Clutha District mayor Bryan Cadogan’s opinion piece on the scourge of P on our communities
Isuppose one could be forgiven when they get a bit older to not be quite as well aware of the spikier end of society. So it has been a rather steep learning curve and a frightening revelation to me during the past couple of months as I have attempted to get a better understanding of the filthy scourge that is scything through not just the fringes of our society, but digging hard into main stream, and that scourge is P.
In the driving seat of everything pertaining to its control and distribution are the ever increasing number of gangs that are spreading south for the 21st century’s version of a gold rush.
So what have I learnt, firstly nothing bar nothing happens in this business without the gangs being in control.
They are fostering a never ending conveyer belt of locals to do their dirty work in the distribution of the drug.
Their dealer of choice is someone not easily recognisable to society or the authorities, with the preference being middle age women.
You don’t get the opportunity to sell unless you’re ripe for the pickings, in other words the preference is that the dealer is just at the start of developing a hunger for the drug.
It must be handy for the gangs to have as much control as possible, no use just chancing it to greed and intimidation.
Most dealers get a rush of income like they have never seen before, and while they no doubt hope at the start of their business involvement that they will be the first to resist the drugs tentacles, in a very short time the inevitable addiction takes hold.
Having large sums of available cash and an itch that needs scratching was never going to end well, and in just a few short months they become too much of a risk to the good old boys.
So they get moved on, and the next unsuspecting entrepreneur takes their place. What comes of the ex-dealer once ties are cut?
This person, who only weeks before was in control of their life, now has an insatiable habit to feed, they have lost their place in the ‘‘money go round’’ and their life is unravelling in all directions.
Just when it must appear that all is lost our greasy merchants of misery are back as saviours offering a way to fund this nightmare.
Prostitution or theft, or maybe even both. They don’t care, it all fits in to their business plan and so what if what they are really offering is a one way trip to hell.
Still you can’t have too much sympathy for our dearly departed dealer, because they never gave a stuff about the deep devastation they cut through our wee communities.
In large numbers they are stealing our kids’ futures destroying their minds, and robbing their souls.
It’s time the lower South Island woke up.
Our kids, our grandchildren’s lives destroyed right under our nose and most of us aren’t even aware it’s happening.
Good kids are paying a ridiculously heavy price for one or maybe two indiscretions.
Eighty per cent of girls are hooked after one go.
If guys get behind on payments for the drug they have to steal modern cars in order to keep the ‘‘shit kickers’’ from their doors.
No easy task to steal a new car. Think about it, the old days of a screw driver and a bit of luck are not going to do it.
And when they inevitably fail they are in the system and making fast steps to their first stretch inside and a deeper association with the gangs.
But I suspect they are the luckier of the genders because the most debortuous and demeaning of penalties awaits any lady that falls to far behind in payments, these guys are sick, bordering on animals, without a shred of common human decency.
Very quickly no matter who you are, your life descends into hell, in fact hell must seem like Shangri-La and for many there must seem no way out.
The gangs only play by their rules they are the only winner and they play for keeps.
For some the stars align and a very small window of opportunity presents itself.
Through the fog some reach out for help, and do you know what I am hearing back, in many cases they are getting turned away because try as they may, the handful of services that are entrusted with providing the professional support and care are so snowed under with this onslaught that they are having to make some tough priority calls.
If you’re in the rural areas and in the lower south isn’t that most of us?
Then the catch phrase I am hearing back is ‘‘In-house services’’.
So when the addict is coming down and needs help with sweats and rages, administering diazepam for control of the huge mood swings, taking their pulse and blood pressure, fending off visits from the flotsam in leather, trying to maintain a house, a family, and maybe hold down a job ,clean up the vomit, and hope and pray that this person you love is going to make it – they have to do it ‘‘in-house’’ , that’s your house, or your mother’s house, or anywhere that still believes in you enough to give it a go.
Understandably ‘‘in-house’’ is proving challenging, and what is the real cost of failure, a tortured soul who is lost forever, a family that keeps putting themselves through the mincer until the price becomes too great, service providers that are trying so valiantly but under resourced, and financially dependent on Wellington bureaucrats who liken the Lower South to an episode of The Walton’s , and then there are the vast majority of the people of the lower South Island blissfully unaware of the eldorado environment that we are providing for the gangs, never ending dealers, never ending users, an inexhaustible supply of things to steal, cash on top of cash, crime in so many dimensions and we haven’t really even begun to see the next episode, with patch war fare, corner dairies getting robbed, devastating intergenerational upheaval of families and the very fabric of our communities.
The gangs have a plan for society, have we got the courage to make a plan for the gangs?
‘‘In large numbers they are stealing our kids’ futures destroying their minds, and robbing their souls . . . . It’s time the lower South Island woke up.’’