The tragic case of body builder Justin Rys

Justin died today 5 June 2015 at the age of 38. RIP, Justin, a big man with a big heart.

This is a sad story. It’s about a man with an obsession – an obsession which is so out of control, it’s killing him. That man is Justin Rys, New Zealand’s most successful body builder. He has won a number of titles in his short life including Mr New Zealand, Mr Australasia and Mr Oceania.

To help build body mass, Mr Rys uses steroids, growth hormones and other drugs. The steroids have enlarged and weakened his heart, which has led to breathing difficulties. By the time he was 24, his heart was already so weak that he collapsed one day and had to be taken to hospital. He was told he could be dead within five years. But Mr Rys was a driven man and figured he had nothing to lose – and now he was going to die anyway. Once he got out of hospital, he continued using body building drugs and working out.

Fantasy (GHB and GBL)

One of the drugs he used was GBL a Class B drug with the street name – Fantasy. GBL promotes the body’s production of growth hormone and strengthens muscle tone. In the US, it is used as a treatment for cataplexy – a condition in which patients lose muscle tone and collapse. Mr Rys began using GBL at age 19. Eventually he was taking up to 120 mls a day – enough to kill a recreational user. (A recreational dose, inducing a pleasant sense of well-being, is about 2 – 4 mls.)

GBL was made illegal in New Zealand in 2002 by which time Mr Rys had already been using it for five years. In 2007, at the age of, he was arrested for importation and given a nine year sentence – reduced on appeal to seven years. He was released on parole in 2010. Soon after, he headed to Fiji where steroids and GBL could be legally purchased at chemist shops. Not surprisingly, his heart condition deteriorated rapidly. He returned to New Zealand after only two months, collapsed getting off the plane and spent 10 days in hospital. This time the specialists told him he probably had only 12 months to live.

Megarexia

This is seriously compulsive behaviour and one can’t help but wonder why someone would do this to themselves. The reality is that Mr Rys is driven by something stronger than drug addiction. He has muscle dysmorphic disorder, sometimes known as megarexia. When he looks in the mirror, he sees himself as small even though he looks massive compared to you and I. Megarexia is the opposite of anorexia in which those afflicted are so obsessed with their weight, they may starve themselves to death.

When Mr Rys got out of hospital, his heart specialist told him he had to lose weight – no easy task for someone with megarexia. But he tried and over the next six months he lost about 20kg. But losing weight made him depressed and he didn’t feel any better. He was going to die anyway so what difference did it make – the allure of the Fantasy came back to his mind.

It was then that Mr Rys discovered a beauty product called EzFlow Tip Blender which was 70% GBL, 30% alcohol and available on TradeMe This product is used by beauticians up and down the country and imported into New Zealand by a company in Whakatane. The owner of this company said she had been importing it since 2003 (after GBL was declared illegal). She even has a dangerous goods certificate from the Customs Service giving her permission.

After further investigation, Mr Rys found that GBL is also a naturally occurring by product in the manufacture of wine and most wines contain small quantities. It’s also used in a variety of industrial products. The fact that GBL is present in so many other products and EzFlow Tip Blender was being imported with the blessing of the Customs Service lulled Mr Rys into a false sense of hope – or fantasy – perhaps EzFlow Tip Blender was not an illegal product. So he imported large quantities for his personal use from the same company in the United States that the beauticians in New Zealand get it from.

One law for Justin Rys…

The Customs Service didn’t like that. Mr Rys was known to have a criminal record. So they prosecuted him and charged him with importation of a Class B drug. They didn’t charge beauticians who had been breaking the law for nine years; nor did they charge anyone importing wine containing GBL. As far as the Customs Service is concerned, there seems to be one law for Justin Rys and another one for everyone else using this product.

Mr Rys is currently on remand in Rimutaka prison. His health is so poor, he takes seven different medications. His heart is so weak, he gets short of breath and struggles to breathe at night. He has apnoea – he stops breathing when he falls asleep and requires an oxygen mask to assist his breathing. Without the mask, he almost suffocates in his sleep which wakes him up. This happens dozens of times a night.

Recently, the machine which drives the oxygen into the’ mask stopped working. After a distressing and sleepless night, Mr Rys advised the prison nursing staff that he was couldn’t breathe and needed a new machine. The nurses ignored him. Mr Rys advised nursing staff every day for the next 2½ weeks that he was suffocating in his sleep and needed help. He could easily have died during the night but the nurses didn’t seem to care. It was only when Mr Rys’ lawyer contacted the prison manager about the problem that any action was taken. The next day, he was taken into Hospital and given a new machine. Even with the mask, the fact remains that because of years of steroid and other drug use, he has severe health problems and could die at any time.

No treatment

Mr Rys’ addiction is unusual. He has two drivers for his drug addiction – muscle dysmorphic disorder which is a life threatening mental health condition and the addictive nature of the drugs themselves. Making matters worse, he has never had any treatment. He had a few counselling sessions with a psychologist in prison and subsequently had one session with a psychiatrist at the Wellington hospital alcohol and drug service (CADS). Unfortunately, the psychiatrist didn’t think he needed to see him again and discharged him.

In other words, Mr Rys’ obsession with muscle size has not been understood as a life threatening condition by psychiatrists, let alone by the Courts or by Corrections Department psychologists. Instead of receiving treatment, he has been hounded by the Customs Service and punished by the justice system. Instead of being sent to a clinic where he could receive specialized care for his condition he has been sent to prison where his health needs are largely ignored.

Unusual or not

This is an unusual case – or is it. In fact there are hundreds of people in prison with alcohol and drug problems driven by mental health disorders that have never even been diagnosed, let alone treated. This is one of the reasons that so many offenders relapse and re-offend as soon as they get out – and why 52% of prisoners New Zealand are back inside within five years. Mr Rys’ case is not unusual. It’s just that he’s a big man with a big heart – and he stands out in a crowd, especially a crowd of beauticians.

Untested substances – Dunne to death by refusal to spend $5,000

Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne has adopted a tough approach towards ‘untested substances’ found in synthetic cannabis, but a hands-off approach towards more dangerous Class B drugs found in alcohol. On October 3rd, he banned three synthetic cannabis substances and instructed health officials to investigate and test these new products.

This means 19 different substances are now banned under Temporary Class Drug Notices which became law in August – with 43 products containing these substances already removed from the market. Mr Dunne issued this staunch statement:

“If testing shows that they contain substances already banned, they will be gone. If it shows they contain new untested substances, I will put in place the necessary Temporary Class Drug Notices to deal with it. I have removed 43 products already; if I have to remove another 43, so be it.”

“If the industry thinks they can get around the law by changing a couple of ingredients, repackaging, re-branding and back to business the way they always have, then they have seriously misread the scope and potency of this law. We are not letting them make their profit by plying young New Zealanders with substances that are unproven and potentially unsafe. The game is over. It is just that it has not clicked for some of them yet”.

Wine also contains ‘untested substances’

In the same week, Professor Doug Sellman and Dr Geoffrey Robinson announced that medical research undertaken in the UK has come to light showing that alcoholic drinks made through the fermentation of white and red grapes contain small amounts of a drug known as Fantasy. Fantasy is the street name for gamma-hydroxybutric acid (GHB) and related substances. It is scheduled as a Class B prohibited drug – considered to be of high risk to public health.

“The UK finding that wine contains Fantasy raises the intriguing situation that New Zealand wines contain a prohibited Class B drug” said Dr Geoff Robinson, who is one of the authors of New Zealand research which equates the risk that alcohol poses to society as similar to the risk posed by GHB.

Prof Sellman concurs: “Given that there are no specific data on wine sold in New Zealand, it would be appropriate for the Government to sponsor such research. Little is known about the specific synergistic effect of ethanol mixed with Fantasy and at what doses the mixing of these drugs is important. The situation we are facing with the existence of two Class B drugs in wine – one legal and sold in supermarkets, the other illegal and associated with severe legal sanctions – highlights the irrational and inconsistent drug laws we have in New Zealand”.

Testing only costs $5,000

Given his staunch attitude towards the risks of ‘plying New Zealanders with substances that are unproven and potentially unsafe’, theoretically Mr Dunne has little choice but to ban wine immediately and have it tested. Of course that’s not going to happen; wine will never be banned.

But if it contains GHB and no testing is done, this makes a mockery of Mr Dunne’s tough talk. Alcohol kills over 1,000 New Zealanders a year and Mr Dunne refuses to even get it tested to see if it contains an illegal Class B drug. Meanwhile he bans these synthetic cannabis products which have yet to kill anyone.
At the very least, the testing needs to be done. It only costs $5,000 – a cost the Government is prepared to bear to test synthetic cannabis.

Suppose that wine was tested and found to contain GHB. Would Mr Dunne be true to his word and prevent wine growers from supplying ‘New Zealanders with substances that are unproven and potentially unsafe.’ Of course not. The Government doesn’t to spend $5,000 to test wine because it doesn’t want to know the answer. It would all be too embarrassing and so this research will never be Dunne.

The global war on drugs has failed – NZ losing millions in drug revenues

This is from the executive summary of the UN Global Commission on Drug Policy released in June 2011.

“The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the US government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed.

Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption. Apparent victories in eliminating one source or trafficking organization are negated almost instantly by the emergence of other sources and traffickers.

Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use. Government expenditures on futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in demand and harm reduction.

Urgent action required

Begin the transformation of the global drug prohibition regime. Replace drug policies and strategies driven by ideology and political convenience with fiscally responsible policies and strategies grounded in science, health, security and human rights – and adopt appropriate criteria for their evaluation.”

New Zealand’s missing out

In New Zealand, all psychoactive drugs except alcohol are prohibited, and users are prosecuted. And yet over 700,000 Kiwis smoke cannabis every year, 100,000 nearly every day. The number of prosecutions for cannabis offences is rising and in 2008, there were 9,500 convictions. Enforcement and social costs have gone up accordingly. In 2001, the black market for cannabis in New Zealand was estimated at $190 million; in 2006 the social costs, which includes the cost of police, the courts and Corrections to enforce cannabis laws, were estimated at $430 million.

This approach is part of the failed strategy of prohibition condemned by the UN and is a huge waste of money and resources. Police time could be better spent investigation more serious crimes – ones with victims.

If cannabis was deregulated and taxed (like alcohol and cigarettes), and police no longer had to enforce prohitibition laws against cannabis users, the net benefit to society is estimated to be between $400 and $860 million.

That revenue could be put to much better use than making criminals out of the 700,000 New Zealanders who like to smoke it every year. It could even be put into improving alcohol and drug treatment services which are woefully underfunded.

Illiterate prisoners not allowed to attend rehabilitation

According to Corrections Minister, Judith Collins, 90% of prisoners have low literacy levels. She acknowledges this is a problem but claims to be tackling the issue. Launching a ‘Prisoner Skills and Employment Strategy’ in October 2009, she said:

“For many prisoners, re-offending is perhaps less a matter of choice than the result of them being poorly equipped to lead a law-abiding and productive life. The skills they lack seem fundamental to the rest of us. Approximately 90% of prisoners have low literacy levels.” The Minister stressed to those attending the launch that prisoner training and employment was a ‘must have’, not a ‘nice to have’.

Continuing this theme, in June 2011, Ms Collins said: “It makes sense that if you… teach them to read and write and help them develop a good work ethic, you reduce the risk of them committing crime when they leave prison.”

Only 1.5% succeeding

It sounds like she really cares. But if 90% of prisoners have problems with reading and writing, surely the Department would make literacy classes a top priority for the majority of inmates. But it struggles to provide classes for more than a few. In 2005, the NZ Herald reported that only 353 inmates attended literacy classes and nearly half of the $3 million education budget went unspent.

Five years later (2010), Dr David Wales, Assistant General Manager for Rehabilitation and Reintegration Services, claimed 1,496 prisoners attended classroom based literacy and numeracy education. That sounds like an improvement – but these figures are deceptive. The Department’s Annual Report says only 9% were assessed by their tutors as having reached a satisfactory level and actually completed the programme.

Nine per cent of 1,496 is only 135 prisoners – even less than attended in 2005. What’s worse, the figure of 135 represents only 1.5% of the prison muster. That’s a disgrace.

Illiteracy an obstacle to rehabilitation

And the ramifications are serious. Prisoners who are unable to read and write are not permitted to attend other rehabilitation programmes (because they require literacy skills). In other words, illiterate prisoners are not allowed to attend programmes which target the causes of offending such as alcohol and drug abuse, anti-social thinking, violence, sexual offending, etc. They have to learn to read and write first. No wonder so many ex-prisoners relapse to alcohol and drugs and re-offend on release.

The lack of literacy is prison is akin to literacy levels in the dark ages. For the vast majority of people who end up in prison, literacy and employment training still remain something that would be ‘nice to have’ – no matter what the Minister may claim.

This issue is discussed at length in Roger Brooking’s new book – Flying Blind – How the justice system perpetuates crime and the Corrections Department fails to correct.

Sensible sentencing leads to reduction in prison population

There are two groups of people in prison – those who have been sentenced and those on remand waiting to be sentenced. Over the last ten years, the number of sentenced prisoners increased by 34% but there has been a massive increase – of 116% – in the number of offenders being sent to prison on remand.

The use of remand is so out of control that over 14,000 people are now remanded each year – which puts enormous pressure on the need for prison beds. In response, the Corrections Department has built a new prison for those on remand in Mt Eden and is planning to build another prison at Wiri.

But for the first time ever, this year’s justice sector forecasts predict a 6.2% decrease in the prison population over the next 10 years. The sentenced population is forecast to fall by 6% and the remand population by 7%. But the fall may even be greater than this – one scenario in the forecast suggests the remand population could fall by as much as 23%.

Cause of the decline

Those claiming that the reduction in prison population is due to better policing or reduced crime have not understood (and have misinterpreted) the data upon which prison projections are made. The turnaround in remand figures actually began in 2007 after the Sentencing Amendment Act came into effect. The Act introduced two new non-custodial sentences – community detention and intensive supervision. It also introduced home detention as an immediate, community-based sentence. Previously, offenders given home detention had to go to prison first – and then apply for home detention from there.

As a result of these changes, from 2008 onwards the number of offenders given home detention and community based sentences has gone up dramatically – by between 40% and 50%. It has taken three years for this to impact on the prison projections and for the trend to become apparent.

Conclusion – sensible sentencing

In other words, the projected drop in the prison population has very little to do with reductions in the crime rate, better policing or socio-economic factors. It’s almost entirely due to the legislation passed in 2007 which gave judges more community-based sentencing options. Because of the decline, Prime Minister John Key said we may not need to build the new prison – estimated to cost $424 million. When New Zealand is facing the biggest deficit in its history, and every prisoner costs the taxpayer over $90,000 a year, this puts new meaning into the term ‘sensible sentencing’.

A reduction in the prison population would be a positive step. But the 14,000 inmates on remand are still not allowed to attend any rehabilitation programmes in prison. And there is still very little support in the community for inmates coming out of prison. Most relapse to alcohol and drug use and eventually re-offend. Fundamentally, the system is still Flying Blind.

Being smart on crime is tough

Last week, TV reviewer Gordon Brown wrote an extraordinary opinion piece in the Taranaki Daily News titled Make the criminals pay. He expressed his disagreement with arguments put forward in my critical expose of the New Zealand justice system: Flying Blind – How the justice system perpetuates crime and the Corrections Department fails to correct. The thrust of Flying Blind is that 80% of all crime in New Zealand occurs under the influence of alcohol and drugs; and that the best way to reduce reoffending is to provide more intervention in the community rather than locking people up and trying to rehabilitate them in prison at twenty times the cost.

Mr Brown on the other hand claims that “ordinary New Zealanders want to feel safe and the only way for that to happen is to resource the police so they can do the job properly.” He also wants to impose tougher sentences on those who end up in prison.

Community safety

If Mr Brown had bothered to read Flying Blind, he might have picked up on a few facts about community safety. First, crime has been on the decline since the 1990s and the murder rate has halved over this period. The projected need for prison beds has also begun to decline for the first time in 50 years.

Second, for the last two years in a row, New Zealand has topped the global peace index out of 149 countries. The index is based on 23 different indicators including crime rates, violence, corruption, military spending, etc. In 2010, New Zealand was also ranked third by the United Nations in terms of human development.

Third, perceptions of community safety have more to do with the media than they do with the police. A study from 2002 into the role of the media’s coverage of crime reported: “the selective and disproportionate media coverage of crime, particularly violence, when set alongside actual police statistics, raises questions of skewed reporting in New Zealand at a time when crime rates are falling.”

Distorted perceptions of safety

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, New Zealanders continue to believe that violent crime is out of control. Between 2006 and 2009 international surveys found that only 57% of New Zealanders reported feeling ‘safe’. This puts us on a par with Middle Eastern countries like Lebanon (where 56% feel safe), Iran (55%) and former Communist states like Albania (54%). In the United States where the murder rate is four times higher than in New Zealand, 75% of the population report feeling safe.

What this suggests is that we don’t need more police to improve public safety. What we need is more honest journalism and less scaremongering by the likes of Garth McVicar, right wing politicians and commentators like Gordon Brown – who claims to represent the silent majority. Unfortunately, the so-called silent majority has not been silent at all. They’ve been very vocal; this uninformed, lock ‘em up brigade has dominated public debate about justice issues for the last 20 years – leading to a populist competition between National and Labour to be tough on crime.

Where has this competition to be tough on crime got us? The answer is – into a financial black hole. The last Labour Government built four new prisons. National has already built one new prison and is planning another. Justice Sector costs are estimated at around $5 billion a year. This is equivalent to the cost of one decent sized earthquake in Christchurch – but it’s not a one off. Criminal liquefaction shakes the foundations of society year, after year, after year. Mr Brown wants to ‘make the criminals pay’. But this $5 billion cost is imposed on the New Zealand taxpayer – not the criminals.

One has to wonder why people like Garth McVicar and Gordon Brown are so keen to drive the New Zealand justice system into this financial black hole. The answer to that question was provided in Mr Brown’s opinion piece. He wrote: “We (just) don’t care”. The fact that so many New Zealanders don’t seem to care is why the justice system is Flying Blind.