Pop­ping those “Zessers” pills may soon be a crime—and pro­ba­tion pro­grammes for pris­on­ers will be launched for the first time.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young re­vealed both de­vel­op­ments dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate of the 2020 Bud­get.

Young said the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act will be amend­ed to crim­i­nalise pos­ses­sion of Ec­sta­sy “Zess­er” pills and deal with such use.

The ac­tion fol­lows con­cern ex­pressed by Young and oth­er Min­is­ters re­cent­ly about in­creas­ing lo­cal use of the club drug Ec­sta­sy, whose street name in T&T is “Zessers”.

Ec­sta­sy is the pop­u­lar name for 3-4 Methyl​ene­dioxy​metham­phet­a­mine, a psy­choac­tive drug pri­mar­i­ly used as a recre­ation­al drug. Ef­fects in­clude al­tered sen­sa­tions, in­creased en­er­gy, em­pa­thy and plea­sure. How­ev­er, it caus­es in­creased heart rate and can cause dry mouth, clenched teeth, blurred vi­sion, chills, sweat­ing, or nau­sea. It can al­so make some users feel anx­ious, con­fused, and para­noid and may dam­age brain cells.

Young first spoke of the drug in Sep­tem­ber, not­ing its cir­cu­la­tion. It was analysed by the Foren­sic Cen­tre.

In­tel­li­gence ser­vices sub­se­quent­ly told Gov­ern­ment that “cook­ies” and “brown­ies” laced with a mix­ture of mar­i­jua­na and Ec­sta­sy were be­ing dis­trib­uted in some schools. Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds who con­firmed this last month said the “good­ies” were seized by law en­force­ment at teenage par­ties. He’d warned that “Zessers” and crys­tal meth (Metham­phet­a­mine) would be placed on the Dan­ger­ous Drugs sched­ule.

On oth­er is­sues, Young said the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is work­ing on planned pro­ba­tion pro­grammes for pris­on­ers and has as­sured it’s close to com­ple­tion. Young said for the first time pro­ba­tion will fa­cil­i­tate for those who qual­i­fy to be re­leased on pro­ba­tion and mon­i­tored.

He said Gov­ern­ment has com­plet­ed all its work for the elec­tron­ic (an­kle bracelet) mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem and is await­ing the ju­di­cia­ry’s in­put as that fo­rum—in sen­tenc­ing—will de­ter­mine who will be fit­ted with bracelets.

Young ap­pealed to the pri­vate sec­tor to find ways to help pris­on­ers/in­mates to rein­te­grate in­to so­ci­ety af­ter re­lease.

On an­oth­er cur­rent is­sue, Young al­so stressed he has ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate state­ments he’s made—in­clud­ing those on last Fri­day’s PNM po­lit­i­cal plat­form. Ad­dress­ing PNM sup­port­ers, Young had al­leged some “high-lev­el” UNC mem­bers were talk­ing to peo­ple in jail. Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar had sub­se­quent­ly chal­lenged Gov­ern­ment to “call names.”

While Young didn’t “call names” on that mat­ter yes­ter­day, he segued in­to an­oth­er is­sue, say­ing there had been a “lot of cry­ing out” about fish­er­men re­cent­ly.

He said “I’ve been very care­ful as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter on call­ing peo­ple ‘fish­er­men.’ There’s been a cer­tain amount of kid­nap­ping that’s oc­curred. I’m fair­ly cer­tain no one on Gov­ern­ment or In­de­pen­dent (Sen­ate) side can raise (US)$5,000 if they walked in­to a bank now. How could a fish­er­man raise (US)$20,000 in cash overnight, to pay a ran­som,” he said.

“Fur­ther­more when these ves­sels were in­ter­cept­ed, go­ing out to ‘fish’, there wasn’t a sin­gle hook, line or sinker in any—nor any fish,”

Young said his Min­istry will al­so be spend­ing a “lot of time and fo­cus” to im­prove the army’s Camp La Ro­maine fa­cil­i­ty where spe­cif­ic op­er­a­tions will be launched in South Trinidad, he added. His Min­istry is al­so get­ting drones.