New Zealand: World’s first legal drug check at public events

By David E. Carpenter

New Zealand recently made a name for itself as the first country in the world to legalize drug control services, especially for those attending festivals and other events.

The decision is a landmark judgment that emphasizes harm reduction for individuals by frequently testing illegal substances they may wish to consume.

Photo by Mireille Raad via Unsplash

The New Zealand Ministry of Health describes drug control services as scientific tests performed on substances to reveal their likely identity and composition. Such services test unknown substances, which could be illegal drugs, and then interpret the results and provide harm reduction information to those who provided the sample.

The main goal of such tests is to help people make informed, safer decisions about whether or how to take an unregulated medicine.

Contrary to what some believe, these drug testing services are not set up to promote illicit drug use or to claim that illicit drug use is safe. Rather, they are portable laboratories that use high performance liquid chromatography or UV-Vis spectrophotometer equipment to determine both the effectiveness and the qualitative nature of drugs, often illicit.

Dr. Carl Hart, a neuroscientist who specializes in how people react to psychoactive drugs, spoke earlier this year about the need for drug testing and safety at events and within the general population. He gave the example of a typical breakfast and the basic certainty that regulated food bought in the store would not make people sick.

“I can feel confident that the breakfast I ate this morning has no contaminants because we have quality control on our food,” said Hart. “And when people are out at festivals, there is no quality control, which increases the likelihood that people have contaminated substances.”

Testing services around the world are currently in what is sort of a legal gray area where local law enforcement can call whether or not to allow them to attend events. Organizations such as The Loop in the UK and DanceSafe often struggle to provide services that can be interpreted as promoting drug use.

Photo by Hanny Naibaho via Unsplash

In reality, testing often does the opposite. A leading drug control service in New Zealand that has been testing unverified substances for the past five years is called Know Your Stuff NZ. The community’s volunteer organization addresses the “lack of factual, documented information available to drug users about the substances they intend to use by providing drug controls and drug-related information at festivals and events.”

The group notes that people often obtain substances from dubious sources that they believe are safe but also have the potential to harm or kill.

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Prior to the global pandemic, Know Your Stuff NZ offered free harm reduction services at 13 events during the 2018-2019 season. During this time, the data they collected showed that drug controls actually reduced drug use and the harm it caused, rather than condoning drug use, as is often feared. Know Your Stuff found that when festival goers found that the drug they wanted to use wasn’t what they thought they were, they tended to give up 50% of the time.

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As part of the New Zealand government’s proactive testing approach, it recently pledged NZ $ 800,000 to coordinate national services to train drug controllers for major festivals and events, and to provide information on drug harm.

Radio New Zealand reported that Health Secretary Andrew Little described drug control services as keeping people safe and not condoning recreational drug use. “There is strong evidence that drug control services at festivals change behavior and reduce harm,” Little said.

This article originally appeared on Benzinga and was republished with permission.