EdLines: Ban gateway drugs

Teenagers have been experimenting with illicit substances since time immemorial.
And as long as we have teenagers, they will continue to do so.
As we reported in Saturday's Northern Advocate, police are putting pressure on dairy owners to stop stocking a synthetic cannabis. It comes in various guises, but the brand Kronic has gained attention for all the wrong reasons, with users becoming ill, turning up at school "stoned" etc.
Oh yes, and the Director-General of Health has warned retailers to stop selling the "herbal smoking product" Kronic Pineapple Express because it contains a prescription medicine used in the short-term treatment of anxiety. It is also used as an anticonvulsant. Nice.
Kronic's accessibility is a concern - you can buy it from a dairy, although its sale is restricted to 18-year-olds and over.
Is there much difference between buying Kronic when you turn 18, and a dozen beer or RTDs?
Particularly when we live in a society seemingly struggling to deal with mature use of alcohol, which like Kronic, is a legal drug.
The proponents of cannabis synthetics will argue there is not much difference at all, they are both legal drugs and when you're 18, you're considered by the state to be old enough to do whatever you like to your brain.
You are, but alcohol and Kronic are not the same.
Kronic mimics cannabis use, if there was ever a gateway drug to illicit substances, this is it.
Selling products similar to cannabis, that provide a so-called legal high, has opened new doors of perception for our kids.
They are dangerous doors - firstly, the user is smoking what is essentially a mystery concoction of herbs and legal drugs.
Secondly, how long before the user steps up to smoke cannabis?
Restrictions on the sale of these products are coming - why not just outlaw them?
It is not a scenario where prohibition will result in a demand-driven black market - the only people using Kronic are curious teens or those that don't move in the wrong circles and have access to cannabis.
Ban Kronic and let it fade into obscurity and become the "Claytons" of smoking products.
In the meantime, let's hope the only good to come of this stuff is that users find the experience so foul, they never go near it again.