EX-DRUG SQUAD MEMBER LETS DVD TELL THE P-SCOURGE STORY TO SCHOOLS

Former drug squad detective Mike Sabin says he would still be policing
if he thought he was getting on top of the P problem.

Instead, Mr Sabin, the managing director of methamphetamine education
organisation Methcon Group, has spent the past year overseeing the
making of a hard-hitting video he hopes will bring home the horrific
realities of a P addiction.

"I would still be in the police locking people up if I thought that
was ever likely to resolve the problem," he said.

"It has now become the world's worst drug problem by volume, and in
terms of the rapid progression to addiction, the world's never seen
another drug like this."

Mr Sabin has just returned from a visit to the United States where
methamphetamine has been around for decades. He said veteran
detectives there told him P was undoubtedly the biggest scourge on
society when it came to drugs.

His own observations here also suggest P is unrivalled in terms of
general destruction to communities and individuals.

After meeting key people in the US to discuss the topic, Mr Sabin
said, he believed lessons had been learned there and he was able to
get a feel for what seemed to work and what didn't when it came to
tackling the problem.

He has been preparing a research paper over the past few months on the
best ways to do so and will present it to appropriate authorities here.

"It's really a case of looking at demand and supply side
intervention," he said. Apart from dissuasion, solutions included
putting the squeeze on suppliers of core ingredients for P and making
ingredients more difficult to obtain.

"Preventing uptake, getting to people that are using quickly and
treating their addiction ... that we give the same level of attention
to policing drugs as we do to policing traffic," Mr Sabin said.

"There has been a huge downturn in the number of detectives around New
Zealand that are specifically working drugs."

Mr Sabin said research on early intervention and treatment initiatives
in the United States showed there were substantial long-term savings
in terms of incarceration, crime and other social costs.

New Zealand already had a sub-culture of stimulant and alcohol abuse
out of proportion with many other countries, "and we're heading down a
dead-end street when you add meth into that mix". The DVD gives
first-hand accounts of the experience of addicts and aims to educate
people about exactly what they are doing to themselves if they become
users.

As well as pseudoephedrine, acids, caustics and solvents were also
used as main ingredients in P.

"So the typical chemicals will be concrete cleaner and battery acid,
solvents like nail polish remover, engine additives, strong organic
solvents that are used in paint thinning," Mr Sabin said.

"There is also red phosphorous, which is explosive and used in
fireworks. It decays people from the inside out.

"Four months of methamphetamine addiction is likened to decades of
alcohol abuse in terms of organic tissue in the brain decaying and
dying."

Mr Sabin said he knew of users under the age of 10 and others over
65.

While pushing his message at schools, he heard of primary school
pupils being offered P while waiting at a bus stop.

Mr Sabin said a lot of parents were ignorant of P because it was not
around when they were young.

"But in the schools we've been to, maybe a third to half the hands
will go up when you say to the students, 'Do you know someone who is
using this drug or has tried it before?"'

Efforts to try to educate people about methamphetamine use have been
few and far between for what is a relatively new problem in New
Zealand, but it's a fulltime focus for the Methcon Group.

"The idea of the DVD is to bring home to New Zealand families the
must-knows about this drug.

"We're all better off for knowing that."

Mr Sabin said the awareness campaign was targeting parents in
workplaces just as much as students in schools.

"The fundamental message is the way in which addiction occurs and the
inevitability with which use of the drug will lead to that."