P.M. pledges drug trade crack-down

Press, 3 November 1981, Page 3

P.M. pledges drug trade crack-down

PA . Hamilton The Government was “totally devoted" to cracking down on the Mr Bigs of the drugs world, said the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) yesterday. Speaking to 140 Waikato policemen before he opened his election campaign. Mr Muldoon said that he was “totally devoted to getting the people — many of whom you can’t get at. and you know it — who have accumulated considerable wealth by manipulating the front men of the drug scene . . . some of them professional men of apparent respectability in the community. “We are totally devoted to getting to them, exposing them, and taking from them what they have accumulated," he said. Mr Muldoon said that the drug problem was “pernicious."

- “I see it ... as being an issue of greed," he said. “It is an issue of greed, of entrepreneurs . . . playing on the weakness of others with a total disregard for the fact that they are killing them in the worst possible way."

The Government would do whatever was needed to assist the police and -the customs “hopefully to stamp out. but certainly to limit" the drug trade. A law introducing the concept of "criminal bankruptcy" to allow courts to strip from convicted drugs

traffickers all assets which’ were believed to have arisen from the drugs trade, would be put to Parliament next year, he said. ’ Mr Muldoon said that restraint and discipline in the face of provocation were the key to control 'during the Springbok tour of New Zealand.

“I went to the people to measure the tangible support for the police force of this country following the tour and the letters I got in would warm the heart of any policeman or their families, ” he said. In an “off-the-cuff" address, he said that as in the depression years of the 1930 s youngsters today were understanding the need to put their heads down and work.

"Young people understand that it is not going to be easy," he said. “They have got to work if they are going to enhance their standard of living." There was a growing awareness that the world outside this country was not an easy place.

Mr Muldoon said that if National were re-elected, the Minister for Police (Mr Couch) would be reappointed. The decision to appoint the Police Commissioner (Mr R. J. Walton) for a further twoyear term was not a vote of no-confidence in the Deputy Commissioner (Mr R. Thompson), the Prime Minister said.