WELLINGTON: The potency of locally made methamphetamine remains as high as imported products despite a clampdown on the precursors used to make the drug. Pseudoephedrine, a major ingredient in methamphetamine manufacturing, was reclassified as a classed B controlled drug in 2011.
Despite making the precursor harder to get, methamphetamine made in New Zealand is as pure, if not more so, as foreign imports from Asian countries such as Myanmar, China and Thailand.
Police assistant commissioner Malcolm Burgess says that it is a common misconception that imported drugs are higher in quality than local products. “It’s more a perception thing than reality,” Mr Burgess told NZ Newswire.
“There might be a perception among some that the imported product is of a higher quality but the experience and the purity levels we’ve detected in New Zealand manufactured product is the same as or higher than imported products.” He said the potency of methamphetamine in New Zealand is around 80 percent. The state of Victoria, in Australia, has a similar average purity and it is the highest of all Australian states and territories despite more lenient pseudoephedrine controls.
Local producers are also making their clandestine drug labs more mobile, with many hidden in the boot of cars and in the back of vans. But despite their smaller size, they’re producing more methamphetamine.
“The labs have become more commercial, able to provide a larger quantity of finished product,” Mr Burgess said. “Smaller in terms of the size of the lab but looking to produce larger volumes or looking to be located in remote location where their activities are not easy to detect or otherwise go unnoticed.” Lab cooks were also keeping equipment and chemicals separate, making it harder for police to detect them and close them down, he said.
