Labour Drags Its Feet On Meth
ACT New Zealand Police Spokesman Dr Muriel Newman today accused the Labour Government of being soft on crime while, at
the same time, trying to convince the public that it is serious about cracking down on drugs.
"Answers to my written Parliamentary Questions show that there is currently `no specific code to record methamphetamine
as a specific drug commodity'. The methamphetamine problem is reaching crisis level - yet this hugely damaging drug will
not be allocated a code for another four to six weeks," Dr Newman said.
"This is totally unacceptable. This slow-moving, soft-on-crime Government has already taken far too long to join the
war on drugs. The detection of methamphetamine manufacturing operations increased more than 300 percent in a six-month
period. It has been linked to crimes like the RSA killings. It crosses all social barriers to harm both users and
innocent victims.
"Yet this drug has only just recently been re-classified as a Class A drug, the police methamphetamine response team is
not funded to start until 2004, and now we discover that this drug is not even specifically coded to allow police to
record it as a specific drug offence.
"The methamphetamine epidemic has been allowed to grow by a Government that talks tough, but puts its priorities
elsewhere. I demand an assurance, from the Police Minister George Hawkins, that he will fast track the coding of
methamphetamine without further delay," Dr Newman said.