The news some Dunedin dairy owners selling synthetic cannabis have armed themselves in response to robberies involving the products is another disturbing element in the already concerning area of ''legal highs''.
According to police, there have been seven aggravated robberies targeting synthetic cannabis in the Southern district in the past two years - most in the Dunedin area and two in the city in the past fortnight.
On Wednesday, this newspaper reported four Dunedin retailers had received formal warnings as police providing crime prevention advice found a machete, mallet and lengths of wood being kept as protection.
About 20 Dunedin retailers sell legal synthetic cannabis products, which mimic the effects of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive constituent of the cannabis plant.
The first temporary bans on synthetic cannabis substances were issued in 2010 and rolled over in August 2011, and removed more than 50 products from the market, but manufacturers have consistently developed new formulas to circumvent the bans. Legislation to address the issue - United Future leader Peter Dunne's Psychoactive Substances Bill - looks likely to come into effect later this year. It passed its first reading earlier this month with the support of all political parties and has been referred to the health select committee.
Retailers have every right to sell legal products, and to do so safely in their workplace. It is also understandable dairy owners - as small-business owners trying to eke out a living - try to sell products that attract customers.
But there is a criminal element also wishing to profit from them. And the fact retailers have resorted to arming themselves is a frightening development - such actions have the potential to exacerbate any situation and cause a greater risk to a greater number of people.
Police say by arming themselves, dairy owners are endangering lives, including their own, staff, members of the public and emergency services.
Given the dangers, it would seem sensible retailers consider removing the products from their shelves. In addition to helping reduce the risk of robberies, there is an ethical debate too, particularly about protecting youngsters from the products.
Police, parents and health professionals have for some time urged retailers to stop selling them - and the Government to ban them - as horror stories of their impact on users increasingly emerge.
This week, a Mosgiel mother said smoking synthetic cannabis had turned her 20-year-old son into a ''K2 monster'', an ''animal'', and was ''killing'' him.
She said it gave him convulsions, he had racked up debt because of it, was unable to pay his board, and had allegedly threatened her and other family members.
This week, too, a Dunedin father said he was tossed around his house ''like paper'' by his son trying to go cold turkey from K2.
And police said a man who smoked synthetic cannabis was arrested after allegedly punching his partner and threatening her with a hammer and a wrench.
Last October, four University of Otago flatmates said they would never use K2 again after 10 friends tried it for the first time, several vomited, some reported hallucinations, police were called and two men were hospitalised temporarily after becoming aggressive and distressed: ''I felt like I was in another world. I thought I was going to be like that forever. It shouldn't be legal,'' one of the flatmates said.
That followed a warning only a week before from an 18-year old female K2 user, who had a manic episode in which she battered her own face and was hospitalised.
''I was possessed by a demon ... I started screaming so loudly that I did not even recognise my own voice ... this is is horrendous stuff,'' she said.
For every reported incident there will be many, many others. The flow-on effects of the products are significant and disturbing in various ways and the new legislation cannot be passed soon enough.
It would make all psychoactive substances illegal and ''reverse the onus of proof'', requiring manufacturers to prove their products are low-risk if they are to be sold. Legal high manufacturers would face estimated $180,000 application fees plus $1 million to $2 million in testing costs for each product.
There would be a minimum purchase age of 18 for products, point-of-sale advertising only, labelling and packaging requirements, and dairies would be barred from selling the products.
A ban may not stop the production of such substances for the black market. But it will stop ready access at the corner shop to young people who are effectively being used as guinea pigs for a raft of unproven, untested, often unidentifiable substances that are causing much damage already and whose long-term effects are unknown.
