The ill-effects of party pills

MP Jacqui Dean (right) opposes the legal sale of party pills. Photo / Wanganui Chronicle

Six years after the first BZP-based party pills drifted on to the local market, they are an entrenched part of youth culture. Legal for sale to over-18s, they are popular with kids as young as 12. They use them to have a good time, stay awake all night - and hook into something excitingly, deliciously dodgy.

Because they are legal and therefore sanctioned by the state, parents, worried about children who lie around like zombies after a party staring gloomily at their cellphones, are mystified. Why are they so shattered after taking apparently healthy pills?

A 20-year-old musician who tried the pills before he graduated to Ecstasy at around 19 says they are, in fact, learner-style drugs.

"Of course they are. They're mimicking something better," he says. "They're cheaper and they're nastier, but they give teenagers a taste for feeling a bit high, doing something a bit daring. And the pills work. You get talky, hyped up and feel in a really good mood."

But, says Jayde, a young dental assistant, the comedown was so terrible she will never take party pills again. Which did not stop her and her friends from spending entire weekends on them when they were between 16 and 18.

"One time, over New Year's, I was awake for about five days on end. My girlfriend and I lost about 9kg each which we thought was wonderful at the time. That's the thing, you lose all will to eat and the hangovers are horrific and make you dreadfully nauseous. We got so dehydrated. I hate to think what it did to our bodies."

By their 20s some party pill users have learned sense. Others have moved on to harder drugs - usually Ecstasy, Meth or P. They cost more - E is at least $50 a pill - but the upside is better as well, says the musician. "And the comedown is much less drastic."

The serious problem, says Otago MP Jacqui Dean, is that party pills, formulated to mimic the psychoactive effects of ecstasy, are normalising the face of a drug culture. "Any level of public legitimacy is giving young people the message that psychoactive drugs are acceptable."

They have also drastically lowered the barrier to young people taking mind-altering drugs. As the latest research on lowering the drinking age suggests, legalise to 18 and the actual age of people taking substances drops to as young as 12.

But, say the businesspeople behind them, there have been no deaths linked to party pills. Manufacturers claim that while 20 million pills, with names like Legal X, Speed E and Wizzers, have been consumed in New Zealand, no significant harm has been done.

Not so fast, cautions Professor David Fergusson, who heads the Christchurch Health and Development Study which has studied 1265 children since 1977, "experts thought cannabis was safe too".