Meth use and addiction is a serious issue. And, as with all serious issues, it remains disappointing to see it trivialized by a pavonine politician in pursuit of a self-aggrandizing headline.
Given her previous modus operandi with law and order issues, it should perhaps come as no surprise that the Minister for Grandstanding who’s attempting to make political bank out of jumbling scary sounding words together this time … is Judith Collins.
She’s clearly set her sights on restoring her reputation as an MP and a member of Cabinet by scaring Middle New Zealand into finding her relatively reassuringly appealing.
So let’s take a look at her latest outburst.
Collins is breathlessly claiming that there’s some sort of organized cabal-conspiracy of the most famous gangs in the country, who’ve geared up in order to bring bags of premium-priced pseudoephidrine-derived crystal to “middle class kids” at some of the “best schools” in Auckland.
Considering this seems to be a response to a recent report about the costs to the taxpayer of gang members and their own children … you’d perhaps be forgiven for expecting a little more emphasis upon *those* kids, rather than the children of predominantly wealthy, National-voting families able to afford to send their scions to “the best schools”.
But instead, we get sweeping statements studded with salacious hooks for middle class paranoia.
Let’s get one thing straight. Meth in Auckland’s well-heeled suburbs is absolutely nothing new. In fact, for a good decent whack of the early-mid 2000s, it was the go-to party drug for the Remuera rich-kids set of the day. One of my associates has rather vivid memories of smoking it out of champagne glasses at some scene-kid’s dad’s mansion, for instance. Further citations for the phenomenon are not exactly difficult to come by:
“For our generation, it wasn’t the drug but the lifestyle that went with it. The majority were middle class, upper class kids with money to throw around. It was that Remuera crowd. The town was filled with (methamphetamine). It was living life through a music video. It was all about having fun.”
Further, it’s not as if the meth many an upper class precocious P-consumer was actually coming from terribly further afield. There’s been a litany of P-lab and P-dealer busts in Remuera over the last few years. To pretend that meth is therefore a new thing to the children of National’s (sub)urban Auckland heartland electorates – and that it’s now only a thing due to predominantly brown gang members from South and West Auckland – smacks of the worst kind of reality-obfuscating sensationalism.
But there’s something else that’s been troubling me about Collins’ recent outburst, and it’s summed up beautifully by none other than Police Association President Greg O’Connor. You know … one of the most senior public servants within Collins’ own portfolio area of Police.
O’Connor’s talking about the issue of prisoner abuse occurring elsewhere in Collins’ Corrections portfolio, but the point equally applies here to Collins’ headline-grabbing meth-outburst.
These problems are not new. Gangs have been peddling drugs – and drugs have been turning up in schools – across Auckland (and particularly out South and out West) for years.
Let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that Collins’ statement is an attention-seeking full-frontal Amygdala-hijack to the brains of urban-core National supporters.
What she’s actually saying, if you look at it, is that these problems only began to really matter once they started (in her limited view) to happen to the kids of the upper-class elite.
You couldn’t ask for a clearer picture of National’s – and Judith’s – perspectives and priorities if you tried.
Two congratulations are in order here. The first, for picking up on this story. I don’t think there has ever been a government in New Zealand so divisive, so selective as to who they govern for, or so contemptuous of those that don’t make the cut. This carries over into the media, which no longer tries to speak to the country as a whole, but continuously warns the well-heeled group about the threat of the less well-heeled, almost as if they were inclement weather rather than human beings. Half of the news is little more than a series of bids for consent to treat the non-well-heeled in whatever way they see fit, and this story is a prime example.
The second congratulations is more trivial – for your use of the lovely and apt word “pavonine” to describe the relevant minister.
John must’ve found a couple points in Max’s DJ bag.
Having read this article I’m unsure what point you’re trying to make.
Are you saying P and gangs are a good thing?
Or are you mindlessly attacking any new initiative the current government takes, just because it’s not your choice of government?
Read this article? The author makes it easy by stating that Collins is only concerned about drugs when they cause problems in rich kids in the last lines of the article. Your inability to understand this will explain the other mindless comments you make that usually ignore the topic while you repeat some neo-lib rubbish.
Well said – agree completely !
I now bypass Andrew trolls comments completely unless I need a good laugh.
God, @ Andrew. We seem to be constantly having to explain common sense things to you. What might that mean, do you think?
Here’s a market-forces-at-work approach to P for you. And all you Right Wing Greed fetishists ( And you cowardly, Left Wing $-six figure plus entitlements politicians too ) will understand the ‘logic’. You did, after all, create the society within which the drug trade flourishes. Namely, those who manufacture and on-sell it ( The desperate) and those who can afford it ( The emotionally vacant, New Rich post Neo Liberal Bubble People who’ve been deprived of a view of what life’s truly about, perhaps because mummy and daddy couldn’t see it either to pass on the info. Too busy booming babies between bouts of getting pissed and smoking weed perhaps? )
Here’s where ‘market forces’ come in to play. To save the day.
The council, churches, police, charities , school boards could lease a large central city warehouse and cook tons and tons of meth thus tanking its street value. Better still ? Make it freely available to all. You got a bucket? We have Meth. Just shovel it down ya mate. Need a bag for the kiddies?
Then? Line up the body bags, oil the hinges on the crematorium, get out your hankies and let your beloved market forces take care of the rest.
judith collins is a meth cook’s wet dream. Her ( It ) and her ( It again ) cronies manufacture Meth users, and Meth cooks just supply to that market. Marketing 101 in fact.
By contrast:
Saturate the market, prices drop, demand dies off. Literally.
There’s one other aspect of addiction to the likes of Meth.
Scenario #1
Meth user goes broke, needs a hit, robs a house.
Those whom profit from that?
Lawyers.
Police.
Courts.
Media.
Advertisers/marketing and by extension retailers and by further extension transporters, shop workers, security industry, honestly? I could go on.
And I will…
Insurers.
Bankers.
Doctors.
SERCO.
Think of all those ‘ service providers’ who, knowingly or not, benefit , in one way or another, from societal dysfunction by living off the flesh of those less fortunate. It’s a huge industry and who want’s stop that flow of money. Not big jude, that’s for sure.
Scenario # 2
Flood the market. Saturate it. Leave hillocks of the shit in the middle of round-a-bouts. Have bins full at bus stops. Free mailers of sachets of P in the mail box? Call them starter packs showing bug eyed kittens just for the kids. High ? Then Drive ! Hugs AND Drugs !
I know this is tongue-in-cheek Countryboy but you may be closer to the mark than you think. Some say it was N.Z police who introduced P to the country in the first place.
Though I feel for Millie Holmes, had she been of a low socio-economic class she would have been just another incarcerated statistic.
Oh, and Judith, if you don’t want middle/upper class kids using P you might want to make a speech to their parents so they stop leaving it lying around.
COUNTRYBOY:
You make some good points. Indeed there is a raft of do-gooders and service providers who clip this ticket to make a living.
Considering we’re an isolated island surely we can do a better job than we are at curbing hard drug importation?
Take for example Singapore. It is a massive trade centre which is close by several neighbouring states, yet they have far less of a hard drug importation problem than we do. This is because they hang them by the bus load.
It seems to work. Plus it’s far cheaper than long term incarceration of gang members.
According to this neuroscientist Big Pharma is the Crystal Meth pusher, which, it seems to me, leaves government and GPs as the dealers and the police as the enforcers:
http://themindunleashed.org/2016/02/top-neuroscientist-explains-how-big-pharmas-adderall-is-essentially-crystal-meth.html
+ 100 Helena.
They are drugging our “autistic spectrum” kids with this shit. Are they trying to prime future addicts? Who the fuck knows with these sickos.
Our kids are being used as lab rats.
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