The Opposition is demanding an inquiry after a corrupt Customs officer gave drug smugglers details of border security secrets. The officer, now awaiting sentencing in the Auckland District Court, worked at Auckland Airport for four years and learned most of the techniques used to check incoming passengers. The most sensitive - profiling techniques used to snare criminals - remain in the hands of the drug-smuggling ring he briefed on how to slip through undetected. As revealed in the Herald yesterday, Tori Rocky Kotahi Puata was arrested on July 30 and pleaded guilty to a charge of importing crystal methamphetamine. [continues 646 words]
The biggest attack yet on the illegal P industry has smashed two pill-shopping rings and taken up to 24 dealers off the streets, police say. They said yesterday that 80 officers had arrested 54 people and knocked out three pure methamphetamine - or P - factories during a month of raids in all three Auckland police districts. And they said their raids had found new drug trade middle-men - people who recruit pill-shoppers but do no shopping themselves. "Shoppers" are people who buy cold and flu pills from pharmacies and sell them to be made into P. [continues 496 words]
Even after New Zealand's most prolific speed cook showered and donned a boiler-suit, the fumes wafting from him had enough punch to make two detectives' eyes water. The cook, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sitting in a police car after surrendering his massive speed laboratory to 60 firefighters, ambulance staff and special tactics group policemen. They had evacuated nearby homes during a one-hour standoff in which the cook poured chemicals on the floor of his laboratory near Kelston Girls High School in Auckland. [continues 589 words]
Gisborne's 11 pharmacies have seen a big reduction in the number of burglaries since they took several cold and flu medicines from their shelves. The burglars left behind strong drugs and took cheap flu pills they could sell to illegal methamphetamine factories, where they were made into speed and P. The pharmacists were also each getting up to 15 visits a week from people pretending to be ill and wanting packets of the cold and flu pills. Their solution was to fax police details of suspicious customers and largely stop selling the pills. [continues 390 words]
Health officials are being urged to ban some cold and flu pills or make them prescription-only to stop them being used for the illegal drugs speed and P. Such a ban would apply to some of the best decongestants on the market, such as Actifed, Sudafed and Nurofen Cold and Flu. Calls to ban the pseudoephedrine-based pills come from pharmacists sick of customers getting angry when asked to show photo identification to buy the pills. Some are already refusing to stock the pills after being robbed or burgled. [continues 293 words]
A legal loophole means at least 4 million cold and flu tablets imported this year are likely to be used to manufacture illegal methamphetamine drugs such as speed and P. A Customs manager who has seen imports of the pill leap 30-fold in two years said the influx was astronomical and Customs was stopping barely one-fifth of the consignments. Pills are being ordered through the internet after a police crackdown on the purchase of large quantities from pharmacies. Illegal pill buyers can be jailed for five years under the Misuse of Drugs Act if caught buying flu pills from chemists. But no one importing by mail has yet been charged under the act because its wording makes it hard to prove possession of the pills. [continues 593 words]
Speed has become the first major "white powder" drug to take hold in New Zealand, says the nation's top policeman. Police Commissioner Rob Robinson said a surge in the use of methamphetamine (speed) was one of his biggest concerns about the latest crime patterns. It was highly addictive and had "horrific effects" on users, sometimes making them act violently or irrationally. "These drugs have the potential to knacker a whole generation of our kids," he said. Figures released on March 22 showed a rise of just 0.4 per cent in cannabis crime, but a surge of 6.9 per cent in "non-cannabis" drug crime. Most of that was due to speed. [continues 228 words]
The British rethink, announced yesterday, will re-classify cannabis from early next year so it is treated the same way as anabolic steroids and anti-depressants such as Temazepam. Most people caught with the drug will get off with a warning and the loss of their stash, although possession will still be technically illegal. Police will continue to clamp down on cannabis suppliers. New Zealanders cannabis law reformers hailed the British move, but opponents believe more young people could use the drug if laws were eased. [continues 426 words]
Last week I worked my second night shift with Vancouver Police officer Al Arsenault. He is one of several "odd squad" officers featured in a documentary entitled Through A Blue Lens. Though A Blue Lens is reality TV at its best: a gritty, compassionate, and telling story of Vancouver beat officers who videotape, with permission, a year in the lives of people horribly affected by drug addiction while living in the "skids" or downtown east side. The documentary-which has won film festival acclaim as far away as Japan-is directed primarily at students and focuses on the real risks of living a drug-addicted lifestyle. [continues 324 words]
We would like to start our response to the letter written by Dana Larsen of the BC Marijuana Party ["Reconsider marijuana," Letters, March 7] with the question "What have you been smokin', Dana?"-but we all know what he's been smoking. Funny how marijuana advocates give credence to the harmfulness of this drug with the very words that come out of their mouths. Why should we British Columbians be proud to boast of so-called billions in revenue - don't know where the figures come from - from an illegal activity? Imagine those nasty police officers tracking down resourceful entrepreneurs while they destroy their landlord's homes. The nerve. [continues 166 words]
Smoking cannabis five times a week does as much lung damage as 20 cigarettes a day, causing disease, phlegm and coughing fits. That is the verdict of Otago researchers who studied the lungs of 943 people aged 21 and whose findings will be published next month in the international journal Addiction. The Otago University respiratory research group looked at symptoms such as wheezing, shortness of breath, early morning coughing and sputum production. It found that 36 per cent of cannabis-dependent smokers had those symptoms, followed by smokers of 21-plus cigarettes a day (29 per cent), 10-20 cigarettes a day (24 per cent), and up to 10 cigarettes a day (17 per cent). [continues 320 words]
An undercover detective who infiltrated two crime rings sparked a series of police raids beginning at dawn yesterday in which guns, drugs and stolen goods were seized. Police claim the raids - with 145 officers taking part - broke the two Waikato crime rings. The raids began when 12 balaclava-wearing members of the armed offenders squad used ladders to storm the headquarters of the Titans motorcycle gang in Peria Rd, Matamata. During the next few hours, 60 police searched other homes in the Waikato town. [continues 418 words]
It started with the biggest heroin bust in United States history - and ended nine years later at the doorstep of a short, balding Auckland businessman. The case against Hing Hung Wong has all the elements of a classic crime novel, with huge drug shipments, bugged phone calls, secret witnesses and millions of dollars in laundered cash. But even a crime novelist would have been proud to invent the name Mad Six, the nom-de-plume of the drug lord said to have drawn Wong into his inner circle. [continues 1008 words]
The United States has failed to the secure the extradition of an Aucklander it claims organised one of the world's biggest heroin shipments - because it botched its legal papers. In the Auckland District Court yesterday Judge Robert Kerr found that there would have been enough evidence to extradite Hing Hung Wong, aged 37, but the US had not properly authenticated its papers. The judge ordered Wong to remain in his secret Auckland apartment under 24-hour guard until October, when Hong Kong police will launch their own extradition bid stemming from a drug seizure in 1985. [continues 345 words]
Residents of an Auckland apartment block that houses suspected heroin trafficker Hing Hung Wong have shelved a legal bid to have him thrown out. Many of the more than 200 inhabitants are angry that they are sharing the block with a man alleged to be linked with one of the biggest heroin shipments seized in the United States. But a spokesman for the body corporate that looks after the interests of residents said yesterday that time and cost had beaten their plan to take the issue to court. [continues 353 words]
Religion may be the reason our first Rastafarian MP gives for smoking dope - - but it's no excuse in the eyes of the law. Nandor Tanczos has taken the moral high ground with his vow to keep smoking cannabis once a week. But a clutch of top criminal lawyers said yesterday that the Green MP would fall to Earth with a thud if busted by police. Auckland lawyer John Kovacevic, who has given advice to Mr Tanczos on the issue, said the religion defence would fail in court. The Bill of Rights and the Human Rights Act endorsed freedom of religion, but those pieces of legislation were weaker than criminal law. [continues 95 words]
COROMANDEL - Police claim they have wiped out most of Coromandel's cannabis harvest in a seven-day operation that netted two guns and thousands of plants. They said a helicopter sprayed weedkiller on 400 plots of cannabis, each with up to 50 plants, and officers ripped out more than 1000 other plants during the hit, which was part of the nationwide Operation Michelle. Detective Senior Sergeant Bruce Currie said 11 people were arrested for allegedly growing and possessing the class C drug for sale, and two guns were found. [continues 175 words]
