Drug debate highlights need to review Act

FEARS around drugchecking demonstrate the Misuse of Drugs Act is ‘‘not fit for purpose’’, the head of the National Addiction Centre says.

Know Your Stuff and the NZ Drug Foundation brought their drug checking service to Dunedin for OWeek, working with the Otago University Students’ Association.

Using a reagent test, individuals were able to gain an indication of what their drug actually contained.

Know Your Stuff told RNZ last week despite an increasing number of festivals inviting it to test people’s drugs, some organisers were still worried technically they could be prosecuted for allowing their premises to be used for drugs offences.

University of Otago Associate Prof Simon Adamson, a National Addiction Centre director, said the debate was a good illustration of why drug laws needed to be overhauled. There were some ‘‘unintended negative consequences’’ of the existing law.

‘‘One of those is health promotion or harm reduction strategies that might reduce risk and end up putting people in this difficult position of being criminalised for temporary possession of a drug.’’

Associate Prof Adamson said the vast majority of university students would have used cannabis, and a ‘‘substantial minority’’ probably used other drugs.

He did not know whether anyone had been prosecuted yet for bringing drug checking on to their site, but that would not stop lawyers advising it was a technical risk.

In general, it took ‘‘some bravery to act outside of the law’’.

‘‘If the law doesn’t change, we do need people to be brave and to do that, because this does put lives at risk.’’

Know Your Stuff and the Drug Foundation were doing ‘‘exactly the sort of thing that we need a lot more of’’, he said.

The University of Otago said in a statement last week it did not endorse the drug testing, which was not carried out on university property, and the Drug Foundation told Stuff last week the testing had not been used at any other tertiary institutions in New Zealand.

The drug most commonly checked in Dunedin last week was class B drug MDMA or ecstasy.

However, the class A hallucinogen LSD was also a drug users were likely to want to have tested, due to ‘‘hazardous’’ substitutes medical professionals did not know enough about, Prof Adamson said.

‘‘The greatest risk for both those drugs, LSD and MDMA, is actually not the drugs themselves. It’s the kind of adulterants or substitutes that are included instead.’’

Last year, 13 people were hospitalised after using contaminated party pills at the Electric Avenue music festival in Christchurch, which contained nethylpentylone, which has been linked to deaths overseas, rather than MDMA.

Both MDMA and LSD were ‘‘low addiction’’, Prof Adamson said. Adulterants were the key risk, but both drugs when used on their own still had side effects.

They could be particularly dangerous for vulnerable groups, such as people who had a personal or family history of psychotic illness.