Legal Highs Boom
Shops selling "legal highs", substances engineered to stay one step ahead of the drug law, spread across Poland from 2008. By mid-2010 hundreds of dopalacze shops trade openly. Then, after a wave of poisonings, the Tusk government acts "at the border of law": in October 2010 the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate seals almost 1,400 shops nationwide overnight, and open sale of any mind-altering substance is banned.
Part of Dopalacze
7 moments in this segment.
- - August 2008 - first dopalacze shop opens in Łódź. Poland's first dedicated bricks-and-mortar "smart shop" selling legal highs opens in Łódź. It kicks off the rapid spread of "sklepy z dopalaczami", shops trading substances engineered to fall outside the controlled-drug list.
- - March 2009 - first substances banned by name. An amendment to the Act on Counteracting Drug Addiction (Ustawa o przeciwdziałaniu narkomanii) adds substances including BZP (benzylpiperazine) and Salvia divinorum to the controlled list, the first legislative response to the legal-highs market.
- - June 2010 - mephedrone banned. The Act of 10 June 2010 places mephedrone, one of the most widely sold cathinones in the smart shops, into the controlled psychotropic group, restricting it to research use. The market simply substitutes the next unlisted compound.
- - Summer 2010 - the market at its peak. By mid-2010 the smart-shop market reaches its height: hundreds of dedicated dopalacze shops, and up to roughly 1,300–1,400 retail outlets nationwide once general retailers are counted, selling synthetic cannabinoids and cathinones openly.
- - October 2010 - mass closure of dopalacze shops. With backing from PM Donald Tusk, the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate (GIS) seals almost 1,400 smart shops nationwide on sanitary grounds over a single weekend. Tusk declares the state will act "at the border of law"; the action follows a wave of poisonings and reported deaths.
- - November 2010 - open sale of legal highs banned. The Act of 8 October 2010 amends the drug-addiction and sanitary-inspection laws to ban the open retail sale of all mind-altering substances, even those not individually listed. Health-ministry data show toxicology hospitalisations dropping sharply in the weeks afterward.
- - Watch - the man who makes legal highs (BBC). A BBC report meeting "Dr Zee," a chemist who designs new psychoactive compounds engineered to stay ahead of the law, the supply-side logic that drove the whole dopalacze market.
