Looking for a good time shouldn’t turn into a bad time. Cityscape talks to Joel Faulkner, Christchurch regional manager of drug-checking service Know Your Stuff.
What does Know Your Stuff do? KnowYourStuffNZ provides drug checking and drug-related harm reduction services across New Zealand.
How do you do it? For drug checking we use an FTIR spectrometer and reagents. The spectrometer uses infrared light to read the chemical signature of the substance, which it then checks against food, drug and other relevant substance databases. This machine can't tell the purity of a sample but it can detect when samples have had other substances added to them. Reagents are chemicals that react to certain substances in certain ways. They produce a colour change that can be checked against a list of known reactions. One issue with reagents is that they can't detect the presence of multiple substances in a sample. This is why we predominantly rely on the spectrometer, with reagents mainly being used to double-check results.
What can’t you do? We can't check cannabis, mushrooms or other organic-based samples with our methods.
How has the attitude of authorities changed since KnowYourStuffNZ began? The police, medics and other health officials have continued to react positively to our work, recognising the clear benefits of harm reduction services in this area. When we show people that their substance is a different, potentially undesirable substance to what they expected, they won’t take it. When people don’t unexpectedly take high-risk substances, it keeps them out of the medics’ tent or A&E. That makes life easier for emergency services, which they appreciate.
And parents? What changes have you seen there? I have had many positive conversations with parents, before and after the changes to the legislation. But it is important to remember our services are used and provided by a wide range of people from all age groups. We have many parents who use our services personally and also volunteer for us. I think this shows that a harm reduction approach to drugs is accepted by many people. Parents say things like it’s reassuring knowing Know Your Stuff will be at the festival my child is attending or I know they are going to try things so I tell them to at least get it checked first.
If people are going to buy drugs, are there any signs they can look for that things are not what they should be? You can't tell anything about a substance with your eye besides its colour and basic shape and so we always recommend coming to get anything you plan to take checked by a licensed drug-checking team. We have a library of high-risk pills that we’ve found over the years, and High Alert has a list of dangerous substance warnings. If anyone has any qualms about the substance they have, they should absolutely come and get it checked.
You have regular clinics now as well as at festivals – tell us about those? A lot of people have been working very hard for a long time now to provide these services before the legislation changes. Over that time we have focused on festivals and student events, which we have become known for, but the legalisation of our services has allowed us to really expand our regular clinics across the nation. In Christchurch we have been running a clinic on the third Sunday of every month at the 298 Youth Health Centre in Amuri Business Park. These clinics have been popular and the number of clients we reach through them continues to grow. Over the winter these clinics tend to be slower, which provides a great opportunity to have in-depth harm reduction conversations with interested clients.
What are you expecting this summer? Any alerts from overseas? Our last few clinics show we’re still seeing a few different cathinones being mis-sold as MDMA, as well as some MDMA pills that have more than one standard dose in them. We can’t really say whether or not this trend will continue over summer but it’s a safe bet to say that people should definitely bring their substances to us for checking.
After the festivals come the university Orientation weeks – how has your role developed with those? We have run clinics with the university students’ associations for a few years now and these take place around the Orientation weeks, Tea Party and Garden Party. Our services have become something students expect around these times and feel comfortable using.
How do you work in with other agencies such as the NZ Drug Foundation? We’re part of DIANZ, which is Drug Information and Alerts Aotearoa New Zealand. It’s a network of medical professionals and scientists, drug-harm reduction organisations like the NZ Drug Foundation and social services that inform Aotearoa whenever anything high risk crops up. We also work with organisations that want to get their drug-checking licence and bring drug checking into their communities. Last year we helped the NZ Needle Exchange get theirs. We helped train their volunteers and lent them equipment and we’re really proud to have been part of their journey.
What have been some of your big successes in alerting people to dodgy drugs? While the stories we are often known for are framed along these lines, it is important to remember we are not trying to find the ‘dodgy drugs’ but instead provide clients with accurate information for what is in their sample and the relevant harm reduction advice. With undesired substances most of the risk comes in when it is consumed like the desired substance. However, often clients don't want to consume an undesired substance and we can destroy it for them. Over the 2020-21 festival season there was a high prevalence of cathinones (usually eutylone) being sold as MDMA. Over this time we helped many people avoid taking an undesired substance unexpectedly or to take the substance they had more safely. We also alerted them to what they may feel during and after an unexpected experience with a cathinone. Last New Year I was at the Twisted Frequency festival. Our services were heavily used by clients who had heard that there were a lot of cathinones being sold as MDMA. Regardless of whether these clients chose to consume an undesired sample, the most important part is that we were able to deliver harm reduction advice to all of these clients and their friends.
Personally, what led you to becoming involved in Know Your Stuff? I have always thought that these services are important and a friend was involved who got me to get involved. I really enjoyed the fast-paced environment of the clinics and the harm reduction conversations, which led to me getting involved with festivals and eventually co-running them.