B.C. health officials are keeping a close watch on New Zealand as it experiments with a novel drug law that could legalize designer party drugs or so-called “legal highs” in a bid to make them safer for users.

The new law, enacted two weeks ago, represents a U-turn from the traditional approach of banning synthetic drugs. Instead, New Zealand will attempt to regulate the substances, allowing their sale if they go through rigorous safety testing similar to that for pharmaceuticals.

The so-called new psychoactive substances, which have street names like “spice,” “meow-meow” and “bath salts” and mimic banned substances such as marijuana, ecstasy and methamphetamine, are banned in Canada.

Dr. Perry Kendall, B.C.’s chief medical officer, said it’s doubtful the Harper government would adopt a similar approach to deal with those drugs, despite Health Canada last month warning Canadians about the serious health risks associated with the drugs.

But he added it is worth watching what happens in New Zealand because health officials here could potentially use the results — if they prove to reduce harm to users — to push for similar reforms later on. The biggest users of such party drugs, he said, are usually those aged 15 to 20.

“We have a lot of drugs of unknown quality and unknown purity that do not have a trivial risk if you buy them on the street. You can potentially overdose,” Kendall said. “We should look and see what we can learn from countries with different drug policies.”

He cited a situation in May this year in which B.C. health officials were warned to watch out for potential overdoses involving the drug fentanyl, an opiate often mistaken for heroin that was believed to be linked to 23 deaths this year. The RCMP also found drugs sold as ecstasy included a range of substances, including caffeine and methamphetamine.

Kendall noted countries like Portugal, which have decriminalized personal use of illicit substances, has seen a decrease in harms from drugs as well as a drop in court times and fewer overdoses.

The Canadian Drug Policy Coalition has twice sought unsuccessfully to convince the Harper government to not ban the substances but to study them, similar to what’s being done in New Zealand.

“With banning the substances all you’re doing is guaranteeing that people don’t know what they’re taking and that increases the risk,” said coalition director Donald MacPherson.

The New Zealand law is getting global scrutiny, with the New York-based non-profit Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates legalizing marijuana, saying this week that it wants to get a similar bill introduced in Congress.

Like many countries, New Zealand has been inundated with designer drugs in recent years, and has become frustrated with finding itself a step behind the manufacturers. Once a drug is declared illegal, a maker often alters its composition slightly to create a new, legal compound.

“These new substances are being created and governments ban them and new ones come along. It’s a bit of a cat-and-mouse game,” MacPherson said. “New Zealand decided to stop doing that and say, ‘Look this is not working because it does not solve the problem.’”

The United Nation’s World Drug Report 2013 suggests new psychoactive substance abuse is growing at “an unprecedented rate and posing unforeseen public health challenges across the world,” rising 50 per cent, from 166 different substances at the end of 2009 to 251 by mid-2012.

Canadian authorities identified 59 new psychoactive substances in the first two quarters of 2012, the report noted, almost as many as in the United States.

Dr. Stewart Jessamine, a New Zealand health ministry official, said drug makers would need to show their drug is free from high rates of serious side effects such as reproductive problems, seizures and addiction. They also need to demonstrate they have clean manufacturing labs and secure supply chains.

ksinoski@vancouversun.com

With files from Associated Press