Drug tester Know Your Stuff NZ says hospitalisations have been avoided, after a Wellington stash turned out to be "dangerous" bath salts masquerading as MDMA.
The free community service discovered the eutylone - more commonly known as bath salts - when a person brought a bag containing what they thought was MDMA for testing this afternoon.
"At the beginning of today's static test at the NZ Drug Foundation in Wellington someone brought in a sample from a stash that they'd found randomly," Know Your Stuff NZ posted on Facebook alongside images.
"The stuff was a plain white crystal, so it could have been anything. They did the smart thing and got it tested with us."
It was lucky they did, with the large white rocks turning out to be eutylone.
The person then brought in a total of nine one gram bags of the substance to be tested, all of which turned out to be bath salts.
"If people buying these treated the substance like it was MDMA because that’s what it was sold to them as, it would have gone horribly for them," says Know Your Stuff NZ.
"We know that the dangerous dose of eutylone is about the standard dose of MDMA So each gram of ‘MDMA’ had approximately 10 high doses of eutylone in them.
"That breaks down into 5-7 people in hospital per gram if the people treated the substance as MDMA and redosed because their high was weak.
"That’s 45-63 hospitalisations in total that didn't happen because of drug checking."
In March this year Wellington police also warned about eutylone circulating in the region.
“Eutylone is a stimulant drug in the synthetic cathinone family and is known to be sold and taken as MDMA as it mimics the effects,” police said.
“In addition to this, the effects of the drug take longer to kick in (over two hours), meaning a user can take more before they’re aware of the effects, and end up overdosing.”
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