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Kronic is just one of a number of cannabis-like legal highs available (until recently) for purchase in Dunedin and around New Zealand, and has in recent weeks been the subject of a veritable media storm. Hype about Kronic, especially its naughty, phenazepam-laced (and consequentially recalled) Pineapple Express variety has caused quite a fiasco, keeping the ODT flush with sensationalist news for some weeks. Inviting commentary from emergency department doctors, political leaders, opinionated journalists, concerned North Shore parents, University of Otago toxicologists, policy analysts and from Kronic’s importer himself, a colourful, controversial and chaotic portrait of this cannabis alternative has played out for our entertainment. And just a week or so ago, the government put a 12-month ban on its sale, effectively making it a Class C drug. Phoebe Harrop finds out what all the fuss is about.

The birth of Kronic

It was the mid-1990s: in a chemistry lab at Clemson University, South Carolina, Dr. John Huffman was hard at work studying the receptor action of the synthetic cannabinoids his colleagues had just created. Two of these, JWH-018 and JWH-073, would later end up marketed as legal highs, having been sprayed onto flakes of something loosely resembling dried cannabis sativa leaves.
 
But, says Huffman, his research team never foresaw that coming. Huffman and his colleagues had developed these synthetic cannabinoids to study their receptor action in the brain, compared to that of THC. The synthetic cannabinoids and the real deal displayed similar receptor action – an interesting phenomenon, given their differing chemical structures. Huffman says, “it was basic science. It had no ulterior motive.”
 
How does Kronic make it into New Zealand? The best person to answer that question is Matt Bowden, the insanely intriguing, articulate and somewhat androgynous figure behind Stargate Operations, an Auckland-based company that imports substances such as the Kronic range of synthetic cannabinoids. Bowden is recognised (by Wikipedia at least) as a pivotal figure in the world of legal high lobbying. Motivated by the death of a family member from ecstasy in 2000, and the suicide of a close friend while under the influence of methamphetamine, Bowden set out to “de-stigmatise non-alcoholic drugs, to establish an alternative regulatory model superior to prohibition or legalisation, and to develop drug alternatives which would not be addictive, neurotoxic or fatal in overdose.”
 
Bowden developed the first party pills, pulled together the legal high industry, and has acted as a consultant for governments here and overseas on legal high issues. He has written discussion documents which are helping to form New Zealand’s new drug laws, he’s well-informed, he understands the science, and he actually makes some quite good points.
 
Bowden is not your typical chain-wearing moustachioed drug lord. He was quick to support the government’s ban of Pineapple Express once it was found to contain traces of the coma-inducing, prescription-only, made-in-Russia sedative phenazepam, explaining that the particular ‘contaminated’ shipment was not from his usual supplier, and that he had no reason to suspect that there was any problem. “The testing we do [when shipments arrive at customs] does not test for contamination of some obscure Russian medicine, there is no reason for it to be in there. It meant that for some people who smoked 3-4 complete joints of Kronic, which is 10 doses, it would have had the effect of them taking an anti-anxiety pill as well. It was 300 parts per million.”
 
What we need, says Bowden, is simply better regulation: “no country in the world has properly regulated non-alcoholic drug use. We are so used to handing the whole thing to the black market that the standards are completely voluntary - it is taking time to develop regulations, but they are coming… we have precipitated a complete review of the Misuse of Drugs Act, which is good progress under such harsh media conditions.”
 
To legislate or not to legislate

The legal high conundrum is something of a 21st century predicament. Among other alternatives to illegal drugs, such as the infamous (and now illegal) BZP, synthetic cannabis began to be sold in the early 2000s, making it to our shores later in the decade. These substances have presented somewhat of a legal challenge, one that has been  grappled with hastily by Peter Dunne, the Associate Minister of Health, who has backtracked in the face of fervent anti-Kronic public opinion.
 
Professor Kevin Dawkins, of the University of Otago’s Faculty of Law, agrees that the legal high industry itself has been proactive: “[Kronic] is now subject to self-regulation by the industry… They’ve been in the past reasonably professional about it.”
 
So far, so compelling. While the public (in particular a bunch of militant anti-Kronic parents from the North Shore) wants to burn Kronic at the metaphorical stake and have it banned once and for all, Bowden argues that a knee-jerk ban of Kronic – as the government has undertaken, at least temporarily - and other legal highs just won’t work. “It is now well documented and understood that prohibition removes quality control, empowers the black market, and generally increases potency. Prohibition turned wine to moonshine, speed to P, pot to skunk, opium to heroin… If you banned the most potent active ingredients and allowed access to the less potent, that might work. The issue is whether or not consumer demand is being met with a safer alternative. If you give people some alternative product that adequately substitutes [safe for unsafe] then sure, that's a good idea. If you ban everything and there are no substitutes, you are back in gang land, you haven't actually progressed toward safer consumer protection at all.”
 
And there’s no doubt that there has been serious consumer demand: Bowden estimates that between 500,000 and 800,000 “enjoy smoking the stuff”. And, undoubtedly, more than a few of those consumers reside in our own slice of North Dunedin heaven.
 
I’m just going to get milk and Kronic from the dairy…

I spoke to two University of Otago students who are, shall we say, experienced in such matters. Let’s call them Frank and Geoff. These boys’ relationship with Kronic and its buddies began out of sheer convenience. The idea that you can pick up a fat joint of Kronic along with your milk and bread at your corner dairy (*cough* Willowbank) has scandalised the public and fuelled the recent furore. And that concern is well-grounded: “we started doing it because we couldn’t get actual weed…. Finding [the real stuff] can just be a big mess. So when [synthetic cannabis] is available at Cosmic Corner, we can just drive there, pay for it, and not worry about getting snapped or whatever.” What started as a Re-O Week jaunt turned into quite the binge: “We smoked most days… We’d get up, we’d go to class in the morning and maybe smoke at mid-day or in the afternoon, then at night as well… We started to doing after town every night that we went out, and we’d bring people back to our flat... for a blaze.” “To get the same high, we had to smoke more and more… There were times we had eight to ten buckies in a sitting.”
 
After a few weeks, the boys had what they call a “premonition” and decided (while high, naturally) to stop: “We went around the house, collected up all our drug-related stuff: lighters, a bong. We smashed the bong, ceremonially - the symbolism of destroying our addiction…. We went across the road to a public bin to get rid of all the weed so we couldn’t fish it out [later]… It was a sick habit and it had turned into a bit of an addiction.”
 
The boys feel that Kronic “shouldn’t be on the market. But as naïve first or second years, there’s no warning on the packets or anything… You’re not aware, and nor do you care about, the side effects.” “It gets around all the testing because it’s sold as ‘incense’… It says on the packet ‘not for human consumption’”. Yet the boys inform Critic that it’s sold (and recommended by) shopkeepers, often next to all the pipes and bongs (which, naturally, are sold as “vases”). “I don’t want to go near it [again]” – Frank.
 
At this stage, their experimentation with synthetic cannabis has left them with nothing worse than several less brain cells. But as they have come to realise since, we don’t know anything of Kronic’s long term effects. Cannabis, which they acknowledge has more or less the same effect, has been extensively researched and found to be relatively harmless in the scheme of things. By contrast, Kronic is legal, yet the ramifications of consuming it on any basis – short term or long term – have simply not been explored.
 
Unknown effects

Dr. Leo Schep, a lecturer at the University of Otago and a toxicologist at the National Poisons Centre, has been leading the anti-Kronic crusade on behalf of the scientific fraternity. He says that the centre has received “a lot of calls” relating to Kronic since last year, including one from a mother who was so worried about her Kronic-using son that she thought he was going to die. He says that while users such as Frank and Geoff may notice similar effects when using marijuana or synthetic cannabinoids, they have “totally different adverse effects…. [The synthetic substances] interact with the same receptor site, but have a greater affinity for that receptor [than marijuana]…. They’re more potent.”
 
Dr Schep stresses that very little is known about the effects of synthetic cannabinoids such as Kronic. Short term consequences include agitation, increased heart rate, nausea and vomiting. However, hot-off-the-press research is beginning to provide some clues. A paper published only a few weeks ago has shown that JWH-018, the most common cannabinoid compound in synthetic products available in New Zealand, is what’s called a “pro-drug”: when the body receives any chemical, it metabolises that compound to make it more water soluble, in order to flush it out of its system. When JWH-018 metabolises, that metabolised compound is as active as the parent compound - so it has a sort of double effect.
 
So while the user effect might be similar, we’re talking “big, big differences” between the toxicology profiles of marijuana and Kronic. Dr Schep says “we don’t know the effects, how long it remains in the body, the influence of it on other drugs, the effects on the unborn child…. What about a mother who’s taking this stuff and breastfeeding a baby? It’s concentrated [in the milk] so the kid is going to get a bigger dose than the parent does.” He says that claims made by the legal high industry that these drugs are safe in therapeutic doses are nonsense. “These people [in the legal high industry] are only out for a fast buck… when they say, ‘a therapeutic dose’, what does that mean?” – testing to establish a ‘therapeutic dose’ only extends as far as internet discussion groups, or “people in the back room smoking the stuff” to work out its effect.
 
Despite the recent ban, Dr. Schep speculates that the legal high industry will continue to tweak existing compounds to “circumvent the law with molecules that have not [yet] been banned.” He says “we don’t yet know all the toxicological effects of these substances. And what we do know concerns us.”
 
Criminals <3 Kronic

Local Judge Stephen O’Driscoll has seen the impact that Kronic is having on criminal offending: “I’ve come across [Kronic] on a regular basis… more in the Youth Court [for offenders aged between 14 and 17] than the district court….The police regularly come across young people who are under the influence of Kronic or are committing crimes in order to pay for Kronic.” He says: “the real danger in Kronic is that research shows that, at least when it comes to the male brain, development doesn’t slow down until the age of 24, 25; and if someone aged 14 or 15 is using substances which clearly affect the brain, then it’s difficult to know what effects that might have on subsequent brain development.”
 
Kronic, then, has been causing a chronic headache (pun intended, had to be done) for the Dunedin Police’s youth aid team, which Judge O’Driscoll describes as “exceptionally good”. But there is no easy answer to the Kronic condundrum: “history shows that once a substance is banned and made illegal, it doesn’t take very long for it to be substituted with another substance. Legislation can go part of the way, but it also needs to be complemented and supplemented with education and good role models.”
 
Band-aid solution

The existing legislative approach to new drugs seems to leave a lot to be desired. As it is, Professor Dawkins explains, the government can control the importation of substances under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act (HSNOA), or separately under the Restricted Substances Regime (RSR), which was created to tackle the BZP problem a few years ago. Since BZP’s inclusion as a Misuse of Drugs Act Class C drug, that schedule has been left empty. Putting a drug in that schedule means that its sale, how it’s advertised and who’s allowed to buy it, can all be controlled. At present it’s not possible for a drug to be controlled by the HSNOA as well as be included in the RSS – an artificial restriction that should be changed, says Dawkins. “If [a new] Bill allows psychoactive substances like Kronic to be both in the Restricted Substances Regime and the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act, then the Environmental Risk Management Authority can demand a full risk assessment”. In other words, importers of synthetic drugs will have to show that their products are not “toxic to humans” before they are granted permission to import.
 
However the government didn’t take this seemingly logical step when it banned Kronic. Rather, it has placed a 12-month restriction on Kronic, putting it in a pseudo-Class C (of the Misuse of Drugs Act) so that its use carries the same penalties as would be imposed for the sale or consumption of another Class C controlled substance, such as marijuana itself.
 
Banning Kronic is, however, is “a Band-Aid solution”, no doubt made in election-year haste. A recent review of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 has revealed that the legislation is seriously inadequate to deal with the wave of new psychoactive substances which have hit our markets in the last decade. These synthetic versions of existing drugs simply weren’t an issue for 1970s legislators who enacted the Act. More fundamental legislative change - a new game-plan, if you will - is required to effectively combat all the new and exciting highs that will continue to ply our shores. Says Dawkins: “Longer term it’s all about sensible risk assessment and cutting through the bureaucratic red tape.”
 
The talk of the town.

And in the mean time, Kronic remains the topic on everyone’s lips. As they say, all publicity is good publicity. This media circus has certainly cemented Kronic in the New Zealand consciousness, if not the Kiwi vernacular as well (note, for example, columnist Fran O’Sullivan’s hip’n’cool quip that “Phil Goff's aides must be smoking a particularly powerful brand of Kronic if they think a capital gains tax will pull in $4.5 billion for a Labour Government to spend.”).
 
Matt Bowden points out that “all the media kept running massive images of the brands on their front pages and all over the 6 o'clock news. It is really clear to us that the hysterical reporting has lifted the profile and actually increased demand for these products more than any advertising could ever do.” Unfortunately, with the ban now imposed, that demand won’t easily (or legally) be satisfied.
 
But naturally, Kronic isn’t going to disappear just because it’s been banned. Critic’s sources in fact suggest that local Mongrel Mob members have been trying to buy up stocks of banned variety Pineapple Express since it was ordered off the shelves. For the next 12 months at least though, Kronic won’t be available at the likes of Willowbank. Like it’s country cousin cannabis sativa, Kronic will be enjoying Class-C notoriety, albeit to somewhat less media attention.