The government has announced that it is legalising pill testing services and it is about time. It should have been done last year. In fact, it should have been done the year before that and the year before that.
[…] Andrew Little announced on Tuesday that time-limited legislation will give legal certainty to organisations such as Know Your Stuff, which have operated in a legal grey area until now.
“This law change today provides these services with narrow and time-limited protection this summer against prosecution for short-term possession of illegal drugs while they test them,” said the Health Minister.
Drug testing services operate by taking a small amount of whatever substance the person wants to use, and testing it for impurities. The drugs handed over for testing are not returned to the person who bought them.
[…]The new Bill means appointed services will be able to receive controlled drugs and unapproved psychoactive substances for testing or destruction, or to pass on to police for destruction or an approved laboratory for further testing.
Little says often people who have their drugs tested and find they are not as pure as they thought will choose not to take them.
Most will choose not to take them.
[…]He says in the new year the law changes will be developed and regulations around them will be consulted so that by December 2021 a full legal system is in place.
The urgent law change is being celebrated by the Green Party, with drug reform spokesperson Chloe Swarbrick saying they have long called for a change to the law.
“We know recreational drug use at festivals is going to happen no matter how hardcore the approach,” she said on Tuesday.
As shown by what happened in NSW when they tried the heavy-handed approach.
“By legalising drug-checking services, festival-goers will be able to check substances and dispose safely of them. It also means festival organisers and service providers like Know your Stuff will no longer be putting themselves at legal risk for providing these lifesaving services.”
Legalising drug testing is also supported by the ACT Party. Its health spokesperson Brooke van Velden says the previous law meant people were likely to take substances with less information about origin, toxicity or purity.
It’s supported by just about every single political party except National. Even the Young Nats support it.
“It’s a fact that many people choose to take pills at concerts and festivals, and no one wants to be the loved one of a tragic fatality that could have been avoided.”
newshub.co.nz
The reasons why allowing pill testing is the right thing to do has been well discussed. What has not been discussed is the real issue, and it’s not pill testing. To understand the real issue we need to look at the elephant in the room: 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, aka MDMA, aka the main ingredient in “Ecstasy”.
First a bit of background. Back in the 1970s, MDMA was given to patients by therapists as a legal substitute for the illegal drug MDA. MDMA soon proved itself to be the perfect drug for therapy as by suppressing the fear response part of the brain it allowed patients to deal with and process painful memories. In the early eighties, it hit the recreational market and got rebranded as “Ecstasy”. This got the attention of the DEA in the US, the media scaremongering began (including an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show falsely claiming MDMA caused “holes” in the brain). Soon it was all over. MDMA was banned in the US and then later banned by the World Health Organization.
Well, not quite all over. Therapeutic use of MDMA still continued but under the watch of the FDA, with it being studied as a treatment for PTSD and also for people with life threatening illnesses and for severe social anxiety for adults on the autism spectrum. As a side note the dose used in therapy is usually higher than a typical recreational dose. With regards to therapeutic use there have been no reports of serious adverse reactions
What has this all got to do with pill testing? If MDMA had not been banned we wouldn’t have pill testing services. There would be no NPSs (new psychoactive substances) and there would be no such thing as “party drugs” like “BZP” (all poor attempts at creating legal alternatives to MDMA).
Making MDMA illegal meant it was now effectively unregulated. Dealers could add whatever they wanted to Ecstasy pills, including little or no MDMA at all, drugs like PMA and methamphetamine etc. They could even compete with one another to see how much MDMA they could put into one pill, creating pills of dangerously high potency, which of course they did.
Which of course meant people, especially young people who are the main consumers, started needlessly dying. And so pill testing services started to allow people to test their pills for adulterants and potency, to prevent young people needlessly killing themselves.
And it worked. Far fewer people die at music festivals where there is pill testing than where there isn’t any, and the reason for this is that MDMA is not a dangerous drug. To really get the debate around pill testing this is the crucial point to understand. MDMA is not a ‘hard’ drug and is not a dangerous drug. Sure, at doses many times the standard recreational dose it can be lethal, but so can alcohol and over-the-counter pain killers. It can be dangerous when mixed with other drugs, especially alcohol, but so can other drugs including drugs that can be bought in supermarkets.
If MDMA were a dangerous drug then pill testing wouldn’t make a difference. People would still take MDMA and they would still die. And people taking MDMA in therapy would have severe adverse reactions and possibly even fatalities.
The reason why people die from taking MDMA is either ignorance (not knowing what they’re taking and how much) or the main reason which is sheer recklessness such as getting drunk and then dropping way too many pills.
Pill testing allows for a kind of ‘intervention’ with young people, often for the first time, being given information which often leads to them modifying their drug use (i.e. not being stupid).
Which brings me to one of the main ‘moral’ arguments against pill testing which is that pill testing means a young person is getting the message that their stash is okay, they’re good to go and have fun. Here’s the thing. Drug testing services cannot and will not tell anyone that they’re “good to go”. But if they did, the fact is they wouldn’t be lying. For someone taking a standard recreational dose of MDMA they will take it and they will enjoy it, especially if used socially, with no severe adverse effects apart from a bit of lethargy the next day. If a drug testing service was to say “don’t”, it’d be like telling someone don’t drink this six pack of beer because if you do you will kill yourself or someone else.
So, in summary, pill testing is a solution to a problem caused by taking a sledgehammer to a problem that didn’t actually even exist. If the government, by some miracle, understood this, there wouldn’t be a need for pill testing.
