Drug-checking agency Know Your Stuff NZ won’t reveal which festivals they’ll be testing at this New Year's despite getting lots of requests.
It comes as the agency warned party drug MDMA was increasingly being swapped out for cathinones, and urged partygoers to be cautious.
A spokesperson said revealing publicly which festivals they will be at opens up opportunities for dealers to operate at venues where testing isn't available.
“That leaves an opening for dodgy people to sell dangerous s**t at events they know won't have drug checking,” the spokesperson said.
Know Your Stuff also can’t say publicly which event they would be attending without the event’s permission, even though the law has changed , the spokesperson said.
“We're giving up our summer break to sit in baking hot tents while we drown in our own sweat so you can go out, take drugs, and not die,…We're not at every festival. We can't be everywhere. It sucks and we know it sucks.
“We're a volunteer organisation with only a handful of people and no government funding. There's only so much we can do.”
The spokesperson said the spectrometers they used to identify adulterants cost $50,000 each.
“It would be amazing if we could be everywhere, but to do that we need volunteers and we need money.
“So if you want to help us grow this service and come to your favourite festival, you can either donate or volunteer.”
Yesterday, Know Your Stuff NZ said several of their clinics, established to provide a safe place to test drugs, have identified a trend of MDMA being either substituted with cathinone or a small amount of MDMA being combined with cathinone to mask it.
Some of the most frequently identified cathinones being used are N-ethyl pentylone, mephedrone and eutylone, which can have the same kind of euphoric affect MDMA can give.
However, with cathinones the affect wears off significantly quicker and prompts people to re-dose despite cathinones typically being more potent.
Cathinones typically have an affect which lasts between two and five hours, however the after effects stay with the person for up to 24 hours after ingesting.
Overdosing on cathinone can cause anxiety, paranoia, gastric distress, seizures or respiratory failure. The follow-on effects can also make it much harder for the person to fall asleep.
Occasionally referred to as "bath salts", cathinones are "a family of stimulants that are often sold in place of MDMA". They are known to be dealt in both crystal and pressed pill forms.
Earlier this month, Health Minister Andrew Little said the Government introduced new laws that would protect pill-testing services like Know Your Stuff "against prosecution for short-term possession of illegal drugs while they test them".
Before the change, organisations like Know Your Stuff were operating illegally.
"This is not about condoning young New Zealanders’ use of drugs, we would prefer they didn’t. But the evidence is that when allowed to operate, drug checking services can significantly reduce drug harm,” Little said.
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