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You may recall me worrying in recent months about this summer's festival season. Well, it's happening: at some events more than half the "MDMA" samples presented for testing have been something far more dangerous: eutylone. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/i-was-too-scared-to-move-alarming-reports-of-drug-reactions-at-new-year-festivals/ZWXLQT6KE27HBYGFRJL23KHB4Q/
As my story for the Herald notes, there have been hundreds of distressing reactions reported – typically anxiety, paranoia and days without sleep, but also seizures and mental health events. These aren't necessarily being seen by onsite medics but may manifest hours, days later.
Happily, there have also been bullets dodged. It seems quite a few people heard the warnings from @KnowYourStuffNZ and either tested their stuff or declined to take something they couldn't test.
Why is this happening? The best guess is that Covid has disrupted supply lines. Real MDMA typically doesn't come in in the same way as cathinones masquerading as MDMA, which are illegal here but can likely be purchased from Chinese factories.
Why so much eutylone? Maybe a load got through, or there was a local stockpile already. It's *possible* it's locally manufactured – chemical precursors are likely easier to source than those for MDMA. Whichever way, there's a *lot* of it and it's bad.
There are several good explainers about cathinones and advice on testing at the @KnowYourStuffNZ website. This is the knowledge the Police are working with too. https://knowyourstuff.nz/blog/
So it was a good time to formally legalise testing, which means that data gathered in the field is available to the whole system. But the government is going to need to make decisions on how this is funded. KYS volunteers are brilliant, but three spectrometers ain't enough.
