Hard News by Russell Brown

Some other data: a ranking of countries by past-year incidence of cannabis use.

New Zealand is ranked ninth, just ahead of ... Greenland?

N.B. Moa Point is the site of one of Wellington’s main sewage outfalls: those figures are just as likely to cover the CBD as anything happening in Miramar.

it's not really a meaningful thing to report

Yet brace yourself for most media leading with the angle that drugs are harm.

Yet brace yourself for most media leading with the angle that drugs are harm.

They all pose some harm, but I think running it through our Drug Harm Index doesn't tell us anything very useful. It's more a way of justifying budgets.

Feedback from Know Your Stuff ...

As suspected, no, Alpha-PVP is not a big issue. It was found in one of 445 samples in the 2017-18 season and was one of 29 cathinones detected. They found n-ethyl pentylone far more often.

Their guess is that Alpha-PVP was the scary and newsworthy cathinone at the time the programme was set up. Things move fast in that world.

Shame that alcohol is metabolised into sugar and in turn stored as stomach fat, they'll have to rely on the official sales figures to work out how much is drunk, instead of sniffing about in people's poo.

Almost like if we just regulated everything, we'd know how much was used. Hmm.

Shame that alcohol is metabolised into sugar and in turn stored as stomach fat, they'll have to rely on the official sales figures to work out how much is drunk, instead of sniffing about in people's poo.

Shame it was deliberately left out of the Drug Harm Index, along with tobacco.

Almost like if we just regulated everything, we'd know how much was used. Hmm.

Indeed.

Yes, media accuracy is often absent when it comes to drugs.

Like the report in Stuff yesterday about the French tourists caught with a large amount of Cannabis in their car:

"Police went to the scene and found the two men and 2.43kg of cannabis in one ounce bags.
The estimated street value was between $40,000 and $50,000, Watt said."

Which would mean a value of between $466 and $583 per ounce.
.

Oh. Dear. From Martin van Beynen's report in The Press. Apparently 80% of New Zealanders are using meth.

In really mindblowingly huge quantities, too, if taken literally.

(“This is your news. This is your news on drugs. Any questions?”)

There is, at least, a more accurate rendition two paragraphs up, though: i.e., the data covers a total of 80% of the population, and that subset has a total consumption of 16kg a week (which would imply a total national weekly consumption of ca. 20kg if the sample is representative).

Apparently 80% of New Zealanders are using meth.

and they are bathing in it, at that quantity.

"people hoovering up the last of their coke before getting on a plane"

Mhh... not the best of the ideas... as anyone that flies a lot in Latin American regional and domestic airlines may be able to attest

$466 and $583 per ounce.

Queenstown prices eh! Only tourists can afford that, tho I have heard of $700 oz's on Waiheke Is. The hippie days long gone.

Apparently 80% of New Zealanders are using meth.

And thats just to get thru the work week. hahahahahahahahahaha
The straighties must be shitting themselves reading that cooked stat.

It's just a hop and a skip to track the sewer to source. Where does the ownership of my sewer change to Council? Could the inspectors track each outlet? Are there rules in that space? Drug usage by suburb? Street?

They're literally taking the piss...
What percentage traces of Viagra© and other prescription drugs and hormones were also present?
Will no one think of the fish!?
The bottom-feeders?
The nibblers and bloaters...
now become shoal-gazers!

What percentage traces of Viagra© and other prescription drugs and hormones were also present?

They can only report what they test for ...

that subset has a total consumption of 16kg a week

Without knowing anything about how many people are using that, it's hard to figure out whether this is a lot or not very much at all. I expect mean use is a somewhat misleading statistic anyway, since it would be highly right skewed - the vast majority of users would hardly ever have it, and there would be a small hard core that use heaps.

Absolutely; from that figure, we can only extrapolate more generally to the population, not more specifically to any smaller subset of users.

(On which note: the catchment area for Moa Point includes not just the entire Wellington CBD, the universities, and the hospital, but also the south coast from Island Bay eastwards; so it really is a stretch to conclude anything about cocaine use in Miramar from that. Might as well say it's all those bankers, as shown by the contamination levels of banknotes! )

the catchment area for Moa Point includes not just the entire Wellington CBD, the universities, and the hospital, but also the south coast from Island Bay eastwards

I believe it’s the whole city except Karori and the far northern suburbs, which I think is also what that map shows (and also this one from the council). I grew up not far from the line where it starts going to Porirua instead and there was once a school visit to see it.

Do some tests, crunch some numbers, out pops a result ...

Assuming:
4 million population.
200 kg wastewater generated per person per day (1 litre = 1 kg for water).
20 kg meth toxin in the national weekly wastewater (scaling 80% to 100% of population).

We then have 0.000005 kg meth toxin per kiwi per week.
Or 0.005 grammes per kiwi per week.
Very different impression from presenting the same result in a different format.

On the other hand, what about the shocking 5.6 billion kg wastewater generated nationally per week = about 300 billion kg per year.
That's a lot of shit to sift through to find 20 kg!!!

And all absolutely meaningless without robust error analysis data and credible control study. Have these been presented?

full of clever cookies.

There's always been a 'home-bake' problem...
;- )

Reminds me, what's the status of therapeutic MDMA as an option for treatment of trauma? I seem to recall clinical trials on the subject. If it yielded positive results, I think therapuetic MDMA is the next destigmatisation cause for drug policy activists.

Reminds me, what’s the status of therapeutic MDMA as an option for treatment of trauma? I seem to recall clinical trials on the subject.

In New Zealand? Researchers at Auckland and Otago Universities announced they would be expanding a study of the use of MDMA to treat tinnitus a couple of years ago, but I'm not sure where they're at now.

The interesting thing is that the idea came from patients – clubbers who told Audiology staff that their tinnitus symptoms eased when they were on one.

MDMA's just asking to be reclassified. It can be handled safely with proper harm minimisation and risk reduction.

Steve Crawford
Yes. It had an astronomically bad smell. :-)