Huge hauls of meth at the border dwarf police seizures
Down at Ports of Auckland in a spotless warehouse Customs staff are hauling out some of the items they’ve found big hauls of illicit drugs in.
Hey look at that, the South American Cartel links with 501 syndicates that TDB was waring about 3 years ago are having an impact on the meth trade.
They have a purer cheaper product and the 501s have the contacts which have bled over to the Hells Angels.
The sheer scale and profit margin from this has counter intelligence level sophistication that is corrosive to any Democracy.
The hundreds of millions this represents is outside the scale of a domestic Police force to counter effectively and requires full State involvement and a branch of Police capable of using full State response.
As much as I hate to admit it, Mark Mitchell’s Raptor Force Police Branch may well be required to counter this explosion in meth trade.
The money these Organised Crime Gangs are generating from Meth will finance aggressive tactics to protect that market and we have seen that with 501 syndicates standing over the domestic gangs.
Aggressive policing tactics however are a short term and immediate term strategy because ultimately the only thing that will push South American Cartels out of the NZ meth market is a drop in demand.
The price margin Cartels are making here is $100NZ for a point vs $5US in America. That’s a supply and demand equation that can only be broken by a sharp reduction in demand and the only way you can force demand down is with effective rehabilitation programs that take 6 months.
If we want to lower Organised Crimes influence over civil society we need to have fully funded meth rehab programmes that can lower demand which will lower the price which will deter Organised Crime and the only way you can fund 6 month meth rehab programmes is by legalising Cannabis and ring fencing profits for those rehabilitation programmes!
If cannabis were legalised, the New Zealand industry could employ about 5000 people and reap almost $1.1 billion in taxes a year, two in-depth reports by Business and Economic Research Ltd have shown.
We currently spend $15million per year on drug rehabilitation programmes.
Imagine if we ring fenced $100million from cannabis taxation to spend on drug rehabilitation!
There are solutions to our Meth drug problems and the danger Organised Crime like Cartels pose to the fabric of society, and heavy handed police responses are only part of that solution.
Legalising cannabis would provide the taxation to fund $100m worth of drug rehabilitation and break the meth addiction that is driving Cartel economic interest.
We need to be smarter with drug policy, not dumber!
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