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Five

The easiest way to make MDMA, Sasha Shulgin wrote in PiHKAL, is to use a precursor called safrole. A naturally occurring chemical compound found in nutmeg and other spices, safrole was once used as an ingredient in root beer before it was banned as a food additive by the FDA. Animal-testing studies showed it could lead to cancer.

Safrole oil smells like licorice, and is obtained by harvesting sassafras trees, which are found in various parts of the world including eastern Asia and North America. In the United States the trees don’t produce enough oil to make harvesting them profitable, but in countries like Myanmar, Vietnam, China, and Cambodia, the rise of ecstasy in the 1990s set off a scramble to turn native trees into a cash crop. Cambodia was particularly susceptible to exploitation by the ecstasy trade. The impoverished Southeast Asian nation of sixteen million people shares long, porous borders with Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos, across which traffickers on bicycle, motorcycle, or even on foot dart through forests to evade detection. With few patrols and a history of corrupt officials turning their backs to drug crime, Cambodia maintains a reputation as a smuggling haven. It also possesses an abundance of a rare type of sassafras tree prized for its capacity to generate rich, highly potent safrole oil. Known as mreah prew phnom, it’s found in large quantities in a protected, mountainous area of the country called the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary.

The 1988 United Nations drug treaty produced an agreement to expand the drug war from crackdowns on illicit drugs to crackdowns on the compounds used to make them, including safrole oil.

Traditionally in Southeast Asia, safrole oil has been used in small quantities to make medicines, including those used to salve skin irritations. But increasing demand for MDMA toward the end of the twentieth century created a multimillion-dollar trade in Cambodia, served by increasingly large and sophisticated operations. The oil was distilled inside factories that were protected by armed guards, and proprietors worked in tandem with poachers of pythons, pangolins, tigers, and other jungle animals. The distillers and poachers would eat the animals or sell them on black markets.

The harvest required entire mreah prew phnom trees to be cut down and their roots chopped off and boiled in giant pots for nearly a week. The product, safrole oil, sold for $200 a gallon, each gallon enough to make thousands of ecstasy tablets. Apparently, many sassafras farmers were left in the dark as to its purpose. “Some erroneously suspected that it was used for yama, or methamphetamine,” wrote Myanmar-focused publication the Irrawaddy in 2009. “One thought it was used to make an atomic bomb.”

The environmental damage became catastrophic, not just for the destroyed trees but also because leaking oil killed off fish, frogs, and other animals. “The illicit distilling of sassafras oil in these mountains is slowly but surely killing the forests and wildlife,” said David Bradfield, who served as adviser to the Wildlife Sanctuaries project of Fauna and Flora International in 2008. “The production of sassafras oil is a huge operation, which affects not only the area where the distilleries are actually located, but ripples outward, leaving devastation and destruction in its wake.” He added that the livelihoods of as many as fifteen thousand indigenous people—hunters-gatherers in the wildlife sanctuaries—were in jeopardy.

Cambodian production ramped up, spiking after neighboring Vietnam banned production of safrole oil in 1999 and then again after China enforced stricter controls in 2004. Three years later, facing the real possibility that the mreah prew phnom tree might be felled into extinction, Cambodia banned the production of the oil.

Simultaneously, Southeast Asian nations accelerated efforts to crack down on the safrole oil trade. In October 2007 three shipping ­containers—containing some fifty tons of the Cambodia-produced safrole oil—were seized at a port in southern Thailand. The containers—two bound for China, one for the United States—possessed an estimated cumulative value of $150 million.

International agents intent on wiping out the trade sent an even louder message a year later. In June 2008, Cambodian and Australian federal police descended upon the Pursat province in western Cambodia, where they destroyed fifty safrole oil laboratories and arrested scores of people. Hoping to deter anyone else from continuing the practice, the officers—clad in gas masks and hazmat suits—publicly burned more than twelve hundred seized drums of the oil, blanketing the sky with giant clouds of black smoke. Enough safrole to make more than 200 million ecstasy pills—billions of dollars worth—went up in flames.

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies were pulling off ecstasy busts of historic proportions. In 2005, officials seized about a ton of the pills in Melbourne, Australia. In 2007, a drug baron named Rob Karam (who was out on bail and awaiting trial in the 2005 ecstasy seizure) traveled to Hong Kong to negotiate a massive ecstasy sale with the Calabrian Mafia, of southern Italy. The deal could have been worth billions. But the man Karam met with was working undercover for the Australian Federal Police. His information helped the government intercept about four tons of ecstasy pills shipped inside tomato cans.

The international effort to disrupt the ecstasy trade was surprisingly successful. Though big drug seizures don’t always make a significant dent in supply, and eliminating one precursor chemical (another name for a critical drug ingredient) sometimes causes chemists to switch to another, this one-two punch was extremely effective. After peaking in the early years of the 2000s, MDMA became increasingly difficult to find.

In the United Kingdom, where EDM (electronic dance music) culture was popular, the drought was most immediately evident. “There wasn’t any MDMA to be had, which is unusual in a market with 500,000 participants every week,” said journalist and drugs expert Mike Power.

The site Pill Reports, where users post the results after testing their drugs, showed that much of the so-called ecstasy that began appearing on the UK scene was adulterated. This fact did not stop dance-floor denizens from swallowing pills anyway, but those who were paying attention quickly realized that something was amiss. The lack of safrole oil had forced the hands of ecstasy suppliers. “A number of international syndicates took a vote on whether or not to raise the wholesale prices on pills or look for cheaper substitutions,” an anonymous source with inside information is quoted as saying in Power’s book Drugs Unlimited. “Apparently the vote came down on the side of substitutions and it was after this that we started seeing more and more pills with what we could consider adulterants.”

The MDMA drought affected dance-music culture across the world. In Europe it helped usher in a new class of exotic drugs known as “legal highs.” In the United States, adulterated ecstasy contributed to a spike in rave deaths. And at the bottom of the planet, in New Zealand, it ushered in a more insidious substance: meth. The problem got so bad that a quirky man who talked with God decided to do something about it.

Born in 1971, Matt Bowden was a precocious kid. Growing up in New Zealand, he loved music and attended university early, at age sixteen. He studied computer science but soon dropped out. “I got bored,” he said. “I didn’t think I needed a degree to get along in life.” He played in a metal band and taught guitar for a living. In his twenties he was drawn in by the electronic music scene and its illicit substances.

By the late 1990s he was a club kid on the nightlife scene. During the summer of 1998—the New Zealand “summer of love,” he called it—he was living in Auckland and the city was awash in MDMA. The dance-music scene was exploding, and everyone seemed to be hugging one another. The festivities continued on for a few years, until about 2003, when international eradication efforts slowed New Zealand’s ecstasy supply to a trickle.

The drug landscape in small, far-flung New Zealand has long been different than that of most countries. Composed of two main islands and hundreds of smaller ones in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, New Zealand is the most isolated well-populated country in the world, a full thousand miles from Australia. Because of this isolation, certain drugs simply don’t proliferate there. “We are surrounded by water and have strong border controls that have always made it challenging for drugs like cocaine and heroin to get into New Zealand,” said Ian Hastings, a retired senior drug-squad detective. “In some ways that is a blessing, but in many other ways it’s not.” Without ecstasy, and without cocaine—which in some countries had filled the void in ecstasy’s absence—homemade crystal meth instead began taking root in New Zealand. In 2003 the percentage of the population using it rose to 2.7 percent, the highest in its history.

Many of Bowden’s friends and family members became addicted to meth, as did he. During this time he noticed a stark change in the local culture. “Everyone in the nightclubs started roughing each other up,” he said. “People were paranoid.” Fights routinely broke out, whereas before club-goers had been warm and friendly. A friend of Bowden’s entered a fit of psychosis while under the influence of meth, stabbing himself with a samurai sword and dying from the wounds. Another friend was killed when a meth lab exploded. These deaths greatly troubled Bowden, so he brainstormed ways he could help. He had some experience in the drug business, having apprenticed with a pharmacologist, and he had worked for a time developing stimulants with legal ingredients, known as “herbal highs.” Now Bowden wanted to develop a successor to ecstasy and a safer alternative to meth, one that would satisfy the urges of the all-night-raging crowd.

Internet message boards discussing drugs had become popular, and Bowden began reading about one compound called benzylpiperazine (BZP). Over the years it had been developed both as a treatment for parasites and as an antidepressant, though it didn’t quite fit the bill for either. It had speed-like qualities, and in the United States first came onto the DEA’s radar in 1996, when it was being used in California. Though it hadn’t really caught on, there were concerns about its potential for abuse. As Bowden dug deeper into its clinical trial history, however, he concluded that it was relatively safe. “What attracted me was the history of research with amphetamine addicts,” he said, adding that they reacted favorably to switching over to the less-dangerous BZP. Like meth it got users’ blood pumping. Unlike meth, however, it didn’t seem to lead to addiction. “After you had too much, you felt you had too much,” Bowden explained. “You weren’t tempted to keep taking more.”

Because it had never been banned in New Zealand, BZP was legal. Bowden set out to bring BZP to his fellow ravers and then to the entire country.

Bowden is not a typical drug lord. Though he became incredibly rich from selling chemicals that are now illegal, he said his ultimate goal was to save kids from overdoses and addiction. His attempt to overhaul New Zealand’s drug laws was bold and unorthodox, not unlike the man himself. He doesn’t crave obscurity like most kingpins. Rather, he seeks out high-profile opportunities to make his case, and for a time could be seen on New Zealand television wearing flamboyant suits, science-fiction-inspired garb from his steampunk fashion line, and platinum blond, feathered hair. His passions over the years have run from learning complicated chemical processes and delving into the minutiae of legislative bills to performing rock operas as his David Bowie–inspired alter ego, Starboy.

He also claims to talk to God.

“Growing up, I had a strong Christian period,” he explains, over a Skype video call, speaking quickly and in a thick Kiwi accent. “I guess I had a vocation, or calling. I had a relationship with the Creator that was based on a belief that God is alive and can talk to us and cares about our lives. If we care to talk to the Creator—and ask, ‘What’s the path I’m supposed to be on? What am I supposed to be doing?’—he’ll answer and lead us and guide us.”

Bowden decided to dial this hotline to heaven during a loveless period in the early 1990s. “I asked, ‘Hey, when are you going to bring the right girl for me to marry?’ ” God responded, Bowden claims, explaining that he would know his great love because she would deliver him a cocktail. This did not happen overnight, however. Bowden had to wait for seven long years. In the meantime, his life began unraveling as he became addicted to meth. One night, feeling particularly sorry for himself, he went into a strip club and found himself making eye contact with the woman on stage.

“This light shined down upon this man as he was walking into the room,” the dancer said. “He was looking at me with this big Cheshire grin and this bright green shirt and this blond ruffled hair.” Before long she made her way to the bar and then, just as was prophesied, brought him a drink. And that’s how Matt Bowden met his wife, Kristi, a cover model for the Australian versions of Penthouse and Hustler, who is known in the industry as Kristi Kennedy. This was July 4, 2000, and they would go on to marry and have two children.

Around that same time, Bowden launched another life-changing endeavor: he began spreading the gospel of BZP. A member of a class of drugs called piperazines, BZP is more like an amphetamine than ecstasy. Employing chemists in labs in India to synthesize the drug, he began by giving away samples to friends in the club scene. They seemed to like it. He claims it helped some people—including him and Kristi, who had been hooked as well—kick their meth addictions. His initial experiment successful, Bowden set to mass-producing BZP. He settled on manufacturers based in China. “From looking at the Internet, I saw where the pharmaceutical industry goes when they need to produce molecules,” he said. “So we went to the same sorts of factories.” He began distributing BZP in head shops around the country. It started to catch on, until hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders were taking it. Beginning in 2004, New Zealand’s meth usage rate began to drop.

BZP also gained popularity in Europe, sold under names like Legal X and Cosmic Kelly; Bowden wasn’t selling it there, but his party elixirs appear to have inspired others. “Piperazines were the first new drug to adulterate MDMA that we saw,” said Rainer Schmid, of Vienna General Hospital in Austria, who runs one of the most sophisticated chemical analytics laboratories in all of Europe. “This was a direct result of Bowden.”

BZP seemed to be a great solution to the decline of MDMA. For the most part, it was safe. And though the United States had scheduled it, the drug was still legal in Europe and New Zealand, where it was sold everywhere from gas stations to local malls. A pack of six tablets might cost forty dollars. Some twenty-six million BZP pills had been sold in New Zealand by 2008, making it the country’s second-most-popular recreational drug—trailing only marijuana. The fighting, overdoses, and violence that had defined New Zealand’s crystal meth culture declined.

But soon a new change occurred: copycat chemists began releasing BZP products with escalating dosages and without proper labeling. Worried that government regulators would come down on them, Bowden confronted other New Zealand dealers. “You all stole my intellectual property,” he told them. “You’ve all broken my copyright.” Yet instead of getting angry or threatening to sue, he asked them to join forces. “Let’s get around a table and work together to develop some safety standards,” he said. Together he and the majority of the country’s BZP manufacturers formed a group called the Social Tonics Association of New Zealand (STANZ), which developed a “code of practice” regarding the production and distribution of its drugs, seeking input from the police and government. The idea was to make BZP as safe as possible. The association attempted to set rules for maximum dosages and age limits, but the best way, it reckoned, was for the government to regulate it.

At this point Bowden’s career began to shift. He focused less on growing his party-pill empire and more on spreading the gospel of safer drug consumption. Drug dealers never run public awareness campaigns, but Bowden attempted to convince the people and politicians of New Zealand that a regulated drug industry would be a tremendous public-health benefit. Since some people are always going to take drugs, he argued, offering something that wouldn’t kill them would be a public service.

“I’m not actually promoting drug use,” Bowden said. “I’m promoting safer policy.”

STANZ commissioned a study to help it understand the health consequences of BZP use. The group hoped it would sway the government to its side, and the results were encouraging. “We weren’t seeing a lot of adverse events,” Bowden said. Though BZP caused a number of hospitalizations, STANZ found “no record of any death, long-lasting injury or illness attributed solely to BZP.”

The New Zealand government was willing to hear Bowden out. In 2004 the Ministry of Health commissioned further studies of BZP, taking seriously the task of understanding the drug—so seriously, in fact, that an addiction specialist and advisory committee member named Dr. Doug Sellman went to a head shop, called Cosmic Corner—which carried brands with names like Kamikaze and Rapture—and took BZP himself. “They gave me this little packet. I went home on a Friday night and took it and sat in front of the television, waiting,” he said. Not much happened, except he stayed up until the middle of the night and had a bad hangover the next day. “You don’t have to worry, really, about this drug,” he told the committee, and its report recommended BZP not be banned.

In 2005, at the recommendation of the Ministry of Health, the New Zealand government passed a law requiring BZP buyers to be eighteen and regulating the drug’s dosage and manufacture—just as STANZ had hoped. But a year later, after reviewing a series of new studies and consulting the public—Bowden said the media had begun painting BZP in a negative light—the Ministry of Health determined that BZP posed a “moderate risk” and thus should be reclassified. In 2008, the New Zealand government banned BZP.

The battle, however, was just beginning.