Drug putting women at risk

By ANGELA GREGORY

Women's Refuge believes violence associated with the use of P is putting both battered women and its staff at increased risk.

National co-ordinator Roma Balzer said abuse of the drug was an increasing worry for refuge centres because of its erratic effects on its users.

"Because their behaviour is less predictable there is quite a potential for really serious harm.

Ms Balzer said the implications of P would be discussed at the Women's Refuge annual general meeting in Rotorua next month to identify policies for dealing with it.

They included how to better identify women whose partners were P users and to develop safe practices for refuge workers.

Ms Balzer said there was a risk that men who were high on P might seek out their partners at the refuge centres, when normally they would not.

"Male batterers by and large don't approach refuges to get their partners back, but if they are on P it might distort their behaviour."

A Bay of Plenty refuge has reported an upsurge in women seeking help which was thought to be related to the rising popularity of P.

A refuge spokeswoman said in many cases the abused women were partners of men taking the drug.

But refuge workers were also suspicious the women might be using the drug themselves as they were having to constantly buy lightbulbs for the safe house.

P users sometimes use broken lightbulbs as makeshift pipes for smoking the drug.

Ms Balzer said she had not heard of any unusual depletion of lightbulbs at the country's refuges, but said it was likely some women who came seeking help would have been P users.

She said there was an increase in P-related cases at refuges in the Bay of Plenty, Waikato and Hawkes Bay before last Christmas.

The women said their husbands were P users and described extreme acts of violence, far worse than what was usually meted out to them.

"We think there must have been a sudden increased in supply around there ... It was quite a distinct geographic area."

Ms Balzer said any negative environmental stresses, from earthquakes to redundancies, triggered increased levels of domestic abuse.

Herald Feature: The P epidemic

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