Fewer recreational drugs are being cut with, or posing as, different substances, a new report has found.
The latest KnowYourStuffNZ annual report, covering from April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022, found 78% of drugs were consistent with what the client thought they had.
The numbers are up on the previous year’s 69%, but down on 2019-2020’s 87%.
The most recent report covers testing from 1611 samples.
The report also found 58% of people said they would not take substances after it proved not to be what they thought it was.
Of all drugs tested, about 69% were MDMA.
University of Otago (Christchurch) department of psychological medicine Prof Joe Boden said the key takeaway from the report was that drug checking worked.
The numbers were hard to interpret with the small sample size, which was also reflective of Covid-19 reducing the amount of events people went to.
MDMA appeared to still be the drug of choice for students and partygoers, which made sense considering its reasonably safe profile, he said.
Most MDMA was imported from overseas and the dip in pure substances from 2020-2021 could be reflective of the recent period of substitute drugs, like bathsalts, being sold.
It was an "uncomfortable" thought that 42% of people would still take drugs that were proven to be a different substance, but drugs were not cheap and some people would not want to waste money on substances they were not going to take, he said.
There would also be people who had already taken a sample from the same batch and been fine.
Otago University Students Association (Ousa) chief executive Debbie Downs said it was happy to learn there had been improvement, but there were still "an enormous amount" of unknown drugs in circulation.
Drug checking was a service about mitigating the harm for anyone considering using recreational drugs, which Ousa would like to see offered across the community. In 2021 97% of students supported drug checking services, she said.
