On Saturday, I was part of a panel on TV3's The Nation, talking about drug policy in light of the programme's interviews with associate Health minister Peter Dunne and Stargate founder Matt Bowden who both advanced the view that the beleaguered Psychoactive Substances Act can fulfill its stated purpose.
I wrote late last year about how the government's amendment banning the use of animal testing as part of the Act's approval process has effectively rendered that process inoperable, at least for the time being. The government wrecked its own law.
Dunne believes it just needs time for new testing technologies to emerge – which he grants might be five or even 10 years – and Bowden believes it's possible to find a way through the mess already, which is why he has announced a crowdfunding programme for testing as part of a product approval under the Act.
In contrast to many people shouting on social media, I do actually think both men are sincere in wanting a regulated system to work, but they do also have other motivations; political and financial.
I think the key thing is that the market isn't going to stand still. There's plenty of evidence that since they were banned from sale (when the Act's interim approval regime was curtailed) synthetic cannabinoids (oh, all right: cannibomimetics) have become more available on the black market.
This bust in Christchurch last month certainly indicated they were for sale alongside methamphetamine. And there is speculation (from Norml and others) that the weed drought of recent months has been partly driven by criminal groups' shift from cannabis cultivation (risky, takes time and space to do) to the production of synthetic cannabis (high yield and fast). It's analogous to the huge spike in the production and consumption during liquor Prohibition in the 1930s in the US. (People went back to making and drinking beer as soon as Prohibition ended.)
This wouldn't mean they were producing the psychoactive chemicals, just spraying them in solution onto some plant matter. The process would even use one chemical often employed in meth production, acetone.
Hamilton mayor Julie Hardaker told me she'd been told by her regional commander of police that the process is widespread.
Whether that's happening or not, it does appear to me that there are now more people importing psychoactive substances via the internet. This isn't necessarily organised crime as we'd usually think of it: quantities and distribution networks are likely to be quite small.
You only need to study Erowid to see that even experienced users can get into strife with the array of substances now available. There's also the risk of people trying to eyeball doses sometimes measured in milligrams. But drugs bought this way are actually likely to be safer than street drugs – they're more likely to be what it says on the label. By contrast, the contents of street pills and powders might be dangerously at variance with what they're supposed to be.
I've seen the results of drug testing conducted at a New Zealand festival last year (with a retail testing kit). In some cases, there's not too much to worry about: the guy who paid money for coke and got ritalin. In others, they're deeply alarming. Four out of five people who though they had LSD in fact had the much more dangerous NBOMe drugs (scary dose-response curve, possibility of organ damage or death) and some "ecstasy" pills were in fact PMA, which has been linked to quite a number of overdose deaths. Only a quarter of people who submitted their purchases for testing actually had what they thought they had.
I guess the question is: what would a harm reduction strategy look like now? Not in five or 10 years, but now?
What actions would a harm reduction approach prescribe? Should partygoers be able to safely test their pills before popping them?