P, Ngaruawahia, government indifference and community vigilantes
I’m all in favour of communities having democratic control over what happens in their local neighbourhoods. I’m all in favour of local people making decisions for themselves and closing down supplies of products damaging to themselves and their children – whether it be the likes of booze shops, pokie machines, loan sharks, fast-food joints, illegal drug suppliers or P dealers.
We need a lot more democracy in our local communities to counter the devastating effects of all of the above – particularly in our low-income areas where successive National and Labour governments have allowed the flood of parasites on poverty to invade with predictable, destructive effects.
When we have hundreds of local people protesting outside the homes of P dealers, loan sharks or pokie outlets and demanding they shut up shop then we will know real, participatory democracy is taking root.
I’m not in favour of vigilante action such as that apparently being taken in Ngaruawahia against what we are told are local P dealers. Instead it appears to be as much an issue of patch protection with P being supplied locally by another gang.
P is a huge concern in low-income areas and has been for a long time. But it was only when middle-class kids were effected that we saw action.
Remember the public shock when teenagers like Millie Elder-Holmes became addicted? Remember the outrage – the near hysteria? Remember the newspaper headlines? Remember the self-righteous editorials? Remember Peter Dunne’s pompous indignation? Remember the government calls for action? Remember the high-powered trust set up to fight the P epidemic? Remember the big donations from the corporate sector?
Remember?
And remember what happened when P was no longer a middle-class concern? Remember the silence? Remember the couldn’t-care-less attitudes? That’s what we live with now.
Low-income, working-class communities around New Zealand are still being hammered by the drug, and the effects are worse than ever.
But none of the groups so hot about P in the past have much more than a passing interest in the devastation the drug is wrecking in low-income New Zealand.
The only references one hears from the government these days is the blame dished out to state house tenants found to be living in P contaminated houses.
It’s been a useful stick for Paula Bennet to beat state house tenants with.
Otherwise she couldn’t give a rat’s arse.
$15 million was allocated last week by the government as a sop to community concerns about P – that’s all it is. The money is for services to help people get off the drug.
Far better would be giving communities the power to deal with the parasites on poverty – to close down booze shops, pokie machines, loan shark operations etc
And alongside community democracy the government should be driving policies to provide jobs for everyone who can work and so provide a way out of the debilitating hopelessness market failure has left in its wake.
My research shows that a “war” on anything is to perpetuate and expand the problem, not to bring the problem under control and eventually eliminate. The drug “trade” is exactly that. A trade… a Money-spinner. And it is controlled from the very top and very carefully aimed.
The silence on the vigilante antics in Ngaruawahia has been quite horrifying. The government’s attitude no doubt is that it’s okay because it’s about evil P. The slow disintegration of the rule of law, when it suits. Cops don’t have to lift a finger, no courts, no prison. Key et al would say everyone’s a winner. If it’s good enough for Osama bin Laden it’s good enough for P dealers in Ngaruawahia.
What can you say. We’re going to get tough on law and order National thundered all those years ago. Crusher Collins was looking all… well constipated, but I think it was meant to look staunch. But reality has set in save the media manipulation, gangs are doing the policing in the vacuum created by cost cutting.
Plainly speaking there is nowhere near enough money for the police to enforce the law let alone when it comes to meth. Those more impoverished communities, you know the ones who are not movers and shakers, the ones who have little influence, who generally don’t vote or complain or donate to the National Party, well they suffer badly.
Those tax cuts cost New Zealand plenty. That and the revenue producing SOE’s they flogged off and the money lost paying the interest of the loans to cover for the tax cuts. Doing less with less has become a Bill English and National Party standard.
It’s a lot like social housing, get someone else to do it, anyone will do, pretend even, cos National don’t give a shit.
It is an ‘interesting’ fact of life that throughout recorded history some people have drunk alcohol, gambled and taken drugs in an irresponsible manner, that has badly impacted themselves and their nearest and dearest.
Yes Robert, some of those rich bastards are at it all the time.
By ranting on about “P” you are feeding a moral panic. Is P really a huge concern in low income areas? Is it really. Do you know that or are you just parroting what you have heard. By any objective measure, alcohol is 100 times worse and while it causes huge harm in society, society still functions. The claimed vigilante acts in Ngaruawahia are just grandstanding by someone pretending to have a moral compass.
If you want to do something about our drug problem, think about ways of ending the war on drugs. Yes I did vote for you for ChCh Mayor John. Brandon Hutchison (ChCh)
Brandon, I don’t think it was a rant at all. The far north has a serious problem with P and they have a serious poverty problem, these issues have been known for a very long time. But who cares about the far north where are the vots in that. Just last night on TV a guy was interviewed about the issue in and around Gisborne.
I am sure Minto knows that booze is a huge oproblem in our society and whilst society continues to ‘function’ it destroys lots of families lives.
The two major parties simply follow public opinion, they are not and have never been leaders in anything.
Brandon, jobs jobs jobs, when are we going to have a political party that says ‘we will do away with unemployment benefit BUT we will absolutely guarantee jobs for everyone on the living wage at the very least’.
If there were real prospects for people to lift themselves up fewer people would be into drugs including booze.