Killer drug leaves trail of grief Tony Wall

Kiwis are dicing with death smoking the world’s strongest synthetic cannabis. and Helen King meet an angry family and an unrepentant dealer.

The last time Stephanie Harawira saw her son alive, he was off to smoke synthetic cannabis.

She was in central Henderson, West Auckland on June 13 when she spotted her son, Kahu James Harawira, who’d been living rough, and another man she knew, Robert Marriner, a known synthetics dealer, meeting in the street.

‘‘I challenged them about smoking that rubbish ... Robert just stood there and justified it – ‘oh no Steph, it’s all right’.

‘‘They weren’t getting it – all they knew is they were going off to get wasted. Within 24 hours my boy was dead.’’

Kahu Harawira, whose father, Tai, is politician Hone Harawira’s brother, died just a few days past his 29th birthday. The interim cause of death has been given as heart failure; coroner’s inquiries are continuing.

His family believe synthetics killed him. Hone Harawira, who as leader of the Mana Party has taken a hard line on drugs, says Kahu’s death had ‘‘torn my brother’s family apart, it’s a massive hole in the fabric of our family, and someone needs to be held accountable’’.

Manufacturers and suppliers of synthetic cannabis and methamphetamine ‘‘need to be put up against a wall and shot’’, the former MP said.

Harawira is one of at least 20 people to have died smoking synthetic cannabis – known on the street as ‘‘synnies’’ – and there are calls for a nationwide taskforce to tackle the problem.

Families of the victims want the Government to put more money into treatment services because there is nowhere for users to go to get the specialist help they need.

Sunday Star-Times inquiries have found that the synthetics now appearing on the streets of New Zealand are the world’s strongest. The culprit is a chemical called AMBFubinaca, which caused an infamous ‘‘zombie’’ outbreak in New York last year.

A sample from West Auckland tested by the ESR and it came back twice as strong as the New York doses. The ESR says some concentrations have been 30 times stronger.

Stephanie Harawira, an awardwinning community worker who led a campaign to ban synthetics in 2014, says the Government has to act now.

‘‘What the Government is doing is not working. They need to recognise it’s a problem and invest more money in centres around New Zealand where people can go and get the help they need. My boy’s death makes me even more determined to fight this fight with synthetics. The sooner we rid our country from it the better.’’