New Zealand border police are fighting a constant battle to keep up with foreign underworld chemists developing new synthetic drugs destined to flood our shores, a top Customs official says.
Mephedrone, or meow meow powder, made mostly in Chinese clan laboratories, is being mailed into New Zealand to look like an ordinary commercial product.
The brazen imports are often strolling past border security, says Auckland-based Mark Day, manager of drug investigations for Customs.
"Since it's imported in various forms, and because it's a powder, we have some difficulty," he admitted.
"These products are now not being concealed in the traditional manners that we used to find drugs, like inside a soft toy or something.
"These things are being bought in in plain sight. It's inside a tinfoil bag, coming from a company that might be SJ Chemicals in China, for example, coming to SJ Chemicals to a PO Box in Remuera. If it was concealed in the backside of a stuffed rabbit, we'd find it. But now we have to work much harder."
He says they have had to evolve to catch up with the drug designers and dealers.
Border police are now reliant on new technology to test various powders and decide whether it's an illegal compound.
Mr Day said their main weapons now are profiling and intelligence.
"But we're up against people in the world who are always designing new chemical drugs by just changing one of the molecular structures.
"The real challenge is try to stop the demand, otherwise we've got a very low chance of stopping the supply. Yes, we can do one thing at the border, but this is actually a wider society issue.
"We're forever increasing our knowledge and have had to adapt to keep up; hence the term, 'The war on drugs'. It's a constant battle."
