On July 1, laws regarding research chemicals or “legal highs” are changing in the Netherlands. The implications of this will be further reaching that just Europe, with ripples likely to be felt on our shores. What does this mean for us here in Australia? And what can we do to combat and keep safe from the effects of these changes?

There have been a spate of media reports about the drug kush, described as “a mysterious new zombie drug that’s ravaging Sierra Leone” with outlandish claims like “the use of ground-up human bones as one of the drug’s cocktail of ingredients.” In real life, kush is either synthetic cannabinoids or nitazenes (but never both). There was no zombie apocalypse, but there is a nitazenes crisis in a very poor, war-torn country.