A law change this year means the Ministry of Health can now provide on-the-spot testing of illegal substances at venues across NZ. A number of providers are being trained in the use of reagents and field equipment to prevent harm from illegal drugs. Video / NZ Herald
Drug testing organisations have seen a dramatic drop in the prevalence of eutylone - a synthetic drug often referred to as "bath salts" and sold as MDMA.
It comes as festival-goers spend their first summer under a law change which allows drug testing services to legallyoperate.
Know Your Stuff managing director Wendy Allison told RNZ the drug testing service had found a dramatically smaller amount of eutylone in the supply of MDMA.
"Last summer, we saw in the end 25 per cent of the samples brought to us as MDMA turned out to be eutylone and at some events it was up to 50 per cent.
"This year we're looking at around 10 per cent so one in 10 is the chance of MDMA being eutylone," Allison said.
She said the service did not identify any new cathinones of great concern in the recreational drug supply over the summer season.
Earlier this year law changes were made to allow drug testing services like Know Your Stuff to legally operate at music festivals. Allison said the law change had enabled the service to collaborate, expand and increase testing capacity.
"What the law change has done has allowed us to expand and has also allowed other organisations to move into this space, which means the service is more available and that has increased the amount of testing that we're doing.
"The other thing that I think is really cool is it has allowed us to openly collaborate with other organisations such as St John and event management to make sure a network of information sharing is going on."
Allison said if Know Your Stuff volunteers identify a dangerous substance circulating at an event they can now quickly provide advice to medics and event management.
Last year, the service raised enough funds to purchase two additional spectrometers, which are used to identify different chemicals, but Allison said they are still unequipped to cope with the massive demand from events over summer.
Several pills of MDMA. Photo / 123RF
"We only have access to five [spectrometers] and that number of spectrometers is what is now limiting our capacity to attend events especially at busy times like New Year's where there's eight or nine events at once - we just can't get to all of them."
Despite a lack of equipment, she said the volunteer-run service was still in for a busy period over the rest of summer.
"There is this odd perception that New Year's is the start and end of the festival season and it really isn't, we've got more work in front of us than behind us at the moment."
Allison said the service would have its work cut out this year as some large-scale festivals such as Rhythm and Vines had been postponed until Easter.
