Cooking up a plan to defeat the P plague

OPINION: P is a dangerously destructive drug that has taken hold in New Zealand. It's wrecking lives, wrecking families, fuelling crime and allowing gangs to flourish.

I'm determined to confront this scourge. That's why I announced this month the Government's action plan for tackling P. It includes cracking down on gangs, beefing up Customs drug forces, assisting more addicts to quit and restricting the availability of pseudoephedrine (PSE), the key ingredient in P.

Media scrutiny of our plan has centred on this final decision. I want to lay out what it means, and why we've done it.

The reclassification of PSE as a class B2 controlled drug means it will be available only by doctor's prescription and that more severe penalties will apply to those who have it for a non-approved purpose.

It may surprise you to learn that these days most of us who buy products such as Sudafed or Codral are not actually using PSE. In fact, up to 80 per cent of the cold and flu products Kiwis buy are instead based on an ingredient called phenylephrine. Phenylephrine can't be used to make P.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers have been selling these alternative products since the early 2000s and most Kiwis seem happy with them. Medical evidence backs this up, suggesting that in almost all cases patients will receive similar relief from cold and flu symptoms using a non-PSE alternative.

In fact, the Netherlands, one of the more liberal countries when it comes to drug control, has banned PSE, with no obvious consequences for the health of its population.

So what's driving the Government's decision? I want to reduce the amount of P available in New Zealand, to make it harder for gangs to produce, and to make it easier for police and Customs authorities to catch those who deal in it.

The advice I received from both my chief science adviser, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, and from the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs was that further restricting the availability of PSE would help achieve those things.

Police report that up to a third of the P labs they bust in New Zealand are using domestically bought PSE as their base ingredient. Gangs and drug cooks are going to serious lengths to get it, using organised pill-shopping syndicates to buy it at community pharmacies.

We believe restricting the availability of PSE will make it much harder for gangs and drug cooks to make P in New Zealand.

Overseas evidence supports this conclusion. Take the American state of Oregon, for example. In 2003, before Oregon began requiring a prescription for PSE, police found 473 P-producing labs. In 2008, with the new controls in place, that number plummeted to 21.

Kentucky, on the other hand, has had less success. It adopted a scheme similar to the Project Stop proposal advocated by the Pharmacy Guild. This involved an electronic monitoring system being installed in pharmacies to track PSE sales.

Initial results were positive, but the tide is now turning and the number of P labs is climbing again, from 302 in 2007 to 405 last year. Why? Because P cooks have adapted to the system and have started using multiple people to buy the pills so none of them goes over the limit. This practice is so common there's a name for it - smurfing.

Our Government was reluctant to adopt such a monitoring system at great cost to the taxpayer, with a huge administrative burden for police and pharmacists, when it was so open to smurfing- type abuse.

What's more, we think police time will be better spent investigating and prosecuting the big drug syndicates than chasing up those shopping for pills. Our Australian neighbours also see sense in a more restrictive approach, with the New South Wales police this week recommending Australia follow New Zealand's prescription-only example.

Will this reclassification solve New Zealand's P problems altogether? Of course not. That's why our plan also includes a push against gangs, additional Customs drug forces and a significant boost to addiction treatment.

Will the restriction inconvenience some consumers sometimes? Yes. As prime minister my job is to weigh up that cost against the wider public interest. I am convinced that all Kiwis stand to gain from this decision.

We all pay a price for this country's horrendous P scourge - whether it's having our house burgled by a P addict, watching a loved one being sucked in by addiction, or fearing another murderous P-induced rampage.

The difference between these things and the effects of the common cold are worlds apart. I think New Zealanders are fair-minded enough to see that.

- © Fairfax NZ News