Drug checking an innovative approach to save lives and reduce harm
Drug checking
A lack of knowledge is causing deaths The New Zealand Drug Foundation is calling for drug checking services to be made available at festivals, to reduce harm from a lack of knowledge about new and unidentified drugs. The modern drug scene is complex, mysterious and dangerous. A huge range of potent new drugs are now available here from ‘dark net’ websites or drug dealers. Our outdated drug law’s prohibition approach just makes this problem worse by driving users underground and keeping supply in criminal hands. Law enforcement is failing to keep dangerous drugs out of the country. And people are still taking drugs like they always will. The way things stand, people often have no idea what’s actually in the substance they’re taking and whether it will send them straight to A&E or kill them. The illegal drug market’s not generally known for its product safety standards or accurate consumer information.
1 OF 5 1 of 5 drug-related deaths at Australian music festivals in 2015 Stefan Woodward (19 years) Date of death: December 5, 2015. Festival attended: Stereosonic, Adelaide.
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NZ Drug Foundation Drug checking
Australia’s recently seen drugrelated deaths and large numbers of people treated at A&E from drug overdoses at music festivals. And it looks like New Zealand has now seen its first death from a new drug. A 27 year old man died in Wellington Hospital recently from what’s thought to be an overdose of the stimulant alpha-PVP (APVP) or ‘bath salts’.
2 OF 5 Sylvia Choi (25 years) Date of death: November 29, 2015. Festival attended: Stereosonic, Homebush. Our emergency departments have also recently seen a string of people who’ve overdosed on NBOMe. This drug’s a potent, unpredictable hallucinogen which has caused deaths overseas and is often sold as the much milder LSD. In response to the Australian deaths there have been calls, including from concerned parents, for drug checking services at festivals and other events so people have a clue what they’re taking. This is often not what they expect. WHAT IS DRUG CHECKING?
Consumer drug checking or ‘pill testing’ services use chemical analysis to check the content and purity of illegal drug samples brought in by drug users. It typically works like this: BRIEFING (MARCH 2016)
§§ information about the drug sample is interpreted by on-site experts and the person who provided the sample gets the results
§§ the person also gets information
about the risks of the drugs identified and a brief intervention occurs to identify and support people away from harmful drug use patterns if necessary
§§ anonymised information about
the sample is shared with other drug users, A&E departments and law enforcement.
Versions of these types of services currently operate in Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Luxembourg and France with positive results from evaluations. LEGAL BARRIERS TO DRUG CHECKING
Frustratingly, there’s legal barriers to drug checking at festivals or other events, although testing itself is perfectly legal. The Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) tests drugs for prosecution purposes and testing kits can be bought for people to test drugs themselves. But under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 (MoDA), possessing illicit drugs is illegal and section 12 also makes ‘knowingly permitting any premises’ to be used for offences against MoDA illegal. This means that festival organisers, for example, risk prosecution if law enforcement considers they know illicit drugs are being consumed at their event (i.e. if drug checking is www.drugfoundation.org.nz
Drug checking
Warnings about unsafe drugs are displayed for all to see at many Austrian festivals.
Drug checking deliberately targets the highest of the high risk, the venues where patrons have already chosen to consume illicit drugs. It’s not possible to encourage them any more - only to persuade them to moderate their ways. DR DAVID CALDICOTT, EMERGENCY MEDICINE CONSULTANT, AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY.
available). And of course the potential drug users are also at risk. There’s more than one way around these legal barriers though, including formal/informal arrangements with law enforcement, parties other than the event organisers doing the drug checks and changing MoDA. We consider changing MoDA is the best www.drugfoundation.org.nz
Source: CheckIT, Vienna.
way to fix this problem, as this would ensure the legal risks to event organisers and people using drug checking services were removed. DRUG CHECKING IN NEW ZEALAND
Despite the legal barriers, drug checking has already been done informally at a New Zealand summer festival in 2015 and 2016. Worryingly, results from this testing in 2016 found that under half (43 percent) of samples were what the potential drug user expected. Encouragingly though, where people were told their sample was not what they expected and may
KEY STATS
44% NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO SAID THEY WON’T TAKE A DRUG AFTER GETTING TEST RESULTS
2PW
NEW PSYCHOACTIVE SUBSTANCES WERE DETECTED IN THE EU LAST YEAR AT THE RATE OF AROUND TWO PER WEEK. EUROPEAN DRUG REPORT 2015: TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS REPORT, JUNE 2015
3X
3 OF 5 Anneke Vo (23 years) Date of death: October 25, 2015. Festival attended: Dragon Dreaming, Yass.
THE RATE SEEKING EMERGENCY MEDICAL TREATMENT AFTER USING NEW PSYCHOACTIVE SUBSTANCES WAS AT LEAST 3 X GREATER THAN FOR TRADITIONAL ILLICIT DRUGS. GLOBAL DRUGS SURVEY 2015 FINDINGS, JUNE 2015
NZ Drug Foundation Drug checking
BRIEFING (MARCH 2016)
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Drug checking
Police warnings not enough to stop festival deaths: drug educator SMH.COM.AU 7 DECEMBER 2015
A lethal chemical has been detected in illegal Ecstasy pills sold on the black market in Wellington. STUFF 27 SEPTEMBER 2015
4 OF 5 Nigel Pauljevic (26 years) Date of death: September 19, 2015. Festival attended: Defqon.1, Penrith.
be dangerous, 44 percent said they wouldn’t take it. This means that drug checking can change behaviour and reduce health risks. The response to the availability of testing among the festival community was also reportedly universally positive, including amongst users, organisers, medical staff, and parents. However, while the festival organisers where willing to let the testing happen, they didn’t want to be directly involved for fear of prosecution. So event organisers
have strong disincentives to provide this service. And to remain discreet the service could not be directly advertised, instead being promoted as a ‘harm reduction’ service, hampering its visibility and effectiveness. Removing legal barriers would enable far more effective services. DRUG CHECKING STACKS UP
The New Zealand Drug Foundation considers drug checking services are a practical way to save lives and reduce harm in this country. Drug checking:
in reducing drug-related harm like treatment services and law enforcement TAKE ACTION NOW
The Drug Foundation recommends drug checking services be made available at New Zealand festivals in summer 2016/17. In the longer term, we need to remove the formal legal barriers to drug checking in MoDA, so these services become a standard part of our drug harm reduction policy.
§§ lets people make the decision
not to take a drug that’s not what they intended or is too potent and also allows other drug users to be warned
§§ gets drug use-related health and safety information to drug users
§§ allows for useful information
5 OF 5 Tolga Toksoz (19 years) Date of death: February 7, 2015. Festival attended: State of Trance, Homebush.
to go to other parties involved
New Zealand Drug Foundation p +64 4 801 6303 e admin@drugfoundation.org.nz PO Box 3082, Wellington New Zealand
www.drugfoundation.org.nz