MUSICIAN ROCKS WAR ON DRUGS
I am a musician. At present I am working on a progressive rock album which is due for release early 2010 and will be available from here at MattBowden.com. If you would like an interview about anything else please have the courtesy to mention this. I am an artist with a social conscience. I pioneered an industry to effect social change after several people close to me died far too young. I devised an effective solution to reduce demand for crystal methamphetamine in my home country of New Zealand by introducing a safer non addictive drug alternative, namely BZP. It worked, I successfully lobbied for law change, New Zealand is now the only country in the world to have provision for non traditional recreational drugs to be sold legally to adults only under strict regulations. Next Step United Nations.THE FACTS
Over a period of 8.5 years from 2000 to 2009, 26 million of the pills I developed (or copies thereof) were consumed by 400,000 consumers on 10.5 million occasions with no recorded deaths or significant lasting injuries caused by these products. During this time the NZ government commissioned research into the gateway effects and learned that a high percentage (44.1%) of surveyed consumers who had used both illegal drugs and our legal alternatives ("party pills") were now using our safer legal alternatives instead of illegal drugs. The products were primarily used as a "gateway off" harder drugs, not the other way around.
The solution essentially worked and so I successfully lobbied for a change in legislation in my home country of New Zealand, and in 2008 new laws came into place allowing low risk psychotropic substances to be made available to consumers over the age of 18, with the ability for government to regulate advertising, manufacturing processes, packaging, ingredients, dosage and form etc. Common sense stuff.
I make statements that consumption of the BZP pills is as safe as many other normal daily activities, not without risk, but certainly not very dangerous, please download these documents if you want all the facts and figures:
THE PRINCIPLES
If there is one basic principle that you need to understand it is this:
A government cannot make a law that fallen apples have to jump up into trees to prevent messy orchards, this would be contrary to the natural law of gravity. So it is with natural laws of economics, such as the law of supply and demand. Yet this is exactly what we are trying to do with prohibition. Our drug policies have focused on reducing supply of drugs either by law enforcement or border control and the result of reducing supply without a corresponding reduction in demand will always be an artificial inflation of value. The price goes up, and as a side effect of the lack of quality controls the quality goes down increasing the health risk. The price always gets to a point where somebody will take the risk of supplying.
The prohibition of consumables in high demand by a significant percentage of the population sets the perfect environment for a deadly black market in the same way that the freezer in your refrigerator is the perfect environment for converting water into ice.
The simple solution is to reduce demand by analysing the consumer needs that are being met by the illegal drug and introducing an alternative product, a non addictive substitute with far lower chance of causing death. If we can reduce the demand for dangerous drugs by supplying safer alternatives then the supply/demand curve goes the other way, the price of illegal drugs slumps, we see a glut on the market and we disempower organised crime.
This frees up police, justice and health resources and the goods can even be taxed so we can build more rehabs and fund research instead of just building more prisons.
THE POINT
The effective use of regulations like the ones successfully installed in New Zealand will disempower the drug black market and greatly reduce the burden on society of the drug and alcohol problem. This is the reason why alcohol prohibition was reversed last century. Prohibition is widely recognised as an abject failure as policy measure, which is held together by misinformed public opinion spurred on by sensationalist reporting. It is a shame that in New Zealand in the lead up to an election year, BZP was made illegal despite research showing that this would increase demand for more dangerous drugs, and that one year later further research shows that, as predicted, other more dangerous drugs are being used.
THE GREY MARKET
As long as there is no formal regulated industry for socially consumed tonics there will always be a grey market. An unregulated 'legal highs' industry where legal businesses attempt to meet the massive consumer demand for products that alter the way we feel. Without regulation there is no quality control, and for every ethical business operator who is running their business to a high standard there are a number who have lower ethical standards and lower value for social responsibility and an even greater number who just don't understand what they are doing at all.
The solution is not to "ban" and to push the industry further underground to increase the black market's share, the solution is to put regulations in place and clean up what you have got. That makes the adult playground safer, banning makes it more dangerous.
Now that you understand what I stand for feel free to contact me: personal [at] mattbowden.com
Thank You for taking the time to understand these things before contacting me for comment, please learn all you can about this subject, but if you need a bad guy for your story, look for somebody who doesn't support regulation, I am not interested in any more media like this guy from Australian radio talkback show, it doesn't come across well for anybody:
Thank You for reading my briefing page, please contact personal [at] mattbowden.com or text +64 21 77 23 23.