As we approach the festival season, alarming new data on the New Zealand drug landscape has shown some Kiwis are getting partially or completely different substances than what people thought they had purchased.
New Zealand drug-checking organisations - Know Your Stuff, the NZ Drug Foundation, and the NZ Needle Exchange Programme (NEST) - have teamed up to compile a new report based on data from August to November.
The new data released on Wednesday found 22 percent of drugs the organisations checked were partially or completely different to what people thought they had purchased.
This includes where the drug was substituted for another drug entirely, or where the drug was a mixture of what people thought it was and one or more other psychoactive substances, the report said.
"Of these, 12 percent were another substance entirely, and 10 percent were a mix of the presumed substance and other substances," the report found.
The report urged people to remember the six Ps.
"Proper planning prevents piss-poor partying. Come and get your gear checked before you hit the dancefloor," the report said.
The top drugs that were either adulterated or swapped out completely were MDMA, Amphetamine (speed), Cocaine, Methamphetamine and Ketamine.
The report said because of a recent assessment by High Alert, it's expected there will be more MDMA with added psychoactives and more MDMA being substituted for something else.
The assessment by High Alert found "MDMA to be less available and cathinones seem to be more available than they were last year".
High Alert liaises with Customs, Police, and drug-checking organisations to monitor what is available on the drug market.
Last year, the Government put $800,000 towards drug testing services, but despite this, major summer festivals have missed out on drug-checking services because of stretched resources.
This has seen festival-goers being urged to get their drugs tested before they head to gigs this summer.
Mitch Lowe from Trademark Group organises one of Aotearoa's biggest summer festivals, Bay Dreams.
Lowe said there would always be people who took drugs and therefore testing was imperative.
"It's a bit of a no-brainer, if you take all the peripheral stuff out of it, it's literally a question of 'will this save lives?'
"And the answer is yes, and it's proven," Lowe told RNZ.
