Home-made drugs N.Z. problem — police

Press, 23 June 1984, Page 12

Home-made drugs N.Z. problem — police

PA Auckland The manufacture of hard drugs in so-called kitchen laboratories has become a problem peculiar to New Zealand, says a police spokesman.

The head of the Auckland police drug squad, Detective Inspector lan Hastings, said

he was not aware that in Australia or the United States chemicals to produce hard drugs were made in kitchens.

“It is a new thing on the scene,” he said. “Eighteen months ago we didn’t have one of these (kitchen laboratories).

“As far as I know the extracting of morphine and heroin from codeine-based drugs is peculiar to New Zealand, but we are keeping an eye on it.” Mr Hastings said the police were concerned that many people were able to obtain sufficient codeinebased drugs with relative ease to start making hard drugs.

He said the trend towards home laboratories to make

drugs such as morphine, pethidine, and heroin had been evident for some time.

In the last 18 months his squad had confiscated 14 home laboratories, some of which had been “very sophisticated.”

Arrests had resulted in 22 people facing charges of manufacturing and possessing Class A drugs which are extracted from a codeine base. “It wasn’t until after we found one of them that we were alerted to a number of problems,” said Mr Hastings.

“We have had to spend some time in consultation with scientists of the D.S.I.R. to train our staff in how to handle these chemicals when we find them.”