A BITTER PILL

The committee set up to advise on the appropriate legal status for
the amphetamine-like substance BZP and other such drugs used in party
pills has recommended that it join cannabis and the like as a class C
drug, says The Press in an editorial.

This would make it illegal to sell, buy or possess the drug, with
jail terms of up to eight years for importing, making or supplying it
and up to three months jail and a $500 fine for possessing it. The
Associate Minister of Health, Jim Anderton, who set up the committee,
says he will consider the advice and decide what to do over the next
three months.

The question he should consider is not whether there are some good
reasons for banning the substance. As the committee shows, there are.
It is whether the benefits of banning it would outweigh the
drawbacks. Banning it would be sure to reduce the supply of the drug
and probably some of the demand for it, but that would be outweighed
by other less desirable effects.

The committee considered the matter as a health problem. The
well-known occasional side-effects of the use of party pills
containing BZP - insomnia, headaches, nausea and vomiting - are
relatively minor, and may be a result of drinking alcohol with them,
but the main concern is that the long-term effects of their use are
not known. Although there is no recorded case of anyone dying
anywhere in the world solely from using party pills, the effect on
the brain of heavy and prolonged use is entirely unknown. Australia
and the United States, among other countries, banned BZP because of
the possible health risks.

Those bans were imposed before party pills had got a grip. In New
Zealand, party-pill use has exploded and the bureaucracy has been
caught flat-footed by it. As the committee notes, BZP is widely
available and actively marketed. About 20 per cent of the population
aged 13 to 45 admit to having used party pills containing BZP,
including nearly half of males aged 20 to 24. New Zealand is now
considered to be the world centre for party-pill manufacture. The
suggestion of a ban now smacks very much of trying to get the genie
back into the bottle.

Because the industry developed so quickly and spontaneously, it has
operated entirely unhampered by regulation. There are no rules
governing the standard of the product apart from the general law. The
effects of BZP are unpredictable in any event, but the quantity of it
in various types of party pill varies significantly so that users may
not be aware of how large a dose they are taking.

A ban would certainly stop the open manufacture and retailing of
party pills, stopping the big profits being made by some of the not
particularly savoury characters involved in the trade. But it would
just as surely drive it underground. Some demand would drop away
because of fear of prosecution, but not all. It is too late now to
hope that the market would disappear entirely. More worryingly, at
least some thwarted users of party pills could also be tempted to
turn to other drugs.

Rather than attempting to prohibit the drug, the Government would be
better advised to resort to strict regulation on its manufacture and
sale. Health and safety standards should be drawn up and enforced.
There is already an age limit of 18 for the sale of party pills
containing BZP. That should be rigorously applied.

In the meantime, Anderton is right to publicise the health risks,
real and possible, of using party pills. But those risks should not
be overstated. At present the proved risks seem to be less than those
associated with alcohol or tobacco. They certainly do not warrant a ban.