Underground labs churning out synthetic drugs up to 70 times more potent than naturally grown cannabis have ‘destroyed’ the lives of thousands of New Zealanders.
The ‘zombie drug’ has claimed more lives than any other drug in the country’s history, including a promising 17-year-old rugby player from West Auckland.
Speaking with Vice, his best friend Trey recalled scenes of ‘little kids’ vomiting and having seizures along the street where he grew up.
He said his friend dying last year and a near-death experience himself was enough to shock him into getting clean.
‘I used to smoke an ounce of synthetics in 2 days. I was real bad, I’m surprised I’m still alive,’ he said.
Underground labs churning out synthetic drugs up to 70 times more potent than naturally grown cannabis have ‘destroyed’ the lives of thousands of New Zealanders
Trey keeps a heartbreaking reminder of the drug’s devastating effect inside his room with a shrine set up in memory of his best friend.
He described his friend as an ambitious, outgoing and modest young man before becoming grappled by the drug, which took his life suddenly one night in 2017.
Recovering addict, Tamarra, held the Government to blame for the social carnage created by synthetic cannabis, as more than 25 people died from it last year alone.
‘Why bring a drug out and have it legalised so widely, put it in so many shops, put it around the whole entire country, and then get all these people addicted..and then just take it away and make it illegal?,’ she said.
‘Of course it’s going to go underground, and then people are going to start making sh** that is harmful, and that’s what’s happened.’
It was synthetic cannabis’s cheaper price tag and it’s powerful effect that had her hooked as a 13-year-old, and now, as a 20-year-old, made it hard for her to stay off.
Emergency medicine doctor and toxicologist, Dr Chip Gresham, said the emergence of synthetic cannabinoids had forced a shift in how emergency staff operated.
‘Now, we’ve seen so many seizures from synthetic cannabinoids, that that’s one thing we always just consider,’ he said.
Recovering addict, Tamarra, held the Government to blame for the social carnage created by synthetic cannabis, as more than 25 people died from it last year alone