March 18, 2026 • 20 mins
A new study is shedding light on the changing landscape of New Zealand’s ‘party drug’ scene.
The annual New Zealand Drug Trends Survey, completed by more than 8000 people nationwide, shows that ketamine is rapidly growing in popularity.
Price data puts it among the more affordable options at around $200 a gram. Overseas, the UK has dubbed young people ‘Generation K’, while ketamine-related deaths rose 20-fold since 2014.
Despite years of warnings from health experts about the risks, ketamine’s now gaining popularity here – so what do we do now?
Today on The Front Page, Professor Chris Wilkins is with us to unpack what’s behind this trend and what it means for New Zealand.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Editor/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Jane Yee
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Kiyota.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
A new study is.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Shedding light on the changing landscape of New Zealand's party
drug scene. The annual New Zealand Drug Trends Survey, completed
by more than eight thousand people nationwide, shows that ketamine
is rapidly growing in popularity.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Price data puts.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
It among the more affordable options at around two hundred
dollars a gram overseas, The UK has dubbed young people
Generation K, while ketamine related deaths rose twentyfold since twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Despite years of warning from.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Health experts about the risks, ketamine is now gaining popularity
here in New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So what do we do now?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Today?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
On the Front Page, Professor Chris Welkins is with us
to unpack what's behind this trend and what it means
for New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
So, Chris, what.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Stood out to you in this year's New Zealand Drug
Trends Survey results?
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, I think the first thing is the decline in
prices of drugs, and I talked previously about what happened
with methamphetamine, but also with MD and a lot of
the other drugs as well. That as we're in this
cost of living crisis and the price has been going up,
all these illegal drugs seem to be falling year on year,
and once we adjusted those for the considerable inflation that's
(01:38):
been going on in the recent years, some of those
prices of those drugs like meth and MD may have
halved in price, which is quite shocking.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well, what do you think is driving the drop in price?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Well, that's of course a really good question and it's
not easy to answer. I think the first thing to
note is that the drug mark it's you know, a
lot of people talk about drug markets as controlled by
organized crime or gangs and they can set the price
at a very high level. But I think these price
walls across the board show that this is actually a
(02:12):
competitive market. And my backgrounds in economics, so it's really
nice to see the interplay of supply and demand and
that this follows that kind of process. So in terms
of meth mvietamine, it seems to be that we're under
there's a lot of more price competition in terms of
production and trafficking, so we're moving from a market that
(02:34):
used to get supplied from Asia and Southeast Asia. Now
we've got a new bunch of suppliers Mexican drug cartels
via Canada, and so there's a little bit of price
competition there. And the Pacific route where the myth from
North America comes from, is probably a little bit more
(02:56):
convenient for us than the previous run from a WITHDMA.
There's been some recovery and manufacture since COVID, so that
seemed to really affect MD production, which is mostly in
Netherlands and Belgium. But there also seems to be some
(03:16):
diversification of locations of production, so now you can find
production in non traditional countries in Europe, Spain, and also
now more production in Asia.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
How does this year's data, I suppose, compare to what
you've seen over previous years.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Well, I think, as I said, that price decline has
just reinforced year after year, and that's been something that's
been very interesting to watch. But the other big things
are we're seeing more diversity in terms of drugs just
year on years. So we'll probably talk a little about
ketamine is emerging as one of the kind of popular
(04:00):
party drugs and availability and US has become much more
stable compared to md M A and cocaine and then
the rise of cocaine. Of course, that is that's been
a big change in New Zealand. But the digitalization of
drug markets is something that we've been investigating for a
number of years and it's something we're focusing on just
(04:22):
moving just you know, just with everything we've moved from
physical retail to this online retail platforms, and the drug
markets basically followed that, and that has some wide reaching
implications that we haven't yet discovered.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I think, yeah, well you mentioned ketamine there.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's becoming a stable part of New Zealand's party drug scene.
I suppose it's I mean, could you define what is
a party drug as opposed to any other drug?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Yeah, So it's an unfortunate term in that it's just
that I think it's a group of drugs to socio
with dance music, and they're kind of as opposed to
more kind of introspective like LSD or or stupefying like
a little bit like cannabis. So it's really associated with
(05:12):
a particular dance party culture and that context of you know,
dancing for a longer time and socializing within clubs. Ketamine
is it's a little on the face of it, so
it's a disassociate and it's anesthetic and lucigen so on
the face of it, it's kind of a little bit
(05:34):
hard to associate it with that, but it appears to
be in that kind of subculture.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Why do you think ketamine is gaining so much traction?
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Now, yeah, I mean that's a good question. I think
drugs sometimes just fit within the sign of the times.
So you know, you think cocaine the eighties and opioids
in the seventies. I think to some extent, ketamine fits
in with some of the things that are going on
(06:04):
in the world, so needing to disassociate from all the
bad news that we're always hearing, and so it fits
within that that somehow. In terms of demand, but I
think on the supply side as well, it's just ramped up.
So now it's more produced within the Golden triag or
in Asia, organized crime have become more involved in it,
(06:25):
so the volume of supply has gone up. But ketamine
has been around for a long long time, but it's
it has been in the past really limited to kind
of particular subcultures or particular countries like Hong Kong and
things like that where and it's been a kind of
an outlier, but increasingly it's become more mainstream within the
(06:47):
dance party scene. I think you might have heard of
k crumps that another side effect, really really bad stomach
pains that can happen if use ket repeatedly.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
It's been compared to childbirth pain. It's really horrible.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
I remember the first time I had it, I went
to hospital because I had no idea what its pain was.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
But Rachel was telling me how a lot of people
end up in this catch twenty two sort of situation.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
But if you're experiencing those cramps and the pains and
some of the physical effects, then actually the only thing
that really helps a bit is to take more ketamin.
And although it's not physically addictive, that is where the
addiction comes in, because it does help ease those cramps
and ease those pains.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Well.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Ketamine has been.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
A huge issue in the UK for years now. I've
seen some horrifying documentaries online on YouTube where you know
there's been a huge increase in young people attending specialist
treatment services with problems related.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
To long term kidamine use.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
What are some of the problems that come with it.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
So long term chronic use can cause a number of
problems to do with your bladder, so that can really
damage it over time and a lot of that and
that sometimes that's irreversible, so and it can be really debilitating.
So people should re really educate themselves and understand that
(08:14):
frequent use can be very damaging to the bladder and
uriny and renal functioning. Also the psychological problems sometimes as well,
and also when it's used in combination with other depressants
like alcohol, it can get very dangerous. But overall it
(08:37):
tends to be on the more dangerous side because it's
a disassociate, so it numbs pain and means that you're
not aware of your surroundings. So people might recall that
Matthew Perry died from using ketamine because in his sparkle
in it, and that just illustrates the danger from accident
(08:57):
and harming yourself just because you're not aware of what's
going on with you with your surroundings. So that's more
of a cute kind of risk.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
And I suppose it probably comes as no surprise that
high usage has been detected in Wellington and Otago.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Well, yeah, so, as I said, I mean, because the
effects are kind of not exactly what you'd expect to
want to want in many party situations, dance parties, going out.
So I do still think it is a bit of
a niche drug in that sense of the effects. So yeah,
(09:36):
it is interesting to see the differences in regional effects.
So I target you could explain that by students who
are most open to trying new drugs, particularly in dance
party situations. The Wellington one, I don't know, you can
pick your reason for that one, but I guess maybe
people are more perhaps anxious about the world and wanting
(10:02):
to be separated out for it for a moment, get
some relief.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
How do you think the diversification of so called party
drugs affects harm reduction efforts in alta?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
How do we target these different things?
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah, it just makes it more challenging because it's more
difficult to educate people because we're dealing with more than
one or two substances. Ketamine is just visually, it's very
you know, it's a synthetic drug, so it comes in
that generic powder perl form, So that really inhibits the
(10:38):
ability to understand how open it is or whether it's
in fact ketamine, But generally I think it's just that
people are often unaware of the risks and is just
more challenging to educate them, and that's why drug checking
is really important. Also, people should think about the kind
(10:59):
of they're in when they decide to try ketamine, because
there's the K hole phenomenon which can be really mentally
health challenging. So they should be in a good, good
frame of mind and have a lot of people around
them that will look after them and don't combine ketamine
with depressants or stimulants can also be a problem as well.
(11:25):
So I guess it's that story that there's a lot
to learn and there's a lot of risks, so drawing
on education good sources of reduction, and then using drug
checking if you can, and then just common sense around
who you have around you and how you're feeling at
the time.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
You mentioned the term K hole, and that's obviously something
that's quite a common term when it comes to ketamine.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
What is a K hole?
Speaker 3 (11:54):
It's kind of like a paralyzing impact where often you're
just stuck in a a where you can't talk or
have trouble moving where essentially you're just so deep within
your subconscious that you're almost in a canatonic state, and
(12:14):
it can be pretty terrifying, so and disturbing, particularly if
you from mental health perspective.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Do you think that there needs to be an attitude
change towards so called party drugs? Like I have young
people thinking, well, it's not math, you know, that's.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
A heroine, that's a bad one. But party drugs.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Do you think we need, you know, societal change towards
how we feel about them.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I think it's one of the problems with drug use
is an issue is there's often no middle ground, so
it's either a polarization between you know, don't try it.
It's the risks are out of you know scope, or
that you know everyone's doing it and I can just
try it and I'm going to be safe. So I
(13:05):
think there is a need to be, as I said,
people be educated about the risks. But that's really difficult
to get across to young people because it's a bit
like your eighteen year old son coming to you and
wanting to buy a motorbike. So you know, as a parent,
(13:26):
you can know them all about that risk and the
risks are very real. But there's a good chance that
a young person is not going to listen to you
or thinks that they're bulletproof, and they're not going to
be the person that's armed. We're a little bit in
that space. So that's why harm reduction and drug checking
are good things, because even if your son's determined to
(13:48):
get this motorbike, you want to, you know, and you
can't convince them otherwise that you want to make sure
that they're willing, wearing a helmet, they've got the safety gear,
and hopefully you buy them the left powerful motorbike, and
then you just hope for the you know, your hope
for the best outcome, and that they will eventually understand
the risk themselves and stop use.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
It Basically just shreds the bladder line in and that
causes your bladder to shrink or be sunken, which then
makes a capacity a hell of a lot smaller. So
my capacity, a female bladder should hold five hundred million liters,
and I think a male is six hundred and mine
it's worse was holding twenty milli liters, So as you
(14:36):
can imagine, that's well, that's a lot of weir and
my bladder was working way more than it needed to
do so, and that's why you have the urgency, because
your bladders then shrunk and your wian all the time.
And sorry, can I just go for a quickly.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I know that we mentioned keddamine in the UK, and
I keep mentioning that because they've had this issue there
for over a decad now, they've actually called this generation
Generation K. Is there anything over there that academics or
health experts are doing to try and alleviate the pressures
of ketamine on young people.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
I think one of the important things with ketamine is
at this stage is really good education and education that
people can relate to and they trust because some of
as we've just talked about, some of the physical and
mental health risks of ketamine are very rare, particularly in
(15:34):
white frequency use and chronic use, but also acute accident
and overdose. And the problem with new drugs is people,
of course, they want to try new things, and the
reputation is i within their peers, so no one's had
any problems yet or there's been no record of dependency,
(15:55):
so it's very easy to be sucked into the idea
that this is going to be harm free, risk free, thing.
So as soon as you can get trusted information to
the user group about some of these risks, I mean
often people will make really you know, can make more
informed decisions about that and you know, understand the kind
(16:17):
of behavior they should be avoiding and how to look
after themselves.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You mentioned before, and the highlight the report highlights an
increased buying of drugs via social media and the darknet.
We've done this a few times on this podcast before.
We've spoken to our investigative reporter here, Michael Mora, about
buying drugs on places like Facebook Marketplace. I mean, how
(16:41):
significant is the shift of New Zealand's drug market to online.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Well, I think this is going to be one of
the you know, maybe the challenge in minimizing harm from
drug use in the future. It's as revolutionary as if
you remember, you know, retail in the nineteen nineties versus
retail in twenty twenty six. That it's that kind of
paradigm shift in how you get to know about products,
(17:11):
how you buy them, who you have contact with, and
the kind of range of products you can purchase. And
so now we can buy, purchase, purchase, you know, clothes
from all over the world and products from all over
the world and have them delivered to our door versus
having to you know, have one or two stores and
(17:32):
your shit and having to go down there and physically
purchase it. So it's it's really revolutionary, I think, and
I mean it's not all bad news. I think there
is some real opportunities to do really good harm reduction
and harm minimization online. And also, but essentially unfortunately, social
media lends itself to drugs pry in a number of
(17:56):
ways that the networking is very powerful way to sell drugs,
the animinity in terms of apps and things like Snapchat,
and also the access to young people. And but some
of the new risks are we're all familiar that all
our social media use and phone use now is driven
(18:18):
by algorithms, so and there's no there's no control over
the content we get most of the time. So once
we start looking for something, we're going to get a
lot of the algorithms going to generate a lot of
content for us. And so if you're a very young person,
you know that can be very dangerous and you know
might be you're not, but it might not be aware
(18:40):
of the risks involved, and that somewhere down the line,
you've got to you're gonna pick up these drugs from
a physical market or meet somebody you know physically who's
going to give you the drugs, and that you might,
you know, have no idea about the effects of these drugs.
So in previous generations you had to physically be in
(19:00):
a peer network of group of the cool people in
the cast to find out about something, and that really
limited access for a whole lot of people. But now
it's very much democratized in terms of you know, anyone
can see this content.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
How do we stop that, how do we stop that
from happening.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Well, it's just one dimension of the whole social media
harm debate that we've had, and a whole lot of
other to do with a whole lot other things like
you know, gambling as well and all kinds of addictive behavior.
So it's not easy to answer. And you know, you
(19:37):
can see some of the things like banning social media
for under sixteen's in Australia, but it's a very complex
question because you know, there are some clear benefits of
social media as well that you don't want to take
away from young people.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Thanks for joining us, Chris.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yep, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Ye that's it for this episode of the Front Page.
You can read more about today's stories and extensive news
coverage at enzidherld dot co dot enz The Front Page
is hosted and produced by me Chelsea daniels Kine. Dicky
is our studio operator, Richard Martin, our producer and editor,
(20:20):
and our executive producer.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Is Jane Ye.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Follow the Front Page on the iheartapp or wherever you
get your podcasts, and join us next time for another
look beyond the headlines.
Kiyota.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
A new study is.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Shedding light on the changing landscape of New Zealand's party
drug scene. The annual New Zealand Drug Trends Survey, completed
by more than eight thousand people nationwide, shows that ketamine
is rapidly growing in popularity.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Price data puts.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
It among the more affordable options at around two hundred
dollars a gram overseas, The UK has dubbed young people
Generation K, while ketamine related deaths rose twentyfold since twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Despite years of warning from.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Health experts about the risks, ketamine is now gaining popularity
here in New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So what do we do now?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Today?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
On the Front Page, Professor Chris Welkins is with us
to unpack what's behind this trend and what it means
for New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
So, Chris, what.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Stood out to you in this year's New Zealand Drug
Trends Survey results?
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, I think the first thing is the decline in
prices of drugs, and I talked previously about what happened
with methamphetamine, but also with MD and a lot of
the other drugs as well. That as we're in this
cost of living crisis and the price has been going up,
all these illegal drugs seem to be falling year on year,
and once we adjusted those for the considerable inflation that's
(01:38):
been going on in the recent years, some of those
prices of those drugs like meth and MD may have
halved in price, which is quite shocking.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well, what do you think is driving the drop in price?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Well, that's of course a really good question and it's
not easy to answer. I think the first thing to
note is that the drug mark it's you know, a
lot of people talk about drug markets as controlled by
organized crime or gangs and they can set the price
at a very high level. But I think these price
walls across the board show that this is actually a
(02:12):
competitive market. And my backgrounds in economics, so it's really
nice to see the interplay of supply and demand and
that this follows that kind of process. So in terms
of meth mvietamine, it seems to be that we're under
there's a lot of more price competition in terms of
production and trafficking, so we're moving from a market that
(02:34):
used to get supplied from Asia and Southeast Asia. Now
we've got a new bunch of suppliers Mexican drug cartels
via Canada, and so there's a little bit of price
competition there. And the Pacific route where the myth from
North America comes from, is probably a little bit more
(02:56):
convenient for us than the previous run from a WITHDMA.
There's been some recovery and manufacture since COVID, so that
seemed to really affect MD production, which is mostly in
Netherlands and Belgium. But there also seems to be some
(03:16):
diversification of locations of production, so now you can find
production in non traditional countries in Europe, Spain, and also
now more production in Asia.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
How does this year's data, I suppose, compare to what
you've seen over previous years.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Well, I think, as I said, that price decline has
just reinforced year after year, and that's been something that's
been very interesting to watch. But the other big things
are we're seeing more diversity in terms of drugs just
year on years. So we'll probably talk a little about
ketamine is emerging as one of the kind of popular
(04:00):
party drugs and availability and US has become much more
stable compared to md M A and cocaine and then
the rise of cocaine. Of course, that is that's been
a big change in New Zealand. But the digitalization of
drug markets is something that we've been investigating for a
number of years and it's something we're focusing on just
(04:22):
moving just you know, just with everything we've moved from
physical retail to this online retail platforms, and the drug
markets basically followed that, and that has some wide reaching
implications that we haven't yet discovered.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I think, yeah, well you mentioned ketamine there.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's becoming a stable part of New Zealand's party drug scene.
I suppose it's I mean, could you define what is
a party drug as opposed to any other drug?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Yeah, So it's an unfortunate term in that it's just
that I think it's a group of drugs to socio
with dance music, and they're kind of as opposed to
more kind of introspective like LSD or or stupefying like
a little bit like cannabis. So it's really associated with
(05:12):
a particular dance party culture and that context of you know,
dancing for a longer time and socializing within clubs. Ketamine
is it's a little on the face of it, so
it's a disassociate and it's anesthetic and lucigen so on
the face of it, it's kind of a little bit
(05:34):
hard to associate it with that, but it appears to
be in that kind of subculture.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Why do you think ketamine is gaining so much traction?
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Now, yeah, I mean that's a good question. I think
drugs sometimes just fit within the sign of the times.
So you know, you think cocaine the eighties and opioids
in the seventies. I think to some extent, ketamine fits
in with some of the things that are going on
(06:04):
in the world, so needing to disassociate from all the
bad news that we're always hearing, and so it fits
within that that somehow. In terms of demand, but I
think on the supply side as well, it's just ramped up.
So now it's more produced within the Golden triag or
in Asia, organized crime have become more involved in it,
(06:25):
so the volume of supply has gone up. But ketamine
has been around for a long long time, but it's
it has been in the past really limited to kind
of particular subcultures or particular countries like Hong Kong and
things like that where and it's been a kind of
an outlier, but increasingly it's become more mainstream within the
(06:47):
dance party scene. I think you might have heard of
k crumps that another side effect, really really bad stomach
pains that can happen if use ket repeatedly.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
It's been compared to childbirth pain. It's really horrible.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
I remember the first time I had it, I went
to hospital because I had no idea what its pain was.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
But Rachel was telling me how a lot of people
end up in this catch twenty two sort of situation.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
But if you're experiencing those cramps and the pains and
some of the physical effects, then actually the only thing
that really helps a bit is to take more ketamin.
And although it's not physically addictive, that is where the
addiction comes in, because it does help ease those cramps
and ease those pains.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Well.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Ketamine has been.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
A huge issue in the UK for years now. I've
seen some horrifying documentaries online on YouTube where you know
there's been a huge increase in young people attending specialist
treatment services with problems related.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
To long term kidamine use.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
What are some of the problems that come with it.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
So long term chronic use can cause a number of
problems to do with your bladder, so that can really
damage it over time and a lot of that and
that sometimes that's irreversible, so and it can be really debilitating.
So people should re really educate themselves and understand that
(08:14):
frequent use can be very damaging to the bladder and
uriny and renal functioning. Also the psychological problems sometimes as well,
and also when it's used in combination with other depressants
like alcohol, it can get very dangerous. But overall it
(08:37):
tends to be on the more dangerous side because it's
a disassociate, so it numbs pain and means that you're
not aware of your surroundings. So people might recall that
Matthew Perry died from using ketamine because in his sparkle
in it, and that just illustrates the danger from accident
(08:57):
and harming yourself just because you're not aware of what's
going on with you with your surroundings. So that's more
of a cute kind of risk.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
And I suppose it probably comes as no surprise that
high usage has been detected in Wellington and Otago.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Well, yeah, so, as I said, I mean, because the
effects are kind of not exactly what you'd expect to
want to want in many party situations, dance parties, going out.
So I do still think it is a bit of
a niche drug in that sense of the effects. So yeah,
(09:36):
it is interesting to see the differences in regional effects.
So I target you could explain that by students who
are most open to trying new drugs, particularly in dance
party situations. The Wellington one, I don't know, you can
pick your reason for that one, but I guess maybe
people are more perhaps anxious about the world and wanting
(10:02):
to be separated out for it for a moment, get
some relief.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
How do you think the diversification of so called party
drugs affects harm reduction efforts in alta?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
How do we target these different things?
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah, it just makes it more challenging because it's more
difficult to educate people because we're dealing with more than
one or two substances. Ketamine is just visually, it's very
you know, it's a synthetic drug, so it comes in
that generic powder perl form, So that really inhibits the
(10:38):
ability to understand how open it is or whether it's
in fact ketamine, But generally I think it's just that
people are often unaware of the risks and is just
more challenging to educate them, and that's why drug checking
is really important. Also, people should think about the kind
(10:59):
of they're in when they decide to try ketamine, because
there's the K hole phenomenon which can be really mentally
health challenging. So they should be in a good, good
frame of mind and have a lot of people around
them that will look after them and don't combine ketamine
with depressants or stimulants can also be a problem as well.
(11:25):
So I guess it's that story that there's a lot
to learn and there's a lot of risks, so drawing
on education good sources of reduction, and then using drug
checking if you can, and then just common sense around
who you have around you and how you're feeling at
the time.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
You mentioned the term K hole, and that's obviously something
that's quite a common term when it comes to ketamine.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
What is a K hole?
Speaker 3 (11:54):
It's kind of like a paralyzing impact where often you're
just stuck in a a where you can't talk or
have trouble moving where essentially you're just so deep within
your subconscious that you're almost in a canatonic state, and
(12:14):
it can be pretty terrifying, so and disturbing, particularly if
you from mental health perspective.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Do you think that there needs to be an attitude
change towards so called party drugs? Like I have young
people thinking, well, it's not math, you know, that's.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
A heroine, that's a bad one. But party drugs.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Do you think we need, you know, societal change towards
how we feel about them.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I think it's one of the problems with drug use
is an issue is there's often no middle ground, so
it's either a polarization between you know, don't try it.
It's the risks are out of you know scope, or
that you know everyone's doing it and I can just
try it and I'm going to be safe. So I
(13:05):
think there is a need to be, as I said,
people be educated about the risks. But that's really difficult
to get across to young people because it's a bit
like your eighteen year old son coming to you and
wanting to buy a motorbike. So you know, as a parent,
(13:26):
you can know them all about that risk and the
risks are very real. But there's a good chance that
a young person is not going to listen to you
or thinks that they're bulletproof, and they're not going to
be the person that's armed. We're a little bit in
that space. So that's why harm reduction and drug checking
are good things, because even if your son's determined to
(13:48):
get this motorbike, you want to, you know, and you
can't convince them otherwise that you want to make sure
that they're willing, wearing a helmet, they've got the safety gear,
and hopefully you buy them the left powerful motorbike, and
then you just hope for the you know, your hope
for the best outcome, and that they will eventually understand
the risk themselves and stop use.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
It Basically just shreds the bladder line in and that
causes your bladder to shrink or be sunken, which then
makes a capacity a hell of a lot smaller. So
my capacity, a female bladder should hold five hundred million liters,
and I think a male is six hundred and mine
it's worse was holding twenty milli liters, So as you
(14:36):
can imagine, that's well, that's a lot of weir and
my bladder was working way more than it needed to
do so, and that's why you have the urgency, because
your bladders then shrunk and your wian all the time.
And sorry, can I just go for a quickly.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I know that we mentioned keddamine in the UK, and
I keep mentioning that because they've had this issue there
for over a decad now, they've actually called this generation
Generation K. Is there anything over there that academics or
health experts are doing to try and alleviate the pressures
of ketamine on young people.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
I think one of the important things with ketamine is
at this stage is really good education and education that
people can relate to and they trust because some of
as we've just talked about, some of the physical and
mental health risks of ketamine are very rare, particularly in
(15:34):
white frequency use and chronic use, but also acute accident
and overdose. And the problem with new drugs is people,
of course, they want to try new things, and the
reputation is i within their peers, so no one's had
any problems yet or there's been no record of dependency,
(15:55):
so it's very easy to be sucked into the idea
that this is going to be harm free, risk free, thing.
So as soon as you can get trusted information to
the user group about some of these risks, I mean
often people will make really you know, can make more
informed decisions about that and you know, understand the kind
(16:17):
of behavior they should be avoiding and how to look
after themselves.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You mentioned before, and the highlight the report highlights an
increased buying of drugs via social media and the darknet.
We've done this a few times on this podcast before.
We've spoken to our investigative reporter here, Michael Mora, about
buying drugs on places like Facebook Marketplace. I mean, how
(16:41):
significant is the shift of New Zealand's drug market to online.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Well, I think this is going to be one of
the you know, maybe the challenge in minimizing harm from
drug use in the future. It's as revolutionary as if
you remember, you know, retail in the nineteen nineties versus
retail in twenty twenty six. That it's that kind of
paradigm shift in how you get to know about products,
(17:11):
how you buy them, who you have contact with, and
the kind of range of products you can purchase. And
so now we can buy, purchase, purchase, you know, clothes
from all over the world and products from all over
the world and have them delivered to our door versus
having to you know, have one or two stores and
(17:32):
your shit and having to go down there and physically
purchase it. So it's it's really revolutionary, I think, and
I mean it's not all bad news. I think there
is some real opportunities to do really good harm reduction
and harm minimization online. And also, but essentially unfortunately, social
media lends itself to drugs pry in a number of
(17:56):
ways that the networking is very powerful way to sell drugs,
the animinity in terms of apps and things like Snapchat,
and also the access to young people. And but some
of the new risks are we're all familiar that all
our social media use and phone use now is driven
(18:18):
by algorithms, so and there's no there's no control over
the content we get most of the time. So once
we start looking for something, we're going to get a
lot of the algorithms going to generate a lot of
content for us. And so if you're a very young person,
you know that can be very dangerous and you know
might be you're not, but it might not be aware
(18:40):
of the risks involved, and that somewhere down the line,
you've got to you're gonna pick up these drugs from
a physical market or meet somebody you know physically who's
going to give you the drugs, and that you might,
you know, have no idea about the effects of these drugs.
So in previous generations you had to physically be in
(19:00):
a peer network of group of the cool people in
the cast to find out about something, and that really
limited access for a whole lot of people. But now
it's very much democratized in terms of you know, anyone
can see this content.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
How do we stop that, how do we stop that
from happening.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Well, it's just one dimension of the whole social media
harm debate that we've had, and a whole lot of
other to do with a whole lot other things like
you know, gambling as well and all kinds of addictive behavior.
So it's not easy to answer. And you know, you
(19:37):
can see some of the things like banning social media
for under sixteen's in Australia, but it's a very complex
question because you know, there are some clear benefits of
social media as well that you don't want to take
away from young people.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Thanks for joining us, Chris.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yep, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Ye that's it for this episode of the Front Page.
You can read more about today's stories and extensive news
coverage at enzidherld dot co dot enz The Front Page
is hosted and produced by me Chelsea daniels Kine. Dicky
is our studio operator, Richard Martin, our producer and editor,
(20:20):
and our executive producer.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Is Jane Ye.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Follow the Front Page on the iheartapp or wherever you
get your podcasts, and join us next time for another
look beyond the headlines.
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