Editorial: Lawmakers need to step up in P fight

New Zealand is a small, self-contained society, surrounded by sea and capable of being effectively policed. We should not tolerate the damage being done our social fabric by pure methamphetamine, the drug known as P.

Over the past week, the Herald has highlighted, not for the first time, the pain and despair this terrible concoction is causing to those addicted and their loved ones. Their stories have been harrowing.

This is a subject that those more fortunate might be finding tiresome but we make no apologies for bringing it to the fore again. Its prevalence in the community is such that nobody can afford to be complacent.

It might be slipped to your teenage son or daughter, grandson or grand-daughter, a trusted employee or a business partner. Initially the effects are deceptive. Users do not become withdrawn, they get a rush of energy, can stay awake for days, work hard and not get hungry. They also argue, look for fights, feel invincible. Then they come down, feeling hungry, sleepy, depressed and craving another dose.

The effect on the brain is such that users need a bigger hit each time for the same stimulation. Once addicted they are easily drawn into the grip of the gangs that manufacture and distribute most of it.

Nobody is immune to its damage. The crime that addicts commit to supply their habit could hurt anyone at any time. It accounts for a high proportion of cases before the criminal courts, from burglary and car theft to the kind of assaults and murders that have illustrated the drug's capacity to cause particularly frenzied violence.

It is 13 years since police first stumbled on a P "lab" in this country, after gangs had learned how to make it from associates in the United States. The number of discoveries quickly rose to about 200 labs a year by 2003, when the authorities began to look at controls on the main ingredient, pills containing pseudoephedrine that were available from pharmacies for relief of colds and flu. Yet six years on, sales of pseudoephedrine have yet to be properly monitored and greater quantities are now being imported from a Chinese underworld.

Customs seized three million pills last year, hidden in all sorts of goods - and officers believe they are missing five times the quantity they find.

Police suspect they are still finding only 10 per cent of local P labs. And they must find them by chance because they lack the resources to go looking for them.

It is an outrage that this country should have come to record the highest P infestation proportionate to population in the world. The police may be doing all they can but successive governments could have been doing more.

Politicians fond of preaching "law and order" have utterly failed to address this most devastating source of crime in our community. Next time they strike a tough pose on criminality they should be challenged to solve this one.

This week Justice Minister Simon Power told us he might tighten money-laundering rules and streamline court procedure, but much more is required.

Police should be given the resources they need to make the eradication of P their primary mission.

They should be given the extensive powers of search and seizure they need to crack down on the drug's manufacture and distribution.

Customs, too, should be using all their powers of random search and resources to identify points in the import chain where the drug suppliers have had access to courier goods. Needless to say, no further imports should be permitted from that trail.

If this country puts its mind to it, we can stop this blight that is destroying lives, estranging families and presenting a public menace. We have a right to be angry that an effective crackdown has not happened long before this.

If legislators and law enforcers need a spur to do something drastic at last, let's give it to them.