Where the saying originates from isn’t clear but it might be from a 1980 Narcotics Anonymous book with the quote; “Insanity is using day after day knowing that only physical and mental destruction comes when we do.”
Since we are on the topic of narcotics…
Last week the Minister of Customs and Associate Minister of Police, the Honourable Casey Costello, released a report on organised crime from her Ministerial Advisory Group on Transnational, Serious and Organised Crime. It makes for sobering reading. Pun intended.
In the year 2014, Customs seized 55 kilograms of methamphetamine. Last year they averaged 90 kilograms each week. That isn’t a result of improved detective work but reflects the volume of this toxic powder swamping our cities.
Last week the Minister of Customs and Associate Minister of Police, the Honourable Casey Costello, released a report on organised crime from her Ministerial Advisory Group on Transnational, Serious and Organised Crime. It makes for sobering reading. Pun intended.
In the year 2014, Customs seized 55 kilograms of methamphetamine. Last year they averaged 90 kilograms each week. That isn’t a result of improved detective work but reflects the volume of this toxic powder swamping our cities.
Minister of Customs and Associate Minister of Police, the Honourable Casey Costello.ROBERT KITCHIN / THE POST
The police know how ineffective they are because they test wastewater and estimate that 36 kilograms of meth is consumed each week. Which. When you consider that they are intercepting 90kg, seems optimistic.
I am informed that the percentage of containers searched by Customs is closer to zero than it is to two percent. Organised criminal gangs are importing at a scale well outside the state’s ability to maintain control.
Data is difficult to clarify but over a million containers enter New Zealand each year. About thirty thousand per day. Customs has 1200 staff.
And you don’t need to sample the wastewater to appreciate the porous nature of our border. The hottest brand of cigarette in Auckland is Double Happiness. Less than $20 dollars for a pack of twenty. Apparently. ( I’ve smoked worse. )
The Costello report states the obvious; “The size of the drug problem is overwhelming. A huge amount of the resources of the Police and Customs are expended on the drug problem…Incredible work is being done, but they are swimming against the tide.”
The high levels of tax on tobacco and prohibition on drugs are powerless to prevent the unstoppable force of the market meeting the immovable object of the demand for nicotine and narcotics.
“In the past, there was a clear impact on consumption following major seizures, but this is no longer the case. That means we are not stopping enough to affect the market.”
Now. Here I want to take you with me. On a journey. Short in distance but vast in scope and using Einstein’s fake quote as a lamp and the twelve hundred Custom’s staff as cobblestones.
The police know how ineffective they are because they test wastewater and estimate that 36 kilograms of meth is consumed each week. Which. When you consider that they are intercepting 90kg, seems optimistic.
I am informed that the percentage of containers searched by Customs is closer to zero than it is to two percent. Organised criminal gangs are importing at a scale well outside the state’s ability to maintain control.
Data is difficult to clarify but over a million containers enter New Zealand each year. About thirty thousand per day. Customs has 1200 staff.
And you don’t need to sample the wastewater to appreciate the porous nature of our border. The hottest brand of cigarette in Auckland is Double Happiness. Less than $20 dollars for a pack of twenty. Apparently. ( I’ve smoked worse. )
The Costello report states the obvious; “The size of the drug problem is overwhelming. A huge amount of the resources of the Police and Customs are expended on the drug problem…Incredible work is being done, but they are swimming against the tide.”
The high levels of tax on tobacco and prohibition on drugs are powerless to prevent the unstoppable force of the market meeting the immovable object of the demand for nicotine and narcotics.
“In the past, there was a clear impact on consumption following major seizures, but this is no longer the case. That means we are not stopping enough to affect the market.”
Now. Here I want to take you with me. On a journey. Short in distance but vast in scope and using Einstein’s fake quote as a lamp and the twelve hundred Custom’s staff as cobblestones.
A drug mule on a flight from Canada arrived at Auckland International Airport with 15kg of methamphetamine hidden in her suitcase worth about $4.5million.CUSTOMS
The solution proposed by the Ministerial Advisory Group is greater emphasis on money laundering laws and enforcement and looking disrupt the criminal organisations.“It potentially sets the wrong incentives for agencies to focus on seizures, rather than taking more deliberate action to dismantle organised crime groups…”
This makes sense when you consider the resource constraint authorities have. Focussing on the individuals hiding the needles is a better use of staff than searching the haystack.
But that fails to comprehend the futility. With each success the rewards to those remaining in the game increases. When you constrict supply you increase price and the corresponding profit. As the income rises those deterred by the risk because the rewards were insufficient become induced to run the gauntlet.
We want the state to protect our children from drugs but they are incapable of achieving this task. We do not consider that the state is creating an incentive for our children to become ensnared in risky game of importing those drugs.
Not our children. Of course. It is always someone else’s offspring. Nice children from good homes like yours could never be induced into criminality no matter how lucrative the incentives. People who commit these crimes are beyond comprehension and redemption. Other people’s children.
The Ministerial Advisory Group’s advice will be accepted and will have the same result. A failure to significantly disrupt supply, the distribution of dangerously manufactured product that will cause harm and a fresh harvest of young men seduced by the profits into temporary wealth, eventual incarceration and libertarianism.
Here is where I want this short journey to end. With the idea, planted in your imagination, that perhaps there is a better way than harsher policing, longer sentences and paying police to drip test tubes into the sewer each week to measure their ineffectiveness.
Unlike the Ministerial Advisory Group I do not expect that this column to achieve a different outcome than the many similar ones I’ve crafted over the years.
My columns ranting against prohibition are as impotent as Custom’s border protection.
I am committed to repeatedly doing the same task and expecting the same result; which doesn’t seem the converse of insanity but the saying, like prohibition, never did make sense......The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
The solution proposed by the Ministerial Advisory Group is greater emphasis on money laundering laws and enforcement and looking disrupt the criminal organisations.“It potentially sets the wrong incentives for agencies to focus on seizures, rather than taking more deliberate action to dismantle organised crime groups…”
This makes sense when you consider the resource constraint authorities have. Focussing on the individuals hiding the needles is a better use of staff than searching the haystack.
But that fails to comprehend the futility. With each success the rewards to those remaining in the game increases. When you constrict supply you increase price and the corresponding profit. As the income rises those deterred by the risk because the rewards were insufficient become induced to run the gauntlet.
We want the state to protect our children from drugs but they are incapable of achieving this task. We do not consider that the state is creating an incentive for our children to become ensnared in risky game of importing those drugs.
Not our children. Of course. It is always someone else’s offspring. Nice children from good homes like yours could never be induced into criminality no matter how lucrative the incentives. People who commit these crimes are beyond comprehension and redemption. Other people’s children.
The Ministerial Advisory Group’s advice will be accepted and will have the same result. A failure to significantly disrupt supply, the distribution of dangerously manufactured product that will cause harm and a fresh harvest of young men seduced by the profits into temporary wealth, eventual incarceration and libertarianism.
Here is where I want this short journey to end. With the idea, planted in your imagination, that perhaps there is a better way than harsher policing, longer sentences and paying police to drip test tubes into the sewer each week to measure their ineffectiveness.
Unlike the Ministerial Advisory Group I do not expect that this column to achieve a different outcome than the many similar ones I’ve crafted over the years.
My columns ranting against prohibition are as impotent as Custom’s border protection.
I am committed to repeatedly doing the same task and expecting the same result; which doesn’t seem the converse of insanity but the saying, like prohibition, never did make sense......The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
7 comments:
Time for the PM to gain some credibility. Forget speeches on Paris, Carbon, Tariffs, Economy and maori mates . Focus on DRUG supply that is ruining more lives than anything else .
Supply or resupply of Methamphetamine in NZ should mean death by whatever means the supplier chooses , hanging , drowning or poison. Their choice .
No decent NZer needs to have to do the job but they have to go.
agreed. Death penalty is the only answer
For the “we need death penalty” “only thing that will work” people you need a reality check.
We aren’t the only humans on earth inhabiting one little island. There are other humans who have tried similar things.
The result is constant and predictable. The drug market goes further underground & the drug trade becomes more violent, a lot more violent. If you’re already facing death, what’s a few murders to tie up loose ends.
Oh and the drugs are just as available, just now with a side serving of murder 🤦♂️
There is a meme I am amused by that goes “the libertarianism leaving my body when I smell weed in public” and I really identify with this feeling. I want every adult to be free to do whatever that adult wants to do that doesn’t harm another person. But that’s an ideology, not a basis for government. Unfortunately the ferals and sociopaths who dwell amongst us will make these pipe dreams impossible.
Maybe Finland or Norway from 50 years ago could have been libertarian but they sacrificed their culture on the altar of “progress”.
I fear a free society is in our rear view and we look forward to anarcho-tyranny: a system where the ferals will smoke their drugs and play their speakers loudly in public while the rest of us get arrested or ticketed for the minor infractions dreamed up by the bureaucracy. Legalise meth, criminalise building a deck. Blah.
Worked in Singapore once a cesspit of drugs and violence. Obviously you have not experienced losing beautiful vital young members of your family to this cruel dehumanizing drug. Death occurs regularly in NZ because of this drug. Children are left with strangers to grow up in uncaring hateful environments because of this drug. So as I said you don't know the effects of this drug . It's monetary value can only be made uncertain if the consequences of selling importing and manufacturing it are met with an accurate penalty.
Where i work i see the harm meth and other drugs do. Legalise it no. Death penalty for traders yes
Under the 'guilty if accused unless you can prove your innocence' basis for Proceeds of Crime legislation, the government profits handsomely from ensuring there's plenty of profits from drugs to plunder.
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