Drug dealers rent to import

Landlords are becoming unwitting pawns in the drug trade as dealers rent their properties and ship illegal imports to them.

The warning from Customs Minister Maurice Williamson came as he told of a huge increase in the seizure of cold medicine being imported to make P.

In one case, the medicine had been boiled down, painted black and formed into the shape of a heel on a pair of shoes. Another haul was found inside ordinary-looking chairs with wooden legs that had been hollowed out and tubes of drugs hidden in them.

Last year between January and October alone, customs intercepted 733 kilograms of pseudoephedrine enough to make nearly $83 million worth of methamphetamine. This is 1200 per cent more than five years ago.

"For me, the highest priority that I believe Customs now have is to try to stop the scourge of P which I think is tearing the very fabric of our society to pieces," Mr Williamson said yesterday.

"It's the most insidious drug out there, in my view."

Methamphetamine has been linked to some of New Zealand's most haunting crimes in recent years the murder and sword attack by Antonie Ronnie Dixon, the abduction and murder of Featherston schoolgirl Coral-Ellen Burrows by her mother's boyfriend, Steven Williams, and the RSA triple murders by William Bell.

Landlords are the latest group being called on to help fight the scourge.

Officials are worried by a new trend of dealers taking a short-term lease of a property as a false address to which to ship the precursors of drugs.

Mr Williamson said landlords should look out for people asking for a short-term lease, paying cash upfront, often with no identification, moving little furniture in, or sometimes not moving in at all, and for anyone asking numerous questions about mail delivery.

"Up until recently, landlords have had to be watching out for whether their flats were being used as a cookhouse for P.

"Well, just as serious now is is it a drop-off point for the ingredients?"

The cold medicine Contact NT can be bought in New Zealand under tightly controlled conditions, but is freely available in China. One kilogram of Contact NT can make 280 grams of P, with a street value of about $113,000.

Mr Williamson said drug smuggling could be very difficult to detect. "They're finding all sorts of incredibly inventive ways and we're just having to keep ahead of it all the time."