Mothers against synthetics
Two signs stand on a Pa¯ tea roadside. One says: Stop selling synthetics. It destroys families. The other is: Stop using synthetics. It’s highly addictive. It’s toxic. It kills.
This was part of Pa¯ tea’s most recent peaceful protest that took place last week - it was antisynthetic drugs.
Two concerned mothers and nanas organised the passive protest on Friday at 10am - they preferred to remain anonymous.
They met under the waka in the centre of town and offered scones, coffee, information pamphlets and smiling faces.
‘‘I wanted to do this ages ago, after I’d seen most of it [synthetic drug issues] online,’’ one of the women said. ‘‘I’m concerned for everybody - it’s everywhere, eh?’’
The women received lots of toots of encouragement from passers by, and had people stopping to talk to them further.
One of the organisers admitted she didn’t know much about synthetic drugs, but did her research and made pamphlets for people who wanted to know more too.
However, the one thing she did know was the dangers of the drug.
‘‘It destroys families,’’ she said. ‘‘All they do is spend their money on that stuff, that’s all they think of. It’s such an addictive synthetic that it makes people go and get more and more and then they don’t know what each lot has in it.
‘‘From what I’ve been reading, they’re changing things in them all the time. It could be flyspray one time, it could be stuff you use at the vets, then I read online about bath salts.’’
The potential use of all these chemicals raised further concerns for her.
‘‘It’s horrible, it’s not even a weed,’’ she said. ‘‘I saw it on TV the other day, you can’t even call it synthetic weed, because it’s not.’’
She said synthetics aren’t just an issue is Pa¯ tea, ‘‘it’s in the big cities too’.
The women hoped Pa¯ tea would start a chain reaction and other towns would look at protesting.
This protest follows the recent Taranaki Daily News article about two Taranaki men coming close to dying after using synthetic drugs. Last week there had been four incidents in seven days where users have had ‘‘a significant, adverse reaction to synthetic cannabis’’, Detective Sergeant Gerard Bouterey, of Taranaki CIB told the Taranaki Daily News.