THE unhappy owner of The Happy Herb Shop predicts the closure of her store this week will worsen a local methamphetamine epidemic.

Talitha Mitchell says, “meth-heads are taking over Freo—you only have to look around the streets”.

She says her Elder Place shop had helped addicts come off drugs safely.

“We specialised in harm minimisation and helped people withdraw from street drugs in a safe, controlled manner.”

She pulled down the shutters this week after seven years in business, saying “draconian” drug laws introduced in October stopped her selling products containing psychoactive substances.

The synthetic products had been marketed essentially as fake marijuana or fake LSD, their effects said to mimic the real thing: but because they’d contained a different cocktail of chemicals, they had previously fallen through legislative prohibitions.

WA was the first state to introduce a blanket law covering every possible permutation.

“I realise the government had to do something, but the new drug laws penalised shops like us which exercise a strong duty of care and make all our own produce,” Ms Mitchell says.

“We are becoming like a nanny state and soon you won’t be able to drink a coffee because it has a psychoactive effect.

“The new pop-up shops are the real problem: they buy in pills from China and no-one has a clue what’s in them.

“People trying them are basically human guinea pigs.

“Websites are even worse, and sending kids to hospital.”

Ms Mitchell is pushing for the government to follow New Zealand’s lead and introduce legislation that makes manufacturers prove the safety of their synthetic products before they’re allowed on the market.

“Shops like mine are closing all across Australia,” she says.

“But we are the good guys, and the drug problem on the street is only going to get worse without us.”

by STEPHEN POLLOCK