Meth Xpert NZ-Our blog has up to date articles on Meth

COMMUNITY 'is' THE SOLUTION

31/5/2017

So last time we talked about Meth abuse of children. We talked about how the users of meth and the p cooks “know” what they are doing to those around them. They “know” that it is bad for them and those they surround, but the “high” they get from the use drives them to simply “forget” everything else.

Now let’s talk about a practical approach to combat this abuse.

Some background:

Police stats show a decline in apprehensions of methamphetamine. (Source)

Youth Drug Services clinics show a decline in referrals. (Source)

For the police stats, (possession of methamphetamine) you’ve got to catch someone (have it on their person or property) with the drug to apprehended them. The fact is that the meth gets used within a short space of time when the user obtains it. It gets smoked very quickly.

The user is so addicted that once they have the drug in their possession, the desire, the reward of getting high, drives them to use quickly. You cannot “catch” someone for possession if they do not have the drug on them. Instead, it’s been used and is “in” them. Whilst there is also a charge for “use” it is infrequently applied as the expense of proving the “use” is difficult involving costly blood tests and scientific analysis.

And the Youth Drug Services are seeing a downturn, or less attendance, at their clinics because the meth users don’t want to get clean. It oftentimes takes an extreme event in their life to override the massive desire for the dopamine hit that using meth gives them. Simply put, the reward outweighs the desire to get clean.

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Meth abuse and children

14/2/2017

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Ok. Let’s tackle a big issue. Perhaps the biggest issue. So, in our line of work, we are in homes that have had a meth lab in it or in homes that has or have had meth users in it. The sad part of our work is that those homes that we go into and find meth in, we also often find children.

Yep. Children. And Meth. Together.

I remembered reading an article from November (2016) where a couple were injecting their children with heroin. Uh huh. Injecting their own children with heroin.

Whilst that’s not something you see everyday. For us, in our line of work, we see children living in drug contaminated conditions and therefore exposed to drugs all the time.

Meth is pervasive. It contaminates everything it touches. Every surface. It penetrates porous surfaces and ‘sticks’ to non-porous. It will remain in clothing, on carpets, on tables, chairs, couches, you name it, it’s on it. Children touching these surfaces then go onto eat food with meth on their hands, or, worse still, eat food that was directly exposed to meth vapour. The P contamination can take a long time to go through their system and the damage done could be irreparable.

The article goes onto talk about how long the heroin remained in the children’s system. It states: “Two months after the children were taken into protective custody, authorities performed hair follicle tests on the children, according to the court documents. The 6-year-old tested negative for heroin; the 4-year-old had heroin in her system but not enough to result in a positive test; the 2-year-old tested positive for the drug.”

One of the Detectives involved said “We unfortunately find kids living in deplorable conditions all too often, but we don't see parents intentionally putting drugs into kids.”

Ashlee Hutt, and her boyfriend, Leroy "Mac" McIver have been charged for allegedly injecting their young children with heroin. The youngest child, aged 2, would normally fall asleep after her parents injected the "feel-good medicine".

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Dealing with Meth: A community minded approach.

20/12/2016

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Our last blog talked about Meth and drug Crime in your neighbourhood, for this blog we want to talk to you about dealing with meth. No, that’s not Dealing Meth.

This is definitely not the blog for that. I’m talking about dealing with the fall out of the Meth epidemic, dealing with the consequences of family and friends falling victim to its insidious grasp, and dealing with the stigma that is attached with the meth user or the P cook or even a township.

Ngaruawahia is one such township that has fallen victim to meth. Not in the sense that the town is rife with users, not that there are innumerable P cooks (there were only 14 according to locals), but in the sense the township now has a stigma attached to it.

Yes, Ngaruawahia is the township that couldn’t deal with its Meth problem, so a local gang member did.
In our last blog we said that the Tribal Huks had done Ngaruawahia a favour by clearing out the Meth dealers and well, what a difference a few days makes.

SO, one person decided to act without the consent of the community.

That one person did not represent the best interests of the community.

And that one person did not act with the blessings of the community either.

The gang member (read: whole gang?) essentially acted as a Vigilante. The very definition of Vigilantism is “a member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate.”

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Meth and drug crime in your neighbourhood

26/10/2016

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Pretty much every week we see some headline about a “P bust” or a “Meth dealer” that has been apprehended by police. But this week just gone (end of October 2016) we have seen a whole community take a stand against the scourge that is Methamphetamine.

Ngaruawahia, a small township in Waikato, New Zealand, has had its fair share of meth problems. With burglaries on the rise (most burglaries are driven by the need for money to pay off the drug debt to the offenders dealer) and petty crime occurring daily, the township had seen better days.

Then, up stepped an unlikely solution to the towns problem, the local gang. The Tribal Huks. Please note that this blog is not to glorify gangs, nor is it to indemnify their actions in the past few weeks, instead, it is to highlight that something has been done, something extreme, and it has dealt with the overt P problem in the town.

The Tribal Huks gang took a stand against the meth dealer in the town after meth was offered to the some of the gang’s presidents’ family members. He took offence to this and “paid a visit” to the dealer. Polite words and not so polite words were no doubt exchanged and war broke out.

Yes, War. Shots fired, property damaged, injuries suffered (no deaths, at least, none that the public have been made aware of).

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