Children used as drug buyers

Drug syndicates are using children as young as 13 to buy raw materials for making methamphetamine (speed) in Wellington.

Senior Sergeant Mike Arnerich, head of the Organised Crime Unit, said the involvement of teenagers in the drug industry was a major concern for police.

Criminal syndicates are organising shopping sprees for over-the-counter cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine (PSE), one of the key raw materials used in the manufacture of speed.

The shopping expeditions are spread across the country, and only small quantities of the medicines are bought at each location, to avoid police detection.

Chemists and drug warehouses in the Wellington region have been burgled for speed ingredients in the past, and Mr Arnerich said "PSE shoppers" were a problem.

"We have had incidents of younger teenagers working for the methamphetamine syndicates to purchase PSE products - some as young as 13," he said. "They were working for gang syndicates."

Some Wellington pharmacies are now demanding photo identification from buyers of PSE products and police are pushing for chemists to record the details of buyers.

In some cases, pharmacists are refusing to sell people cold and flu remedies if they suspect that the medicines will be used illegally.

Pharmacy Guild president Gray Maingay said pharmacists used a range of strategies to minimise misuse of the drug.

These included asking for identification, particularly if the customer was not known to the pharmacist.

"Every pseudoephedrine sale is treated on its merits and weighed up accordingly," he said.

Taranaki pharmacists have had the same problem and say the drug shoppers are sometimes children in school uniform.

Four methamphetamine laboratories have been uncovered in Wellington this year, and Mr Arnerich acknowledged that more were operating undetected.

Speed has become the drug of choice in Wellington and elsewhere in the country.

"Methamphetamine production is a very organised enterprise that requires several different cells [of individuals] who are each given the task of acquiring the different resources that are required," said Mr Arnerich.

One difficulty for police is that the cells buying the pseudoephedrine-based products - particularly youngsters - are low down the organised pecking order of the drug syndicates.

The lower layers protect the kingpins at the top.

Commissioner for Children Roger McClay said the practice was another of the "hair-raising and extraordinary ways" in which "lawbreakers and creeps" used children for their own gain.

Mr McClay cited other examples of people giving drugs to children to calm them and of smugglers secreting illegal substances in the crevices of babies' skin.

"It's an environment which is not conducive to the sort of society most New Zealanders want," he said.

"You cannot let the gangsters rule and I look forward to the day these creeps crawl back under their rock."

- NZPA