Experts warn of Omicron boom, focus again turns on MIQ and a tragic plane crash in Brisbane in the latest NZ Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald
Ecstasy pills pressed with Jacinda Ardern's name and a crude caricatured imprint of the Prime Minister's face are being sold on New Zealand's underground drugs market.
The pink pills of Class-B methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) are being sold for around $30-$40 each, the Herald understands.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's office referred media enquiries to police. Photo / Mark Mitchell
They are imprinted with the words "Jacinda Ardern".
The illicit pills have surfaced ahead of New Zealand's summer festival season.
Just before last New Year's Eve celebrations, Know Your Stuff, which for six years has had volunteers at summer festivals checking drugs for high-risk substances or dangerous impurities, warned of an "incredibly dangerous" substitute that was turning up.
They reported increasing incidents of what people thought would be pure MDMA either turning out to be just cathinones or only just enough MDMA to "spoof" the tests.
Synthetic cathinones, also known colloquially as "bath salts", have a similar euphoric onset to MDMA but wear off faster, leading people to redose, running into trouble.
However other effects are more potent and can lead to anxiety, paranoia, gastric distress, seizures or respiratory failure.
Mephedrone, a common cathinone found here, has been linked to a number of deaths in the United Kingdom and Europe.
The finding came after toxic industrial chemical methylenedianiline was found last December being sold in place of MDMA in Auckland.