Growing up rurally in Te Tai Tokerau, Wendy’s love for the land developed young.
“I was a horse kid.
“My family was not well off, but I was lucky that we lived rurally, and people would happily graze horses for free or cheap in those days.
“My first pony was $175, saved up for by me and my parents. He was both entertainment and transport, accompanying me everywhere I went until leaving home at 17.”
Her interest in drug reform was sparked in 2008, when the government of the time chose to ban BZP party pills instead of implementing proper market regulations. Wendy, who was living in Wellington at the time, saw what was happening as a result and became determined to do something about it.
“The result of the ban was predictable. The illicit market filled up with fake pills, and there was no way for people obtaining drugs in this market to keep themselves safe.”
Realising she could have more influence with a university degree, Wendy enrolled at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington to study criminology and social policy.
“I realised I'd never get attention just shouting opinions into the void, so I went to university to get a degree so people would listen to me.“The goal was to be able to advocate for better drug laws, and while drug issues should be in social policy, the law and its impact on users means they are in criminology as well. So I studied both.”
After learning the extent of the damage caused globally by drug prohibition, Wendy says she became all the more determined to end the injustice.
“My time at Vic taught me how to craft a good argument that makes people listen and pay attention, but more importantly, it set a fire under me when I learned the racist history behind the creation of drug laws and their enforcement.”
Once it had emerged that psychoactive chemicals and adulterated substances were being sold as more well-known recreational drugs, Wendy decided to buy her own reagent testing kit (in which you place a sample in a certain liquid, and the resulting colour change alerts you to the presence of a particular drug) and started testing among her community.
"For the first few years I did it, I didn't test a single thing that was what it was supposed to be.”
Graduation coincided with the founding of KnowYourStuffNZ—a not-for-profit charity Wendy grew from the ground up. To this day, the organisation is focused on drug harm reduction through providing accessible community substance testing at clinics, festivals, and events across New Zealand.
Armed with the kudos—and the knowledge—to make a difference, a more formal organisation, and a spectrometer (a device that can determine the exact content of a sample rather than just detect the presence of a particular drug within it as reagents do), KnowYourStuffNZ began setting up at festivals around the country.
“I wanted to help my community, prove drug checking works to reduce harm, and start a national conversation about harm reduction.
“But at the time, testing at festivals meant operating in this weird little grey area where what we did wasn’t illegal, but everything around it was."
Those who did allow KnowYourStuffNZ on site were obliged to pretend they had no idea what was going on.
“We knew that if we'd gone to the Government and asked for permission, we would have been dismissed out of hand. Without significant evidence and public support, we couldn't round up the political will.
“There was definitely a view in the early days that we were just a bunch of festival hippies that, you know, wanted to take drugs."
Eventually the evidence KnowYourStuffNZ was producing became impossible to ignore. Public and political support grew, and in 2019 a research report from Te Herenga Waka found that 68 percent of people who had used a drug testing service had either disposed of drugs they intended to consume, or followed advice given to them by a volunteer.
Rather than encouraging drug-taking, testing had turned out to be a remarkably effective deterrent.
Thanks to Wendy’s determined advocacy, relationship-building and evidence collecting, in 2021 New Zealand became the first country in the world to explicitly legalise drug-checking services.
Selected as one of the University’s distinguished alumni, Wendy is recognised for her outstanding contribution to our country’s public health.
She was also appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit earlier in the year.
After eight years of direct action in which all of her goals were achieved, plus a law change, drug checking has been established as a legitimate harm reduction measure and Aotearoa has world-leading drug checking legislation.
Wendy has now stepped back from the day-to-day running of KnowYourStuffNZ but remains involved as Chair of the Board of Trustees. She continues to be active in drug reform.
She has returned to the land, residing on a small farm in the Wairarapa with her husband, where together they breed coloured sheep to produce wool for hand spinners and for food. They also have an extensive vegetable garden, orchard, and chickens.
“It’s The Good Life, just with more mud.”