Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Mike Sabin: Former detective and anti-meth advocate on the need for preventative action

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Mike Sabin: Former detective and anti-meth advocate on the need for preventative action · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So new data from Health New Zealand release to news
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: talks there be patients being discharged from hospital with meth
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: as part of their diagnosis has quadrupled in the last decade.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: The amount of the wastewater testing doubled, but since twenty
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: nineteen as well, which is obviously not great. Mike saban Form,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: a detective and drug educator on the show Mike Good Morning,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Uri Row. Where's it all coming from?
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: The mess? Yeah, Southeast Asia and now South America.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: And then does it go to the five oh one
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: gangs and then to Northland.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Well, we've had a triple tripling in the last twelve
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: months in actual effect, so a fair bit of it
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: will be But I think the five ones I've had
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: certainly had a hand to play. I think that's probably
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: largely where the American South American connections now come in.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: But we're a country that has a large appetite for
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: a drug that we pay a lot more for than
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: anyone else. So it's not surprising that you know, the
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: problem with bad bubbling away for the last twenty twenty
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: five years is continuing on with a head esteem.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Now, are you confident in those wastewater numbers that they
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I mean they're terrible, but are they accurate?
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Well, there are much better indicator than probably what we've
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: had before. But in a place like Northham, for example,
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of people obviously that are on septic tank,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: so it's not picking them up, so it's not entirely accurate.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: But if you look across a number of the other indicators,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: that certainly because they're pretty good indication that use usage
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: is just steadily increasing and now exponentially increasing in recent years.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: So what do you do about it? I mean, we've
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: been banging our heads against the wall trying to stop
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: this at the border. Clearly we're not stopping it. I
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: mean we're doing all we can and we're spending a
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: lot of money trying to do it, but it's not working.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: What do we do well? I guess the question is
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: if there's a demand, they'll always be a supply. It's
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: like any other commodity. It's just that this particular commodity,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: you know, people get addicted to the stuff, they can't
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: not use it, and so you know, for the suppliers,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: it's a really really made customers that just keep buying more.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: So demand reduction really is the key I mean fundamentally,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: you've got to turn the tap off on the supply
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: because otherwise people are going to keep supplying it, and
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: we don't really address that, haven't done so for the
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: twenty five years. We've had the problem largely because our
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: policy is centered around the notion of harmonimization or problem limitation,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: which accepts that use is going to happen and tries
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: to manage it, which is the wrong way to go
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: about it. Anywhere that's seen any reductions has really had
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: a focus on prevention, which we do with tobacco, we
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: do with you know, diabetes and other health issues. I'm
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: not sure why drug use we say, well, let's just
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: try and manage the problem instead of preventing it from
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: starting an affairs.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Interesting, Mike, appreciate your time this morning. Mike Sabin form
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: a detective drug educator of course nationally MP as well the.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: More familiar edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to news
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Talks it be from five am weekdays, or follow the
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: podcast on iHeartRadio.