HEALTH MINISTRY BLOCKS USE OF ONE4B

The Ministry of Health has stopped the distribution of a legal party
substance that doctors and police want banned. The potentially lethal
One4b has put comatosed users into hospital.

Director-General of Health Karen Poutasi issued a warning yesterday for
people not to take products like One4b that contain 1,4 butanediol, an
industrial solvent.

The United States Federal Drug Administration has warned that 1,4
butanediol can cause dangerously low respiratory rates, unconsciousness,
vomiting, seizures, and death.

Risks are increased when the chemical is mixed with alcohol or drugs
such as depressants.

The ministry is working closely with police, who were frustrated
yesterday at the rate at which new variants of party drugs were popping
up.

Police, and the doctors who treated two Auckland nightclubbers taken to
hospital unconscious at the weekend, wanted One4b banned before it
caused deaths. Detective Senior Sergeant Colin McMurtrie, head of
Auckland's drug squad, said One4b had appeared on the streets since the
ministry restricted its chemical cousin, Fantasy or GHB.

"It's a sad fact of life that every time we legislate against one thing,
they are going to find something else," he said.

"Chemistry being what it is you can find a variation of anything. That's
a problem we're always going to have. We'll continue to chase our tail
on these things and play catch-up - hopefully not because someone has
died."

One4b is marketed as a dietary supplement, but has close ties to GHB
(gamma-hydroxybutyrate), the drug made prescription-only following
overdoses last January. The 1,4 butanediol it contains turns to GHB in
the body.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine this month said 1,4
butanediol had similar health risks to GHB, including potentially fatal
toxic effects, addiction, and withdrawal. One4b is made in a Timaru
factory, but no adverse effects have been reported by Christchurch
users.

Outerspace, the distribution company run by Mark and Kate Barlow, said
it was safe and beneficial, if taken correctly.

The Barlows shun any responsibility for people overdosing on their
product.

"People do stupid things," said Mrs Barlow. "I believe it is people
taking it unwisely. Our responsibility comes in educating people."

Dr Keith Bedford, forensic programme manager of Auckland's Institute of
Environmental Science and Research, said claiming One4b to be a
nutritional supplement placed it outside legislation covering medicines.

"It seems to me that they are walking a bit of a tight-rope on that," he
said.

Dr Bedford said the listing of GHB was so specific under the Medicines
Act, and other regulations, that he believed it did not legally cover
related substances like One4b and GBL (gamma butyrolactone).