The Drug Lord With a Social Mission
The Drug Lord With a Social Mission
Matt Bowden (sometimes known as Starboy, an "interdimensional traveler"
helped create one of the most viral outbreaks of new drugs in history. He might also have the antidote.
MAIA SZALAVITZ MAR 2, 2015
http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/the-drug-lord-with-a-social-mission-also-performs-under-the-alter-ego-starboy?Src=longreads
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For a time in the late 1990s, Bowden had worked in the “herbal highs” business—developing and selling products similar to Red Bull, as well as some containing ephedrine, the active ingredient in the now banned performance-enhancing stimulant ephedra. In part to look for new products, and in part out of a personal fascination with drugs, Bowden had trained informally with a neuropharmacologist. And while perusing the scientific literature, he had come upon a drug called benzylpiperazine (BZP).
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And sell it did: His customer base quickly climbed to half a million. Within a few years, a study would find that 20 percent of adult New Zealanders had tried “legal party pills”—as products made from BZP rapidly became known—and 44 percent of respondents who reported having used both legal party pills and illegal party drugs said they’d used BZP to replace the illegal drugs. Soon, the press in New Zealand was spending less time writing about the country’s meth epidemic, and more time sounding the alarm about an epidemic of drugs like BZP.
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New Zealand, an isolated island nation where popular traditional drugs are harder to come by, was one of the first countries to see the commercial spread of so-called legal highs (thanks in no small part to Matt Bowden). But when a worldwide ecstasy shortage in 2008 spiked the price and lowered the quality of traditional club drugs, the market for legal highs went global. The new drugs started to show up worldwide in online marketplaces, at head shops, even in gas stations—and, finally, on the radar of the world’s drug control agencies.
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Worldwide, more than 350 new substances are now marketed as alternatives to marijuana, amphetamines, and other drugs, branded with names like bath salts, Spice, K2, and Blaze, according to the United Nation’s drug control agency. In the United States, by 2012, over 11 percent of high school seniors were reporting that they had tried at least one of these new psychoactive substances, usually a synthetic cannabinoid designed to substitute for pot. That made synthetic marijuana the second most popular class of drugs among American teens, after marijuana itself.
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In 2013, New Zealand passed a law creating the world’s first set of regulations to allow the clinical testing and approval of new recreational drugs. Much as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does for medicines, New Zealand’s system stands to create a government-regulated market for legal highs—an attempt to tame the industry not by stamping it out, but by guiding consumers to safe, reliable products, and giving suppliers an incentive to bring such products to market.
much, much more at: http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/the-drug-lord-with-a-social-mission-also-performs-under-the-alter-ego-starboy?Src=longreads
