Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: This is bad – very bad

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  • Russell Brown,

    Vice has a story up quoting Ross Bell.

    Bell calls the New Zealand black market right now a “very, very dangerous place” and says drug users deserve all the information out there in order to make informed choices. “What you see when you give people factual information about what’s in the substances they’re about to consume [is that] they make really good decisions, and I think the same concept applies to whatever smokeable shit is out there at the moment.”

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • tatjna,

    Oh ffs when are the people with access to the technology to identify this stuff properly going to stop faffing about wringing their hands about ‘sending the wrong message’ and start testing, identifying and telling people what is out there?

    Customs, police, ESR, I’m looking at you. You all have the technology to do this, and the power to say “Actually saving lives is more important that moralising about what we do and don’t condone."

    Get on with it. We need an early warning system and we need it now.

    Wellington • Since Dec 2010 • 22 posts Report Reply

  • andin,

    moralising

    The No. 1 pastime for those who don't want to do anything.
    Plus they think it makes them look important and concerned without doing anything.
    A win/win in their echo chamber.

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Shaun Lott,

    It would seem altogether simpler and safer for people be able to grow their own actual cannabis, no?

    Waitakere • Since Aug 2009 • 113 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown, in reply to Shaun Lott,

    It would seem altogether simpler and safer for people be able to grow their own actual cannabis, no?

    It would, although we’re long past the point of these drugs really being used as a cannabis substitute. They’re much stronger and weirder than that.

    Someone who works with street people told me today he’d noticed that the people he had contact with have been much more wasted lately. This is a popular class of drugs for people living rough – they’re cheap and they take the day away. You see unconscious people on the street quite often in the inner city.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown, in reply to tatjna,

    Customs, police, ESR, I’m looking at you. You all have the technology to do this, and the power to say “Actually saving lives is more important that moralising about what we do and don’t condone.”

    They absolutely do. I've talked to ESR scientists about it. Even if they don't have a reference profile – and in this crazy market that's not necessarily uncommon – they can make an educated guess as to whether it's a cannibimimetic or something else.

    And yet we're hearing today that St John's, dealing with 20 cases a day, don't know much more than you and I do. It's just not acceptable.

    Listening to the St John's guy on the radio just now, the most acute cases don't sound so much like an opioid overdose, but fentanyl could still be in the mix. Who fucking knows?

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Mikaere Curtis, in reply to Russell Brown,

    It would, although we’re long past the point of these drugs really being used as a cannabis substitute. They’re much stronger and weirder than that.

    I'm not so sure, do we have any research around this ? Getting wasted when your life is pretty tough is a time-honoured response to unmitigatably adversity. My sense of Occam's Razor is that people use what they can get, and if it's some green vegetable matter sprayed with God-knows-what, then that's what they'll get wasted on.

    IMO, we could drastically reduce substance abuse issues overnight by a) legalising marijuana and b) legalising MDMA.

    Alcohol-related violence, synthetic cannabis toxic overdoses and P-related violence would (over time, once the existing addicts have treated) would evaporate until only the minuscule hard core users remain.

    I have young-adult aged kids, and the prospect of them making an ill informed choice around something like synthetic cannabis with potentially fatal results is basically fucking terrifying !

    Tamaki Makaurau • Since Nov 2006 • 528 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    I wrote two years ago about this.

    The reports from ESR fly in the face of a recent assurance from Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne that police had told him there was only a “comparatively small” underground market, trading in products stockpiled from the old legal regime.

    ESR’s results say different.

    “There are significantly more,” ESR forensic analyst Hannah Partington told me. “And it’s not consistent, they change.”

    “It’s new ones,” confirmed senior forensic scientist Jenny Sibley. “We had a very new one last week. It was in our data library, so we could identify that way. But we could not find any published data in scientific published papers. It takes ages for them to catch up.”

    Both agreed that the large Customs seizure of JWH 018, one of the original “legal highs”, banned by the minister in November 2012, was an exception. Recent samples almost all contained cannabinomimetics never listed by the ministry.

    It caused an internal shitstorm and I think I got the scientists in trouble, for telling the truth.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • andin, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,

    Getting wasted when your life is pretty tough is a time-honoured response to unmitigable adversity.

    And time and time again a platform for those who like to...the M word.

    I think I got the scientists in trouble

    Did they end up on the streets doing that " time-honoured response"?

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    A useful new Science Media Centre backgrounder, with comments from Dr Paul Quigley.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,

    I’m not so sure, do we have any research around this ?

    These chemicals are full agonists for the THC receptor and at that level something completely different starts going on. Extreme and unpredictable reactions, rapidly-developing dependence.

    Because of the way it played out, the least harmful ones, first on the market, were banned early on. During the big media furore around the Psychoactive Substances Act, I recall seeing an interview with some girls in a regional town, high as kites, saying that plain old weed wasn't going to do any more and they didn't want it.

    A regulated cannabis market might have stopped this situation ever arising, of course. But the effects you see in users now are not those of cannabis. This is different.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Neil,

    It’s more likely to be something like fly spray than fentanyl.

    But what ever it is it is as you say a different hit to weed and some prefer it.

    Since Nov 2016 • 382 posts Report Reply

  • andin, in reply to Neil,

    I dont think "prefer" is the right descriptor.

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Neil, in reply to andin,

    I'm not suggesting it's an informed choice, there's people out their creating stuff that draws people in.

    Since Nov 2016 • 382 posts Report Reply

  • tatjna,

    None of the testing methods available to the general public can reliably detect synthetic cannabinoids. FTIR is unlikely to be able to detect Fentanyl either. It's also unlikely NMR could. For this, we need GC-MS.

    I think 7 deaths is enough to warrant demanding this be addressed - people need to know what this is, and a means of submitting samples for identification.

    The thing that bothers me is that it sounds like maybe the people dying are not from groups that get prioritised highly, and all the warnings we put out may not reach those people effectively.

    Meanwhile, possibly not relevant to this but still worth putting out there: Dancesafe now has Fentanyl testing strips available. They recommend that for plant matter, the material is soaked in water and then the water tested.

    https://dancesafe.org/product/fentanyl-test-strips-pack-of-10/

    Wellington • Since Dec 2010 • 22 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown, in reply to tatjna,

    Meanwhile, possibly not relevant to this but still worth putting out there: Dancesafe now has Fentanyl testing strips available.

    Someone told me earlier that the only purported drug fentanyl hasn't show up in in Canada is actual cannabis. I'm glad there's some sort of test if it happens here.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    From a Facebook friend earlier:

    I rang a ambulance for a homeless dude on Queen St the other day. He was so out of it - it was frightening. He came round where he could walk after about 15 mins and I cancelled the ambulance but he couldn't understand anything I was saying to him. He wandered off with his mates but I've never seen anything like it and I lived through the crack and China cat years in NYC.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel,

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel, in reply to Russell Brown,

    These chemicals are full agonists for the THC receptor

    The agonists and the ecstasy...
    - I just assume the bad reactions are 'merely' parts of the sufferer's brain or body dying.

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha, in reply to Ian Dalziel,

    religious upbringing by any chance?

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • nzlemming, in reply to Sacha,

    religious upbringing by any chance?

    Didn't we all?

    Waikanae • Since Nov 2006 • 2937 posts Report Reply

  • nzlemming, in reply to Sacha,

    religious upbringing by any chance?

    Or film buff

    Waikanae • Since Nov 2006 • 2937 posts Report Reply

  • TracyMac,

    A quick note on one of my pet peeves: can we please stop with the "50 times stronger than opium" meme?

    Maybe by mass, yes, but no-one takes 5-10mgs of fentanyl - it's in the microgram range of dosage.

    Typical oral doses are around the same as a shot of heroin, or maybe twice as strong. Is it that cool that people can simply swallow the equivalent of a heroin dose or two in one tablet - not if they're handed around like lollies.

    It's definitely not cool it might be sprayed onto some smoking medium in an unknown dosage. But it's not wildly different to any other opiate in terms of effect, as those "x stronger than $opiate [by mass]" comparisons imply.

    What IS different is its cheapness (ingredients and process are cheap; low mass for a therapeutic dose means cheap shipping), its relative availability, and the low bar to its consumption - no needles or glass pipes required.

    Canberra, West Island • Since Nov 2006 • 701 posts Report Reply

  • Caleb D'Anvers,

    There are similar issues at the moment in the UK, with some unsurprising parallels:

    Police in Manchester battling an epidemic of the use of spice attended nearly 60 incidents related to the drug in the city centre in one weekend….

    […]

    Phil Spurgeon, a city centre inspector with Greater Manchester police, questioned the wisdom of the ban on the drug. “Spice has been around for the past two or three years in different guises,” he said. “I’m not being judgmental about the legislation, but the reality with the Psychoactive Substances Act is that it has shifted supply on to the streets.

    “The product was probably more consistent in the head shops. Now it’s more varied, the makeup is constantly changing. That’s why we’re seeing people collapsing, as the drug becomes more potent.”

    Frances Perraudin, Manchester police attend 58 spice-linked incidents in one weekend, Guardian
    (10 April 2017).

    Of course, one of the basic commonalities is hopelessness.

    London SE16 • Since Mar 2008 • 482 posts Report Reply

  • WH,

    So legalising potentially dangerous and addictive substances might reduce some harm but sweep some of it under the carpet.

    Recreational drug users sometimes leave the impression that they don't really care whether reform results in an increase in suffering or not.

    US CDC figures state that 500,000 people have died using prescription painkillers, opioids and heroin over the last fifteen years. Facilitating the use of such substances is not going to reduce harm.

    To be completely clear, the act of supplying addictive drugs to new users is unspeakably evil. What sort of lowlife sells an addictive poison to the homeless?

    religious upbringing by any chance?

    Growing up I knew a Wiccan who claimed to have a spirit guide that kept her safe. She starting experimenting with drugs, dropped out of school and turned to stripping and then prostitution to pay for heroin.

    She became addicted and died of an overdose.

    Since Nov 2006 • 797 posts Report Reply

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