New Zealand's meth flood

Meth dealers in New Zealand are driving increasingly sophisticated and profitable operations, so much so that police now call them "criminal business entities". In spite of regular busts that seem to capture increasingly record amounts of meth, New Zealanders don't seem to have a problem getting hold of the drug.It's been 25 years since methamphetamine use exploded in New Zealand, but despite the drug's well-known dangers, tens of thousands of Kiwis are still hooked. Today's episode of The Detail looks at our problem with P, including how the nation got so addicted, and where all that meth is coming from. It feels as though most weeks there's a new headline about another record breaking bust. In January, 713 kilograms of methamphetamine concealed in maple syrup bottles was seized by police, and just a couple of months later another record-breaking 747kg was located during a raid on a south Auckland property. Just last month, 26 kilograms was found in a Canadian man's suitcase - the largest amount of the drug to be seized in a passenger's luggage.Methamphetamine is flooding the market, and New Zealand is an attractive one. "You can land 600 kilos here for something like a couple of million dollars, and produce $123 million in profit. The profits are immense." says Detective Superintendent Greg Williams, the head of NZ Police's National Organised Crime Group. Detective Superintendent Greg Williams.But what started as an operation confined to local gangs has in recent years spread much further afield. "It was a number of really influential senior gang members coming from gangs like the Rebels, Comancheros, and the like that were pushed back here in New Zealand ," he says."What they brought with them was those transnational links and sophistication that was quite different to the way in which the gangs here operated." Williams says Police now call them "criminal business entities", because referring to them as gangs is far too simple. "I think it's a better term because it shows you the sophistication of how these enterprises operate and function. Just like any business, it's resource infrastructure, it's multiple forms of revenue, it's building a market."It's having professional facilitators supporting them, and enabling them to operate." And the harm they're creating is immense. "Once they've got these people hooked, they're trapped by addiction. They're trapped by debt, and this is where we are seeing people being used to sell drugs on behalf of these groups, buying guns for them, prostituting themselves. It's just tragic."…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details