New Zealand’s mainstream drug law turns 50 this 12 months – yet we still do not have a transparent, comprehensive picture of the societal harms different drugs have.
when Misuse of Drugs Act Introduced in 1975, it developed a set of prohibitions not only through evidence of social harm, but additionally through the politics and anxieties of the time.
Ban on drugs Historically reflected A mixture of real harms, moral panic, political momentum, prevailing attitudes, prejudice against minority groups and industry influence.
Just recentlyscheduling decisions are influenced by media coverage, public concern, piecemeal social statistics, and the views of academics and agencies.
A standard proxy for judging the harm of a drug is the extent to which it’s related to dependence.
Several self-reports Screening tools are used to evaluate dependence—but these typically bring a psychological dimension to an issue that we all know is multifaceted, with societal implications that reach beyond the drug user.
There has been some progress in developing Broader damage classification For different substances, but such reviews depend on small, select panels with limited focused expertise.
While there are a handful Index of social harm of drug usethese also include significant gaps.
To help address such limitations, we developed the Substance Outcomes Harm Index (SO_HI) based on the concept individuals who use drugs can offer worthwhile, experience-based insights.
Although its mechanisms are still being developed, our preliminary findings provide recent insights that challenge common beliefs about drug use and harm.
What our recent index revealed
Our SO_HI Index draws on data from greater than 4,800 anonymous respondents in 2025. New Zealand drug trends surveywhose large sample broadly mirrors the broader population.
Respondents were first asked whether, prior to now six months, that they had experienced Harm from alcohol or drug use The identified lifetime of any of the 12 “dimensions”. These range from physical and mental health to relationships, personal safety, work/study performance, parenting and care giving, violence and money.
The harms described are largely acute problems that make it easy for substance users to attach with their recent alcohol and drug use. Some substances, reminiscent of tobacco, are also accountable for long-term chronic diseases and these harms usually are not well captured in our index.
For each area where harm was reported, respondents were shown a temporary description of 4 increasing levels of severity and asked to pick out the one that they had experienced.
Interestingly, nearly two-thirds (.1 63..1%) of the respondents reported no negative consequences from drug use in any dimension.
The mostly reported drug-related problems were mental health problems (19.0%), money problems (18.2%), physical health effects (14.6%), and relationship problems (14.3%).
Fewer participants reported work or study problems (10.5%), unsafe driving (6.7%), or personal safety concerns (6.7%). Only a small proportion (3.1%) reported legal problems related to their substance use.
When asked which substances were responsible, 60% of respondents identified a single drug (59.7%), 1 / 4 identified two (26.3%), and about 9% identified three.
On our index, heroin/morphine, methamphetamine and GHB/GBL (also referred to as fantasy, liquid ecstasy or G) carried the very best overall mean harm scores across 12 dimensions.
At the opposite end of the size, LSD had the bottom harm mean rating, followed by cocaine and MDMA (ecstasy)—the latter scoring a fraction of the harm level of methamphetamine.
These scores reflect that Current patterns of use in New Zealand And will vary across countries when it comes to prevalence, price and availability.
For example, a low rating for cocaine likely reflects low availability and low frequency of use in New Zealand. In our sample, 71% of cocaine users had used it only a couple of times prior to now six months and 21% had used it monthly.
Alcohol ranks sixth on our index, behind heroin, methamphetamine and GHB.
This differs from some published international classifications Pour the wine over the top. However, our index measures the person risk of harm, not the entire societal harm, that might cause prevalence of use.
Some harm estimates were also based on the relatively small variety of respondents who attributed a drug to harm.
Where our research is next
Our preliminary findings illustrate the worth of engaging with drug users to tell policy responses and resourcing of health services and to check the danger of harm of several types of drugs.
The vulnerability rating may also be broken down for demographic groups that could be more vulnerable to drug harm—reminiscent of young people or those with mental health problems—and for ethnic groups which might be often poorly served by health services, including Māori and Pacific.
Our questions may also be tailored to specific groups, reminiscent of heroin users, to enhance estimates of gear which might be rarely used.
We at the moment are developing a technique to weight different damage attributes and severity levels. For example, some may consider parental damages more serious than those related to property crimes or poor work performance.
We are also validating our results against other damage measures and assessment tools, and further refinement is forthcoming.
Harm related to polydrug use must be accounted for, on condition that 40% of our sample attributed a couple of substance to their problems.
Application of our index to other countries, where patterns of drug availability and problematic use differ, would even be necessary to enable robust international comparisons.