Editorial: Crack down hard on scourge of P

Over the past two weeks the Herald has been drawing attention to the latest curse to take hold in our community - pure methamphetamine, known as "P". Like all stimulants, it gives young or tired people an artificial energy boost, helping them, as they see it, to have fun, keep going, escape reality or attempt to meet the pressure to perform at a high level. But like most illicit drugs its effects do not stop there. It can drive users to psychotic violence, against themselves or others, particularly on the way down from their chemical charge. And it is highly addictive.

The experiences readers have shared with us over the past fortnight ought to leave no doubt of the extent of this scourge. Epidemic is not too strong a word. The drug has crept into most corners of the country. It is in schools and workplaces, small towns and city office blocks, criminal gangs and high-earning professional circles. In fact it is pushed particularly hard to the well-off because it is not cheap. An addict can spend between $1000 and $3000 a week.

Among those who related their ordeal to us were the wife of a Melbourne Cup-winning jockey, Tony Allan, and a couple from Dairy Flat who watched their son spiral out of control after he started smoking P and blamed the drug for his death. There is a pattern in the accounts we have published. Most of the dead or damaged people had come to P from other drugs, including cannabis, in their ceaseless search for a new escape. A night on P would be followed by morning mood swings and depression. Families suffered, often violently. Work standards deteriorated. Users who lost their jobs resorted to theft, often from their families, to feed the addition.

But P also has its own insidious method of feeding its own growth. Since it can be made from the pseudoephedrine in some common cold and flu remedies, some addicts become "shoppers", going to pharmacies to buy the medicines and selling them to mysterious "laboratories" where the ingredients are extracted for the manufacture of the methamphetamine. Shoppers are said to sell to the labs at twice the price they paid for the tablets and police believe they are often paid in quantities of P, which they can use or sell at greater profit.

Now that pharmacies are taking note of who buys tablets containing pseudoephedrine, the medicines appear to be coming into the country from orders over the internet. Customs officers say they have noticed a 30-fold increase in imports of the pills over the past two years. They seize perhaps 20 per cent of the number they suspect is heading for P laboratories. A deficiency in the law makes it hard to seize more.

Fixing that deficiency should be just the first response from the Government to this scourge. It has known of the problem for six months and should not take another three months, as suggested, to effectively stop these imports at the border. There is no legitimate need for anyone except pharmaceutical companies to be importing ephedrine or pseudoephedrine in any form. If direct supplies from overseas can be stopped, pharmacies might be able to starve the laboratories. After the 11 pharmacies in Gisborne took the pills from their shelves and denied sales to certain people who were coming in several times a week, police reported a marked decline in P-related crime.

But stronger measures are needed against an industry that seems to have developed an extensive infrastructure in a comparatively short time. The police might consider setting up a special unit to concentrate on infiltrating the industry and going after the principal organisers rather than just the gangs and other more visible cogs in the distribution networks.

The drug is here, it has taken hold to the extent that New Zealand now records one of the world's highest rates of its use. It is time for the Government to start tackling it urgently.

Herald Feature: The P epidemic

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