Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: Fentanyl: it's here

Craig Young

Sat, 24 Mar 2018 10:07:43 +1300

Helen Clark supports festival drug assays and supervised injecting rooms: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12017963

tatjna

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 06:45:24 +1300

I think there is an argument for the value of access to lower risk drugs as a potential means of directing people away from higher risk ones. However, there will always be those who seek out the higher risk ones, and in my view that use is much less likely…

Neil

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 00:43:20 +1300

What you have quoted doesn’t indicate Tim Harding having any direct experience of acute meth withdrawal.

I’ve seen it and it’s essentially quite a few days of living hell. If you’re lucky that hell might get replaced by the somewhat lesser hell of acuphase. Anyone contemplating doing meth might want…

Neil

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 20:12:47 +1300

Well yes, but I’ll bet they also get the decks clear when someone shows up having any other psychotic episode, that’s part of any other illness. Tim Harding, CEO of Care NZ says methamphetamine addicts are relatively easy to manage. They generally sleep in off.

By clear the decks I…

tatjna

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 10:30:11 +1300

As you are suggesting long prison time as a 'solution' to an alleged problem with methamphetamine, it would be good if you could demonstrate how harsher punishments for supply of methamphetamine has reduced the harm associated with the drug in other countries.

It would also be good if you could…

Rich Lock

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 10:27:06 +1300

Things used to be a lot simpler, put it that way.

Yeah, about the only thing my peer group had to worry about was being sold cheap and nasty speed masquerading as Ecstacy.

Obviosly, it was a bit more complicated than that, but we didn't generally have to worry about…

Neil

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 10:20:10 +1300

KnowYourStuffNZ would like nothing better than to be put out of business by a better system, one that includes legal purchase, quality control, and labelling, and doesn’t pretend that prohibition had ever worked.

But not all drugs have the same minimal harm. People working in acute health settings do fear…

tatjna

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 06:45:24 +1300

Amphetamine use in NZ has been stable for about 8 years. It is a moral panic, and part of the reason for that is that the marginalisation of methamphetamine and its users means that problematic meth use is now centred in poor communities – and we all know that everything…

Neil

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 00:04:27 +1300

It’s a sad irony that just as the harm reduction approach is about to gain critical mass a new set of drugs comes along to complicate things.

Harm reduction was based on the fact that drugs in themselves were essentially harmless – at least for all except a very small…

tatjna

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 22:32:55 +1300

The illicit drug market is global. Economics + distance would be my guess. But it is just a guess.

Trevor Nicholls

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 21:26:50 +1300

This may be a dumb question, but what's the incentive for suppliers to insert fentanyl into their "products"? Given how lethal it is the risk of killing their market is so high that I'm wondering where the benefit is.

tatjna

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 19:51:58 +1300

Thanks Steven, the needle exchange model is the one most apt to apply to what we’re doing. They also began with ‘ethical non- compliance’ that produced evidence which demonstated its value.

Hopefully it won’t take the government 20 years to catch up this time.

Jez Weston

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 13:59:56 +1300

(Hi, I did the testing as a volunteer with KnowYourStuffNZ, lead by Wendy Allison. I've a day job, so I'll answer now on my lunchbreak and can answer further questions this evening.)

Steven's question about teenagers is a common one. I don't think that drug culture is terribly different now…

tatjna

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 13:59:04 +1300

Hi Steven, Wendy Allison from KnowYourStuffNZ here. While we try to stay involved in discussions where we can, we are all volunteers and have full time jobs, and as you can imagine today has been quite busy for us already. If you have any questions, please fire away but we…

Ray Gilbert

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 09:54:18 +1300

One of my favourite "quirks" of the current legislation is the rating of fentanyl and its analogues. Heroin is Class A, fentanyl which is 100 times as potent is Class B and carfentanyl which is 50 times as potent as fentanyl and 5000 times as potent as heroin is Class…

Russell Brown

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 09:50:24 +1300

This whole millennia drug culture concerns me. I am responsible for guidance and wisdom toward millennial teenager.

Things used to be a lot simpler, put it that way.

Russell Brown

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 09:45:16 +1300

If the problem is adulterated MDMA

Not generally adulterated – usually just a completely different substance than it was sold as.

But Know Your Stuff has been detecting what appear to be deliberately deceptive mixtures intended to confound tests.

These will fool the reagent test kits people can buy –…

Craig Young

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 09:41:40 +1300

At least MDMA proper may have psychotherapeutic benefits for trauma relief if certain clinical trials pan out overseas, but we do need to rationalise our MOD Act when it comes to harm reduction, harm magnitude and severity and risk minimisation. If the problem is adulterated MDMA, and the aforementioned clinical…

Russell Brown

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 09:02:16 +1300

Know Your Stuff’s Jez Weston has just tweeted this explanation of why the result is being announced now, rather than at the time of detection:

I did the Fentanyl testing at a festival a while ago, but we had to wait to publish to hide which festival it was. This…

Public Address

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 09:02:15 +1300

Discussion from blog post.