No limit to drug importers’ creativity

A fibreglass panda, a curious looking Rubik’s cube, a children’s book, some gym equipment and a mascara lid.

All innocuous items. All used to try to smuggle illicit drugs into New Zealand.

Provisional figures for 2016 show just over 413 kilograms of methamphetamine and almost 1.1 tonnes of its precursors was seized at our borders.

Investigations manager Maurice O’brien said ’’we talk about 413kg of methamphetamine seized. In effect that’s 4,130,000 injections.’’

Customs’ seizures hit record levels last year with the largest seizures made in the past 12 months. These include 176kg of meth found in shipping containers, 200kg of ephedrine in ‘‘hollowed-out’’ paper, 35kg of cocaine in a horse head sculpture and 20kg of meth in false-sided suitcases.

Northern ports manager Bruce Berry said Customs made more than 4000 interceptions, totalling 1.86 tonnes, 51 litres and ‘‘over 200,000 other forms in pills, tabs and the like’’.

Berry said there had been a rise in the ‘‘dark net’’ or internet-type seizures with people believing the internet gave them anonymity ’’but it’s the same as strapping it to your body and walking through the airport’’.

He said New Zealanders are becoming more familiar with buying things online; ’’they’re looking for choice, they’re looking for price, they’re looking for opportunity. The same can be applied to the illicit market’’.

‘‘What we are seeing is an increased variety of drugs and their precursors, mimics, analogues, synthetics.

‘‘You name it, it’s coming through there. The lengths these people go to is only limited by their imagination.

‘‘In the past 12 months I’ve seen cloth impregnated with ephedrine that the technology picked up [and] we’ve seen fillings of biscuits.

‘‘The Rubik’s cubes is a really good example. Each of those little squares holds less than a gram. Somebody has to fill each of those cubes up with the ephedrine,’’ Berry said.

Said O’brien: ’’There’s no doubt that criminals are trying harder to smuggle drugs into New Zealand and are being far more sophisticated.

‘‘I can tell you that customs is also working harder and smarter.

‘‘New Zealand is no different from the rest of the world, in that the smuggling of drugs around the globe in international, it’s transnational and it has no respect for any of our borders.

‘‘The challenge for New Zealand is that the price of our methamphetamine and MDMA is a lot higher than a lot of other economies around the world.

‘‘For this reason, it makes New Zealand quite an attractive and lucrative business proposition for some of these transnational syndicates.’’