Salient

Party on, no more

By Yvette McCullough | 24 Mar, 2008

The announcement of the official banning of party pills has caused a great sting to the raver in my heart. Although party pills are subject to the snobbery of A Class drug users and considered “nowhere near as good as the real thing’, they shouldn’t be banned.

The cost of ecstasy in New Zealand is ridiculous! At $70 per pill you would expect the highest quality but the unregulated black market, means lots of dud Es. The beauty of BZP over MDMA is the effects last longer than three hours and are consistent. If you’re spending loads on your ticket for the gig, you wanna know you’re gonna last the distance!

The turnoff for people and party pills is the comedown. The lack of sleep, the loss of appetite, dodgy stomach and feeling like ass is not appealing. But that’s all part of the fun of the mash out day after. Some of the best smack talk happens during unforgettable ‘comedown sessions’ boasting how cool we are for being so wasted. The harder your hangover, the harder you must have partied! And we all wanna show off that we’re living the dream! Also not being able to eat for a day or two has its definite aesthetic rewards.

Banning party pills will change supply and demand ratios so the quality of E will decrease. It is going to create a dodgier, more expensive underground market. At least with party pills suppliers had to specify what was in them. Now they can be laced with God knows what. Let’s see how fun the comedowns are then, or how high the hospitalization rates are.

People will always want to party and drugs are part and parcel with that. Efforts should have been made to regulate and improve the quality of legal drugs instead. Now that the option for the C class version is illegal, why would anyone bother? Banning them has not changed any attitudes towards the drugs. It has taught kiddies wanting to stay up all night and dance to their favourite band that synthetic assistance was fun; so why not just go for the real thing.