PM’s Pill Pull Problematic, P Plague Prevails

First it was the cycle-way, then it was the Letterman show, now he’s banning cold remedies from pharmacy shelves. Is there no end to the goofiness of our Prime Minister?

There’s no denying that New Zealand has a problem with methamphetamine drug use and the mindless sub-culture that goes with it. And it’s clear that access to precursor drugs plays an important part in the manufacture of pure crystal meth or “P”. What is less clear is exactly where the criminal element are sourcing these materials from.

Pulling pseudoephidrine based cold remedies out of chemist shops is not going to solve our drug problem. It will however deprive thousands of honest citizens temporary relief from cough and cold symptoms. In fact such a response may lead to even more serious crime because criminals will have to resort to more overt methods to secure the materials they need. In any event there remain substantial amounts of these drugs making it across our borders from offshore in a variety of different disguises.

What is even more crazy is that there is a technological solution available for this problem. The Australian Pharmacy Guild already offered free monitoring software to their Kiwi counterparts. The software correlates multiple purchases of drugs across pharmacies and reports suspicious activity directly to Police. For some unknown reason the offer was refused.

The fact that a technological answer to this issue has not been implemented is all the more bizarre given that the Prime Minister’s science advisor Professor Peter Gluckman has been all over the case. Perhaps Dr Gluckman’s time would be better spent reminding the government why this is an excellent example of  how New Zealand is failing miserably to use digital innovation to improve economic productivity.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

3 thoughts on “PM’s Pill Pull Problematic, P Plague Prevails

  1. Alarming alliteration not withstanding, “goofiness” is a pretty good adjective for our current PM given that he looks, speaks and acts like a cartoon character. Unfortunately, it does not reflect the damage a fool can do when in a position of power. Also NZ probably gets what it deserves when the constituency has a tendency to vote successive governments out rather than in.

    Withdrawing from sale pseudoephedrine based remedies, as you correctly point out, will not reduce NZ’s drug problem. Instead it will just drive it further underground. NZ is a temperate country and the common cold is endemic during the middle of the year. When in NZ, I rely on these drugs to enable me to continue working and feeling vaguely human when struck down by “Man-Flu”. Banning them is just plain stupid when any calculable positive effects regarding reducing P production would be compared with untold collective misery of the country’s winter flu sufferers.

    I, for one, would like an explanation as to why the tech solution was not gratefully accepted.

  2. There was some vague mumbling about NZ “broadband” not being good enough, so the NZ Pharmicists turned down the offer. Sounds like bollocks to me. An application such as this requires no more bandwidth than your average Google search enquiry.

    Knowing that the tracking system was in place would be deterrent in itself.

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