Pubdate: Fri, 29 May 2009
Source: New Zealand Herald (New Zealand)
Copyright: 2009 New Zealand Herald
Contact: http://info.nzherald.co.nz/letters/
Website: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/300
Author: Denis O'Reilly
Note: Denis O'Reilly runs a national project called Mokai Whanau Ora 
that targets the leaders of Black Power and the Mongrel Mob seeking 
to enrol them in a movement to prohibit the manufacture, distribution 
and use of methamphetamine.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

LET'S CUT THE HYPE AND LOOK AT THE REALITIES OF METHAMPHETAMINE

I've been following the War on P campaign being run by the Herald and 
would like to contribute to the discussion. I take a different line 
than many of the opinions reported in the paper to date but endorse 
the general view - so powerfully expressed by Joe Walsh when we 
started campaigning against P some six years ago.

He said: "Methamphetamine is evil. If you are involved in bringing it 
into the country, or selling it, or manufacturing it, your ancestors 
are not at peace with you. You will eventually be responsible for 
people's deaths and when you go to meet your God, it will be a burden 
on your shoulders.

"I have tried it. It is a dead end. It goes nowhere. It's a demon and 
it eats your soul from inside you.

"If you are doing meth I say to you, no matter how awful things are, 
they will get worse beyond your wildest imagination.

"But you can come back, as hopeless as it looks. It was the hardest 
thing I have ever had to do but it can be done."

So Joe Walsh's message was that P is a go-nowhere substance and has 
no place in our lives or our communities.

Let me start with the good news. As hard as it is, if you put your 
hand up and ask for help, you can beat this awful addiction. I have 
seen people who I once considered to be so addicted that they would 
be forever lost, rejoin society and play their role as contributing citizens.

Secondly, Dr Chris Wilkins' research for the NZ Police suggests we 
have moved from an epidemic to an endemic stage in the life cycle of 
this particular substance. The community awareness-raising about the 
negative impact of P has had a positive impact and the uptake rate of 
new users has reduced although those addicted are using more.

There is a great deal of media hype around P and it doesn't help 
resolve the problematic subject.

Let's calm down and deal with the facts, or as near to them as we can 
get. For instance even though the Herald carried a bar graph 
illustrating the exponential growth of P precursors that have been 
detected coming across our border (and the admission by Customs that 
this is likely to be only a 20 per cent indicator of the actual 
volume) the stories still seems fixated on the availability of 
across-the-counter pharmaceuticals.

I don't deny that there will be instances of home-bake P derived from 
these products, but compared with the inflow from China this will be 
small change. An unintended consequence of our Free Trade Agreement 
is that the volume of inbound goods acts as a vector.

Although the "P devils" are generally portrayed as being the poor 
Polynesians from South Auckland, in fact the common denominator of 
recent major importing busts is that the traffickers are Asian.

Far from making assertions about the criminal activities of Maori and 
other Polynesian people, it would be more helpful if Auckland's Asian 
politicians, Pansy Wong and Melissa Lee from the National Party, and 
Peter Low from the Asian Anti-Crime Group got together with John Key 
and discussed how they might apply moral suasion over their own cuzzies.

 From all the evidence available it would seem apparent that a "war 
on" approach - the interdiction and supply reduction strategies - 
will not win the day on its own. In fact, in light of the laws of 
supply and demand, I would argue that we need to lead with demand 
reduction strategies, with the "Force of Law" being a secondary 
strategy to be firmly applied against the recalcitrant and those who 
insist on trading.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom