Research shows that it poses a grave health risk to people suffering heart and respiratory disease, asthmatics and pregnant women. Over 60 deaths have been connected to police use of capsicum spray in the United States. A study of the use of the spray in Victoria showed that the majority of incidents of use of the spray involved a 'mentally disturbed subject'. This target is particularly disturbing when medical opinion emphasises that capsicum spray may be an adequate co-factor to cause death where a person is under the influence of speed, cocaine or a psychiatric drug. Capsicum spray is presented as an alternative to shootings, however police are instructed that the only appropriate weapon to use if confronted by a person with a firearm or a knife or a bludgeon is a gun.
Capsicum spray is intended to slow down and control a person.
Fears that capsicum spray would be used as an additional weapon of punishment in circumstances where firearms would never have been used, have been realised. In February of this year in Surry Hills, a man unable to speak or hear, responded to being 'approached' by police by punching the air with his fist and then allegedly kicking and hitting two of the officers. He was sprayed and arrested. In January 1997, in Victoria, Cheryl Black, an intellectually disabled woman who suffered from epilepsy and asthma was alone in her prison cell, became distressed and allegedly pressed the emergency button and threatened to hurt herself or police with a plastic knife. Police immediately sprayed her with Capsicum Spray, despite the fact that she was incapacitated and unable to cause any harm to others and the fact that the spray posed a greater risk to her safety than the plastic knife she was wielding.