Bucharest citizens demand the prohibition of ‘legal drugs’

The protesters, most of them young people, listened to music and wore flags that said ‘We love life’.

Other people wore banners with messages such as ‘Prohibit legal drugs – the poison which kills’, ‘Why do you hate our children? Stop selling death!’ or ‘Governors, young people are the future of our country, not drugs’.

Organisers asked all the mayors in the country to take action and shut down the shops that sell legal drugs.

They emphasised the alarming levels that legal drug use has reached in our country.

Reporters with Radio România Actualităţi and Bucharest FM radio stations participated in the demonstration.

Representatives from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Public Health and from other institutions met to discuss and to analyse what concrete measures could prevent and fight against the traffic and consumption of plants with hallucinogenic effect.

The officials will have to present a project in the government meeting on Wednesday, that will later be promoted in a way to forbidden these facts that are increasingly more present in Romania.

The prohibition of legal drugs, delayed by the European Commission

The minister of Health stated that the institution he leads prepared a draft bill to forbid legal drugs in 2009, but the European Commission pointed out that it might cause problems concerning the free movement of merchandise.

On 10 February 2010, the Government issued an emergency order through which the selling of 36 hallucinogenic plants and substances considered to be drugs was forbidden.

However, after the publication of that order, hundreds of young people continued to end up in hospitals in critical condition, as a result of consumption of legal drugs bought from specialized ethnobotanical shops or via internet.

Translated by: Lidia Enăsoiu

MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University