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.

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