure methylamphetamine, and from 1kg to 750g when mixed. Commercial traffickable quantities have been reduced from 100g to 50g of\u00a0 pure methylamphetamine and from 500g to 250g when mixed.<\/p>\n
Anyone convicted of large commercial trafficking faces a maximum of life\u00a0 in prison, or up to 25 years for commercial trafficking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Andrews Labor Government\u2019s crackdown on dangerous drugs continues with a new blanket ban on synthetic drugs coming into effect today. While many of these substances were previously available for purchase over the counter, anyone peddling these substances now faces tough penalties,\u00a0 including up to two years in prison or more than $38,000 in fines. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media-releases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9480,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8586\/revisions\/9480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}