Turner: Tinny houses offer 'free' P samples

Wellington tinny houses are offering their cannabis clients free or heavily discounted samples of the highly addictive drug P to get them hooked, United Future's Judy Turner said today.

"It seems to be a growing practice. They claim to have run out of cannabis, then offer P as an alternative at a huge discount. And then when they have them hooked, up goes the price," Mr Turner, United Future's health spokeswoman, said.

"Then there are the Auckland gangs, with police stating their fears about young women being forced into prostitution to pay for their P addiction, which has been deliberately created by the gangs," she said.

It was becoming impossible to deny the gateway link between cannabis and P, and drugs in general and prostitution and violent crime, she said.

"Even the head-in-the-sand Green Party, the only party that opposed upgrading P to a Class A drug earlier this year, can surely now see the damage being done by this drug.

"No one can look at the evidence and dispute the links - cannabis, P and young people being forced into prostitution and crime are completely interwoven," she said.

Mrs Turner called for communities to step up to the plate to protect their young.

"They have got to become more pro-active. It is no good simply pointing to government, because government alone cannot fix this problem. There has got to be a joint approach involving diversionary schemes and other measures," she said.

"And at a political level, I once again challenge the Green Party to reconsider its open-slather drugs policies. The way they effectively legitimise drug use is grossly irresponsible.

"It's time for them to stop being part of the problem, and start becoming part of the solution," she said.

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