I think articles like this miss the point. Methamphetamine isn’t some uniquely harmful substance – I certainly wouldn’t advocate it, but one puff doesn’t instantly turn you into a crazed arm-chopping psychopath.

People I know have tried the stuff a few times – it’s a buzz and you feel shit after. If you have your life in order, you probably won’t do it much for that reason. People with stuffed up lives are going to be the inevitable victims of meth, alcohol or anything else.

If society did more to help people sort their lives, deal with their mental health issue and gain a sense of self-worth, there would be less problem drug use. Fixing that isn’t as attractive to the media as paying more cops to smash in doors, but it would be much more effective in the long run.

PS: can we put the ‘A’ back in respiratory?

I don’t believe that simply educating is the key as when I started we were all well educated middle class kids who “knew better” who were studying at University and had come from private schools. I personally spent a vast proportion of my inheritance on the drug.

Reducing the source will help to some degree but as far many are concerned this is an elastic demand (people will always find a way to get it no matter the cost), and believe me I have witnessed that first hand.

It’s certainly true that you become a very negative lifeless person though I am happy to report it is definitely possible to get your life back on track. It can be as simple as deleting your phone number or changing jobs. And yes, back in those days the money was good if you were smart about it!

However many of my friends are now suffering mental illness and coming to terms with the fact that they have wasted a vast proportion of their lives which is horrible.

I also reckon whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger and it didn’t kill me and leave me brain damaged (that I know of) so I guess that makes me one of the lucky ones.

Good luck New Zealand in controlling what was considered by us as users/dealers to be the worst drug pandemic Wellington had ever seen.

You get to catch a whole lot more breaches of importation law, and that has many financial benefits…both from requisition of illicit imports and proper taxation of imports.

Then again….who can honestly say that the govt has any real say what happens at the docks

Babs makes a very good point. But do you think you are stronger than the average P experimenter?

Vested (and patched) interests – ah…, the drug debate.

Here’s a way. It will take maybe two weeks and cost almost nothing.

Solution:
Police (who already have a handy and very varied supply of drugs, which at present they have to either keep or destroy) just announce that very soon they will be putting on to the open market drugs that have been laced with deadly poison. They also do it.

The news will soon spread, especially if there’s a death or two. S it won’t mean a lot of expense on publicity.

After a few users who didn’t hear the news have been wiped out, what would the number of mourners be and would anyone complain…? Certainly not the taxpayer, who pays to support them now. The only complainers would be the foreign fascist organisations that have set up these drug revenues to support their criminal political whims.