‘Biggest day ever’ for drug testing at NZ music festival

Know Your Stuff offers free safety checks on recreational drugs at festivals and concerts around New Zealand.

• The NZ Drug Foundation had its biggest drug-checking day ever on the first day of Rhythm and Vines.
• Drug safety-checking organisations have worked legally at New Zealand festivals since 2021.
• About 4% of Kiwis say they have tried MDMA recently.

The New Zealand Drug Foundation had its “biggest day ever” for safety checking recreational drugs at a festival at the end of 2024.

A spokesperson said the drug-checking team at Rhythm and Vines in Gisborne had its busiest day on record on Sunday, the first day of the festival.

“Our first day of drug checking at the festival was really successful and very busy.”

They said the following days were also busy and the team was stretched with the workload.

Drug testing checks for counterfeit drugs and any hidden or dangerous substances

“We are seeing fewer synthetic cathinones misrepresented as MDMA than previous years,” the spokesman said.

Drug-checking organisations have legally worked at festivals in New Zealand since 2021.

Drug testing organisation Know Your Stuff is expecting to test more than 2000 drug samples this summer, which it says is a similar figure to the last festival circuit.

Rhythm and Vines festival goers enjoyed lovely beach conditions at Wainui on the first day of the Festival, which was also the biggest day ever for drug testing by the NZ Drug Foundation. Photo / Murray Robertson

This year, Know Your Stuff is at AUM Festival in Auckland, Northern Base near Kaiwaka, and Twisted Frequency in Golden Bay.

“We have about 20 staff and 400 volunteers supporting our operations,” said Know Your Stuff NZ general manager Casey Spearin.

Last summer, Know Your Stuff found the high-risk drug Alpha D2PV at two of the three new year’s festivals it attended, and the drug continued to be found in New Zealand through the summer until February.

Alpha D2PV is a synthetic cathinone, also known as bath salts, which has been incorrectly sold as MDMA and has caused hospitalisations in Aotearoa and overseas.

Spearin told RNZ that seven upcoming festivals where it had tested drugs in the past had not booked the service this year.

“A lot of festivals are being forced to make tough calls on their budget priorities in order to stay afloat this year,” she said.

Know Your Stuff NZ founder Wendy Allison (right) at one of its testing stations at a festival in past years.

“Most events see drug checking as a health and safety priority and build it into their fixed costs to run an event, others choose not to prioritise it.”

Most drug tests only need a pile of the substance the size of a matchhead to be tested.

Know Your Stuff NZ uses either one or two tests to find out what a substance has in it: a Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) infrared spectrometer test, and/or a reagent test.

Once tested, the organisers and volunteers will give users harm reduction advice about what they’ve found in the substance.

For information on drug testing locations in New Zealand this summer, click here.

Jaime Lyth is a multimedia journalist for the New Zealand Herald, focusing on crime and breaking news. Lyth began working under the NZ Herald masthead in 2021 as a reporter for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei.