{"id":105871,"date":"2021-01-29T23:38:05","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T23:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/?p=105871"},"modified":"2021-01-29T23:38:05","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T23:38:05","slug":"the-spinoff-how-nz-lost-its-head-in-the-bzp-party-pill-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/politics\/the-spinoff-how-nz-lost-its-head-in-the-bzp-party-pill-experiment\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spinoff: How NZ lost its head in the BZP party pill experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally published by The Spinoff<\/strong><\/p>\n

From 2000 to 2007, the party drug BZP was legal to buy and available from your local dairy. What happened?<\/strong><\/p>\n

“This is what movies say drugs are like,” says Jim (not his real name), remembering how he felt when he took six party pills in one night. He was a musician, student and regular drug-taker \u2013 he’d munted his body and mind plenty of times. This was different, and he hated it.<\/p>\n

His body split into one very hot half and one very cold half, and he hallucinated a crow in his living room. It was 2007 and streaming services didn’t exist, so he watched a Napoleon Dynamite DVD on loop for five hours with the sound off, pacing around his Dunedin flat and doing character voices. “I felt like if I stopped moving, I would die,” he says.<\/p>\n

He went to the bathroom, locked the door, and turned both of the taps on full \u2013 hot and cold. “I was splashing water on my body trying to force it to adjust its temperature. Like, ‘I’ve got to get normal again’.”<\/p>\n

It wasn’t the first time he’d taken party pills, but it was the most he’d taken at once. And it was totally legal.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, you could buy a pack of the recreational drug benzylpiperazine, better known as BZP, for $25. In 2006, one survey found a massive 40 per cent of 19-29 year olds had taken it at some point in their lives. That’s a lot of people, and yet pill producers say no one ever died from taking it. The first official BZP death happened after its ban.<\/p>\n

“I think it would have been nigh on impossible to take enough in a way that would harm you chemically,” says Jim. “It would be very hard to die just from that. But did I feel it was possible to take enough to have a heart attack? Yeah, absolutely.”<\/p>\n

Dr John Kerr, a Cambridge-based academic, wrote his masters’ thesis on the history of BZP. He also took some of it as a broke Otago Uni student. He still can’t quite believe it ever happened.<\/p>\n

“Even in Amsterdam, weed isn’t technically legal,” he says. “Portugal has decriminalised drugs, but they’re not legal.” In New Zealand in the noughties you could go to a proper shop, in broad daylight, and buy recreational drugs. Jim bought his first pack from a dairy in Gore. “It was New Zealand’s moment in the sun for weird drug policy,” says Kerr. “The rest of the world turned around and went, ‘What? What are you doing?'”<\/p>\n

Starboy<\/h2>\n

What we were doing was listening to the advice of rock musician and godfather of legal highs, Matt “Starboy” Bowden. He stands by his invention.<\/p>\n

“Crystal meth was going crazy,” Bowden says, speaking to The Spinoff from his garden on the North Shore. “Back then, if someone had some speed on a Friday, they’d snort it and go up, and come down, and be back at work on Monday.” With crystal meth, which was growing in popularity, the effects were much worse. “You’d had three times as much as you used to have in a weekend, and it’s only half-past f***n’ Saturday.”<\/p>\n

Bowden’s cousin was the third person in New Zealand to die after taking ecstasy, and he thought something like BZP could be a safe alternative for meth and ecstasy users. He approached the government, which was taking public suggestions on the methamphetamine crisis.<\/p>\n

“I identified myself as a representative of the dance community, that cultural group of humans who dance regularly all night as a means of hooking up with another person, or just having a good time, in a ritual that’s been going on for many thousands of years,” he says. “In order to sustain our energy levels and reduce our inhibitions we use substances from plants, chemicals, or minerals to do that.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One substance with untapped potential was BZP, which was initially researched as a treatment for depression in 1973 and then shelved when it was discovered to have a similar effect to dexamphetamine.<\/p>\n

“At the time, they thought, ‘that means this drug’s evil and has potential for abuse’,” says Bowden. “But looking back in 2000, methamphetamine was causing the real problem \u2013 if this is less toxic and people are going to substitute this, it’s a real tool.<\/p>\n

“It was meant to be a gateway drug, a gateway off harder drugs.”<\/p>\n

The government agreed, and Bowden launched Stargate International. Over the next eight and a half years it would sell 26 million party pills to 400,000 consumers.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t think to patent them,” he says. It didn’t seem to matter. He bought a clifftop mansion complete with a lighthouse, started a clothing label, and filmed a three-part space opera based around his music. Even before he became a millionaire he looked the part: eyeliner, immaculately swooshed hair, and steampunk blazers. He might own the occasional laboratory, but Bowden will always be a rock star.<\/p>\n