There's P in your pantry; a 21st century scourge.

Growing up in New Zealand, the illicit drug of choice was always marijuana. Most people tried it as teenagers and most people also grew out of it once university and OE's were finished and real life was buckled down to. A rite of passage, even if an illegal one. Your family rarely, if ever, knew about it.

But four decades on from my time as a teen of deciding it wasn't for me, there is a new drug that is regarded as the most addictive in the world and has become so prevalent that just about every family in New Zealand is having to deal with the fallout of its use.

Methamphetamine has been around for more than 100 years; created by a Japanese organic scientist. It was used during the second world war (in small doses) for Luftwaffe pilots to keep them alert while on sorties.

With the advent of the internet and the discovery of the recipe in how to make it, early dealers realised there was a packet to be made. At the time, all ingredients were easily accessible and you didn't have to be a scientist to cook it.
It is the one drug that has even the "experts" disagreeing on how wide-spread it is.
The Drug Foundation believes only around 26,000 use it according to government stats.  But the Ministry of Health says, during the same year, that it believes 53,900 were using it in 2009. Meth Xperts say according to their data, 138,000 kiwis are using it.
And the Hamilton Alcohol and Drug Community Support believe the figure is closer to 700,000. If you read many of the social media pages around the country, you'll see there are a lot of drug houses that their local communities are pushing police - often unsuccessfully - to deal with. Last year, there were 3177 convictions - an increase of 22% on the year before.

It is now much easier to get than marijuana and the reasons for that are widespread. It is much easier to make than to grow. And the yields are enormous. Around $300,000-$800,000 per kilogram, broken down into ounces, it's about $5000. From there it is about $100 a point (crystals the size of a fingernail).
And New Zealand is one of the top three countries who pay top dollar for this - which is why, it is believed, the Asian crime bosses focus their attention on getting either the ready made, or the pseudoephedrine, a necessary component, into the country, rather than into other countries. Once here, the gangs and in particular, the Mongrel Mob and Head Hunters, are believed to be the biggest group of cooks and dealers. This is underlined with the fact that when it comes to convictions, over 60% of those are gang members or their prospects. Yet these two gangs also have a rule.  Meth use is prohibited. Think about that one.

We have gone from border control finding just $4.5 million  street value of attempted meth related imports in 2014, to the largest ever haul in one instance in 2016 of $438 million street value of meth. Such is the growing demand.

The social cost these days, of meth use, is around 1.8 billion dollars when it comes to police, courts, prisons etc. Housing New Zealand, in the past year, has spent 5.5 million of our money on meth testing and of the 640 homes tested in the past year, 323 were positive, 278 had to be fully decontaminated and 12 had to be demolished. Yet, it isn't just a lower socio-economic drug. There were 53 properties reported to the Auckland City Council last year to be added to their data base (started in 2005) of meth contaminated properties. Many drug related facilities are working with both middle class and upper class families who have members who are addicts. Young tradies, people involved in sports, particularly horse racing given the work hours required and, while the percentages have leaned toward males being the biggest group, an ever increasing amount of women have also become meth users.

In the past five years 153 kids have been removed from 87 meth labs, according to police stats. Yet CYFS (or whatever they call themselves these days) won't release the statistics of children being removed from meth infected families. These kids, given the drug's libido-enhancing abilities, are at risk according to lawyer Chloe Barker, are at real risk from abuse, which doesn't even touch on the problems causing higher metabolism rates, respiratory, skin and organ failures because children are much more susceptible to absorbing what's going on around them via smoking or manufacturing.

The unbelievable part is, you'll find all the drug help with facilities etc in our main cities. But the regional areas, where this is as rampant as a bull on steroids, there is nothing. No help for addicts, no help for their families. And those involved in rehabilitation have just about become hoarse in the asking for government funded help.
There is no getting away from when someone is on meth. Previously clear skin suddenly develops acne like spotting which escalate to full blown sores when use is heavy.  They grind their teeth, shimmy their legs, can't sit still and their eyes are shifting everywhere. Many have an ever present water bottle, because it does create thirst. Speed up the speech, or see them jumping from one subject to another and perhaps the hardest part, the paranoia and aggression. The illnesses that meth causes are widespread - and so is the crime, ranging from burglaries to fund a habit, to killing or injuring partners and children because of the aggression and paranoia.

The worst part of this drug, and the primary reason for its misuse, is that it is psychologically, rather than physiologically based. At normal heights of pleasure, say, sex for example, the brain releases about 300 a unit of dopamine, the body's own "happy pill". With the use of meth, that's raised to 1000 a unit. And there is a price to pay for that externally created overstimulated euphoria - the user will crash and burn, psychosis is often a product of it. Tests have shown long term users brains look like those with Alzeimhers disease. And like the latter, this is unfixable.

There has been a massive jump in hospital admissions in the past two years, over 51%. New Zealand doesn't yet have the stats for deaths that are meth related, but Australia does and it makes for sobering reading. 43% of them were caused by drug overdoses; 22% by diseases caused by meth use; 18% by suicide linked to meth use, 15% in accidents, usually vehicles and 1.5% killed in drug deals that had gone wrong.

These days, there are few extended families who haven't had someone who is trapped in this insidious addiction. The confusion, the sense of loss, the anguish that such addicts bring to the family table is one of the saddest indictments of the 21st century, where the police can only fight a rear guard action at best, and given their under-resourcing thanks to past governments, do not have the amount of staff required to fight an effective offensive.