Police On Watch For Reefers

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30633, 26 December 1964, Page 1

Police On Watch For Reefers

Christchurch police over recent weeks have been making inquiries into reports that reefers (cigarettes made from marijuana) have been brought into the city by men off ships calling at Lyttelton.

Three houses and at least one night club have been kept under watch by detectives.

“Police inquiries have not led to any evidence of widespread use of marijuana in Christchurch and district," said the head of the Christchurch Criminal Investigation Branch (Superintendent A. C. B. Wade) when questioned yesterday. “The police would welcome any information or evidence concerning the existence and use of marijuana in Christchurch,” he said.

“The police are very much alive to the danger of this drug. Its existence and use, generally associated with other and more dangerous drugs in immoral company and bad surroundings as amply illustrated in other countries, must be stamped out.” He had no further comment to make at this stage, Mr Wade said, except to say that inquiries were being continued and any information given to the police would be acted on promptly. However, the police have reason to believe that some reefers, also called goof butts and Mary Warners, have been brought into the area by men off ships. It has been reported that some of the reefers have been sold to others and that young persons have been smoking them “for kicks.”

Persons with criminal records, some of them young women, have been frequenting the houses kept under watch by detectives. The real danger of marijuana. or hashish or bhang, is that the drug does not give sufficient “kicks." Its user

then moves on to heroin (“horse’’) and/or cocaine (“snow") and becomes an addict ("hooked”). The New Zealand Police Commissioner (Mr C. L. Spencer), who has learned through attending Interpol conferences of the trouble that drugs cause in overseas countries, has publicly stated his intention to do all in his power to prevent drugs entering this country. A special narcotics squad has been formed in Auckland and several persons have been arrested in connexion with drug taking and trafficking in that city this year.

Mr Wade made it clear that the police expected any parents who had any suspicion that their teen-age children were trying out reefers “for kicks” to inform the police immediately. The main task of the police was to detect sources of supply. Parents, particularly during school and university holidays, should know where their sons and daughters were going and what company they were keeping. Drug addicts almost invariably moved in criminal circles, he said.