A law will allow controlled substances to be tested without penalty to ensure their authenticity. The goals are to reduce health risks and, perhaps, change users’ behavior.
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — New Zealand has enshrined into law a one-year experiment allowing drug users to have illegal substances tested without penalty to ensure their authenticity and to weed out dangerous chemicals.
The testers will not call the police. The drug users will not be thrown in jail. To tackle an endemic drug problem, New Zealand on Friday became what is believed to be the second country to formally legalize such drug checks, after the Netherlands. The European nation began a similar program in 1999 — though the practice is spreading around the globe.
Here’s what’s happening.
So, how does this work?
It is still a crime in New Zealand to possess or sell illegal drugs.
But say you’ve acquired an illegal chemical substance and would like to double check that what you have is what you think you have. A New Zealand law allows that.
Last year, as part of a pilot program, the government passed the Drug Checking Act, and the Ministry of Health appointed an independent drug-verification service, KnowYourStuffNZ, to test samples of pills or powders to give users a clearer picture of their chemical makeup, often at music festivals. But until the act became permanent, KnowYourStuffNZ operated in a kind of legal gray zone, where the testing was not widely publicized.
Over time, demand for its services skyrocketed, leaving the organization struggling to keep up. In 2016, it tested 330 samples at nine events, which rose to 1,368 samples tested at 22 events in 2019, according to recent data from Victoria University in Wellington.
“We basically are not touching the sides of the demand at the moment,” said Sarah Helm, the executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, which works with KnowYourStuff. “We are not able to get to all of the events where they would like to have us present, because we just don’t have the equipment.”
What exactly did the checks find?
Contaminants were common.
More than 60 percent of the samples tested by KnowYourStuff in 2019 were MDMA, the illegal party drug known as Ecstasy, with LSD and cannabis the next most common drugs. Over the summer period, more than half of all samples tested were not what users expected, Ms. Helm said, with many found to be potentially deadly synthetic cathinones, sometimes known as bath salts.
Almost as important as the tests themselves was the opportunity to give drug users advice in a confidential, nonjudgmental setting, Ms. Helm said.
“It’s really hard to get any advice aside from dodgy tips from your mates or something you’ve picked up online,” she said. “There’s not enough reliable advice, information and support for people who are using substances, and so we’re putting people at unnecessary risk.”
Why is New Zealand doing this?
According to the most recent data from the Ministry of Health, around 9 percent of New Zealanders have used an illicit drug in the past year, with cannabis the most popular. Synthetic cannabis is a common problem, with more than 40 deaths associated with the drug reported in 2018. (The country narrowly voted against legalizing marijuana in a referendum last year.) Drugs are the third most common reason young people are kicked out of school.
While New Zealand has long struggled with methamphetamine abuse, party drugs are increasingly common. In 2019, the New Zealand police seized more than two million Ecstasy tablets and their equivalents, up 560 percent from 2018.
It is these party drugs in particular that have resulted in injury or death, sometimes as a result of people taking mislabeled or contaminated drugs. This year, KnowYourStuff received almost 1,000 messages from festivalgoers who reported atypical reactions to drugs sold to them as MDMA, including paranoia, seizures, severe nausea and days of insomnia. The drugs are believed to have been contaminated with synthetic cathinones.
Speaking in Parliament last year, Andrew Little, the minister of health, emphasized that the current New Zealand government saw drug policy as a health matter rather than a criminal one.
A prosecution-led approach has not worked, he said, adding: “It’s not changing. If we want to change behaviors, then we’ve got to take a different approach.”
But does it work?
The data is spotty, but promising.
A survey from Victoria University found that 68 percent of surveyed festivalgoers who used the testing services changed their behavior, with some reducing the amount they took while others disposed of their drugs altogether.
A similar study held at a festival in Canberra, Australia, in 2019 found that “all those who had a very dangerous substance detected disposed of that drug in the amnesty bin.”
Pill testing is common, if legally dubious, in European countries including Austria, Portugal and Switzerland, and it is gaining traction in Australia and Britain. A drug-checking pilot program held in 2016 at the Secret Garden Party music festival in Cambridgeshire, England, led to a sharp reduction in drug-related hospitalizations. There was just one admission to the hospital following the 2016 festival, compared with 19 the previous year.
Does anyone object?
While there is some evidence to back the legalization of drug checks, political support is not unanimous. New Zealand’s main opposition party, the National Party, voted against the measure last year.
Speaking in Parliament, Simon Bridges, the former leader of the National Party, warned that drug use would increase as a result of the law and that the testing could give a false impression that drugs were safe.
“It turns out pill testing legalized by government gives confidence — false confidence,” he said. “Tests don’t make Ecstasy safe, even if they give an all-clear for impurities or contaminants that the tests detect.”
Some advocates in Australia, where overdoses are common and where policy tends toward the punitive, are pushing for an approach similar to New Zealand’s. But not everyone is on board.
After 700 people were hospitalized following a music festival held in Sydney in 2018, Gladys Berejiklian, the premier of New South Wales, proclaimed her opposition to legal drug checking, saying: “Anyone who advocates pill testing is giving the green light to drugs. That is absolutely unacceptable.”
Ms. Helm, of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, said testing helped users make better, more informed decisions.
“There is no evidence to suggest that it encourages use,” she said. “What we have seen instead is harms being avoided, and better information about what drugs are out there.”
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