New Zealand's Legal Recreational Drug

"Legal Highs" used to mean paying £15 for a bad headache. But a New Zealand entrepreneur has sold 20 million doses of a new ecstasy substitute that works. Can former musician and recovered junkie Matt Bowden bring his legal pills to Britain? And are they safe?

Matt Bowden knew that the panel of serious-faced pharmacologists toxicologists and emergency doctors had no idea what to make of him. After all the former musician - dressed in a suit that appeared to be made from tablecloth - was trying to convince these government advisors to allow him to supply drugs to New Zealand's addicts. No matter what misgivings the committee had, Bowden was determined to sell them his idea - tackling New Zealand's spiralling methamphetamine problem by introducing his own 'safe' party pills.

In 1999, New Zealand had already accepted the concept of harm minimisation in drug use, and the government was desperate to contain the methamphetamine explosion and accompanying surge in violent behaviour. Bowden had created pills called Nemesis, using benzylpiperazine (BZP), a non addictive, euphoric stimulant. All he had to do now was win over the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs and to make it through the Select Health Committee process, where everybody in the community had their say on his plans. Remarkably, he was successful and New Zealand introduced a new drug categorisation - Class D - for lower risk substances deemed not harmful enough to be illegal.

Fast forward to 2006 and the BZP pills have not only helped addicts but become a commercial success, with many imitators. Around 20 million tablets have been consumed in New Zealand with no reported fatalities. The industry is worth an estimated £8 million annually. Now Matt Bowden and his company Stargate want to bring safe, legal pills - that work - to the rest of the world.

Since Stargate released their original BZP-based party pills in New Zealand, they breathed new life into the legal highs market - that dubious world where what you buy in headshops promises a safe alternative to the E experience but usually just delivers a bad headache. Here in the UK, after mushrooms were made illegal again last year, British companies have begun to churn out their versions of party pills that work. Large pharmaceutical companies are even researching their own products. Bowden has set his sights on ecstasy and along with his team of drug designers he's on a mission to perfect a legal alternative to MDMA based pills. It would appear that legal highs, once considered a bit of a joke by clubbers, have the potential to become big business here.

"One of my friends disembowelled himself with a samurai sword at a party when he was high on methamphetamine," says Matt Bowden. "That was the turning point for me. I knew that if he'd felt that he could have got help, then he might not have died like that. I realised that a safer alternative needed to be created."

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