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Source: ONE News -
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Police say an alarming number of foreign students in Auckland are being recruited by Asian crime rings to receive illegal shipments of drugs used to make methamphetamine, or P.
Customs officers last month intercepted about 30 packages containing pseudoephedrine-based ContacNT cold tablets, often hidden in chocolate, noodles and similar items.
"At least that many, maybe more" could be coming into the country every month, Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Cahill has told The New Zealand Herald.
ContacNT is legal in China, but is a class C drug in New Zealand and importing it carries a maximum penalty of eight years in prison.
Cahill says young Asian males, mainly Chinese, have been used to receive drug shipments for years.
However, police are concerned at an "alarming increase" in the number of secondary school pupils being lured in.
Ten students have been arrested in the past three months and are before the courts, and more than 100 have been caught receiving drug shipments in the past five years.
The recipients, known as "catchers", are believed to get up to $1000 per parcel, which contain up to 2kg of ContacNT, enough to make hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of methamphetamine.
Cahill says most were not aware of the risks they were taking.
Customs investigations manager Mark Day says students and young people are being "used and victimised" by the drug rings.
He says officers found pseudoephedrine most weeks and often several times a week, mainly in mail coming from China.
