The beginning of sensible drug policy?
Matt Bowden, Stargate Founder & Chair of the Social Tonics Association of New Zealand (STANZ)

I’m a fairly optimistic guy, but if 18 months ago somebody had told me that I would end up working with Government to come up with an evidence-based drug policy based on genuine harm minimisation, I simply wouldn’t have believed them.

If that person had told me that Jim Anderton would be the Minister leading the development of this policy, and that this policy would be supported and enhanced by Green MP Nandor Tanczos, I would have probably been in hysterics.

Yet, believe it or not, this is exactly what has been happening over the last 18 months, culminating in Parliament passing the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill Number Three.

New Zealanders all know that Minister Jim Anderton has a hard line prohibitionist stance when it comes to drugs and alcohol, having campaigned on tough drugs policies, so we knew we weren’t going in to chat to “soft on drugs” regime.

However, over the past 18 months, there has been something of a mini revolution in the way drug policy is developed and implemented following worldwide trends towards harm minimisation. Those affected by drug laws should hope that it sets a precedent for more of the same. I am really hopeful that it will.

Faced with an increasing consumer demand for BZP-based party pills, which were unregulated and available to anybody with the money to buy them, Government looked at its options in terms of controlling these products.

Stargate took the initiative to set up an industry body, the “Social Tonics Association of New Zealand” to collectively represent responsible members of the party pill industry and, right from the start, began advocating and lobbying for a harm minimisation approach to this issue from Government in New Zealand to set precedent for international drug policy.

New Zealand’s National Drug Policy (NDP) is a little known document which seeks to reduce drug related harm in three ways – supply reduction, demand reduction and treatment provision. The NDP invites public and industry groups to come forward with their own demand reduction solutions, and this is precisely what STANZ and the many users of party pills did.

In meetings with Minister Anderton and Government officials, through regular correspondence, and through feedback from the dance community, the case was made for a legally regulated and controlled supply of high-quality party pill products, rather than a ban as has been the case in the US.

We made the case that BZP-based products were safer, non-addictive alternatives to dangerous illegal drugs like P (New Zealand’s problematic smokable crystal methamphetamine) and were playing an important role in reducing demand for dangerous drugs.

The argument was made that the availability of these products was minimising drug-related harm and that regulation was required to ensure the products were only available to adults and that high quality standards were met in their manufacture and labeling.

We made the case that banning the products would simply force them underground into the hands of gangs, where there would be no quality control and where buyers would be forced into contact with the dangers of organised crime.

Sound familiar?

We are aware that these arguments have been made many times before in relation to other social tonics, but we were surprised and impressed with the Government’s approach to this issue, and the response to our arguments from Jim Anderton.

Right from the start he told us that he would make decisions based on the best evidence, and this is exactly what he did.

New Zealand’s Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs (EACD) investigated BZP and found there were no grounds upon which to ban it. Rather, it noted that a ban on BZP-based products could lead to a swing back to the use of dangerous and addictive drugs.

With agreement in principle from the experts, STANZ drafted a code of practice based on the principles of harm reduction and invited public submissions – many of which came from the dance community and the alcohol and drug treatment sector. We then presented these submissions to Government.

New legislation was drafted around our regulatory recommendations and BZP was afforded unique status within a specially created fourth schedule to the Misuse of Drugs Act.

Throughout this process I was very aware of the many years of hard work in drug law reform that had gone before, both here and internationally. It was apparent to me in my dealings with many Government officials that they favoured this approach for cannabis and other soft drugs as well.

As I see it, our mission was to propose a regulatory framework which could be used to provide measures other than prohibition for substances which were less dangerous than those already available, such as alcohol, tobacco and hard drugs.

Politicians only lead into new territory if they feel that the voters are with them. We had to launch a concentrated public information and awareness campaign to sway public opinion to pave the way for this progress.

For us this meant learning how to utilise mainstream media for a de-stigmatisation campaign to highlight our solution and to try and temper the media’s predisposition towards hysterical misrepresentation. We used professionals to assist us in putting together a strategy and then presenting our case – both to Government and the public - in the most professional, credible and persuasive way.

We now have a brand-new approach to drug issues in New Zealand which works. Consumers have the safer, non-addictive alternatives to illegal drugs that they want, there are standards around their sale and manufacture to protect people’s health and the gangs are kept away from these products because they fall within the law.

I know New Zealand has a long way to go before we have an across the board, evidence-based drug policy that genuinely protects people from harm, but I believe we have taken a big step forward in the right direction, giving us platform from which we can begin to show other nation’s policy analysts that regulatory options other than prohibition truly represent safest practice in harm minimisation policy.

I hope everybody with an interest in drug policy and harm minimisation can take some learnings from this experience and the resulting decreases in public health risk and together move forward into a safer, freer world.

I would welcome your comment and feedback.
Contact: matt@stargate.org.nz