We’ve already witnessed a legal, ‘offramp’ drug become a dangerous fixation for young people in this country. An anonymous industry insider reflects on her time within the BZP scene, and explains why she’s getting flashbacks.

Consuming all the media coverage about vaping ahead of the election, I can’t ignore a persistent sense of deja vu.

I’m struck by the similarities between the vaping problem and Aotearoa’s experience with legal party pills in the early 2010s. Just like with vaping, party pills were touted as a harm-reducing option compared to dangerous drugs on the scene at the time (namely methamphetamine), but they ended up taking on a life of their own, with rangatahi bearing the brunt of the harm. I should know: I was closely involved in the party pill industry, and saw first hand how these “legal highs” got out of control. 

Cast your mind back to 2008. The P epidemic was taking lives with alarming regularity, and destroying thousands more. Because methamphetamine is a Class A drug and users risked arrest for possessing it, they were dissuaded from seeking help for problems with the drug. Communities were being ravaged by meth and policy makers had their heads in the sand about the issue. 

This was the impetus for the party pill movement, figure-headed by an eccentric musician with a unique magnetism and influence before the God complex completely took over (I’ll call him “M”). Recreational drugs like benzylpiperazine (BZP) were seen as an offramp to drugs like meth and ecstasy; a legal alternative to the dangerous and unregulated substances riddling the nation. Scientists and academics like Keith Bedford, John Kerr and Bruce Cohen were leading conversations about drug harm, and people like M sincerely believed party pills could be part of the solution. 

2008 was also the year I met my ex-husband, who I’ll call “J”. He was involved in the party pill scene from the very beginning, working with all the major manufacturers. He drew the molecular structure of novel compounds for getting high, which were then made in China and imported back into Aotearoa. At the time, I was studying for a postgraduate diploma in international business, and I became fascinated by the potential for the party pill industry to kick off social change. A lecturer encouraged me to use party pills as a case study for a group project. 

So there I was: standing at the front of a lecture hall, flanked by my group members, opening a presentation about party pills to a large audience that included my lecturers, the self-proclaimed king of party pills, and his right-hand man, who was now my boyfriend. I looked up at the audience and thought, “Holy shit, am I really about to talk about what is essentially a massive legal drug ring?”

More and more people became convinced by the theory that party pill drugs were an agent for positive social change. BZP dominated parties, events and venues across the country, smoothly aided by its legal status. Party pills exploded in popularity, and soon they were being sold over the counter at dairies. 

I know BZP helped some people who would otherwise never have got off meth, but because party pills had a rosy reputation as the legal, harm-reducing option, a channel of unexpected harm was opened: a whole new generation started using BZP, some of whom might never have tried meth in the first place. Suddenly this drug was looking a lot less like an offramp, and more like an onramp.

I watched with horror from within the industry as party pill manufacturers became more and more reckless. They made stronger products with more additives and put profits over people’s health again and again. It was a race to the bottom, too: if one manufacturer acted responsibly, the next cowboy would undercut them and dominate the market. Synthetic cannabis came on the scene, and things turned ugly fast. 

As the regulations around “legal highs” got tighter, manufacturers of party pills entered a game of whac-a-mole with the Ministry of Health: each time a compound was banned, industry insiders would create a new one. I watched this process happen in real time: as soon as the ministry banned a compound, J would draw up another molecular structure and send it off to China. It would return to New Zealand in powder form, and some guys in the factories here would smoke it off tin foil to see if it got them high with no immediate negative consequences. It that worked, they tinkered with the dosage, added flavouring, and poured it into vats to be mixed with dried plant products. Then it would be packaged up and sent to market. 

I sincerely believe people like J tried to make the following point to the ministry: this whac-a-mole process is self-evidently absurd, so let’s pursue the obvious alternative, which is major drug-law reform, starting with the decriminalisation of drugs like cannabis. But what actually ended up happening is that a bunch of dangerously experimental drugs were rushed to market, and ended up in the hands of young people. 

Which brings me to vaping. Just like party pills, vaporisers were touted as an offramp to a more dangerous alternative: cigarettes. Just like party pills, they’ve become trendy among people who might never have been cigarette smokers; widely adopted by rangatahi as the new “cool thing”. Just like with party pills, there is little to no quality control over additives, and little understanding of the long-term health effects. And just like with party pills, regulators and policy makers are dangerously slow to respond, tinkering around the edges of a swirling vortex of harm. 

Kerr, who wrote his masters’ thesis on the history of BZP, told The Spinoff last year that, despite any good intentions about party pills being an offramp drug, it’s clear now they had an onramp effect. “A lot of people who didn’t consider themselves drug users were taking BZP,” he said. “Most users of BZP probably weren’t meth users.” 

Sound familiar?