I'm delighted that we are again focussing on this drug as the horror stories which used to feature regularly in the media and served as a deterrent to those who are tempted to experiment with the drug have dried up during the past few years.
I got to know more about P than I would have preferred when Sir Paul Holmes approached me to help organise an anti-methamphetamine charity called the Stellar Trust.
Paul was determined to use his fame and fortune to campaign against the drug having seen the damage that P did to individuals and families, including his own.
The Stellar Trust, chaired by Burton Shipley, husband of former Prime Minister Dame Jenny Shipley, was very well connected and favoured education as a primary weapon against the spread of the drug.
We employed a recovered drug addict who gave powerful presentations at secondary schools but raising money for a larger education campaign proved problematic as many of the usual funders had decided that education was pointless where drugs were concerned and, worse, possibly counterproductive.
I spent a great deal of time researching the many drug "epidemics" which have swept through various countries at various times and came to the conclusion that, though formal drug education was treated by young people with a great deal of suspicion, real life stories were crucial.
I noticed an interesting fact associated with the spread of methamphetamine in the USA.
The drug initially entered the USA from Asia and appeared first on the West Coast, in California.
Meth use and addiction rapidly grew in California and spread across the country as the clandestine laboratories mastered the formula churned it out.
However, by the time significant amounts of the drug reached the Eastern parts of the USA, there were many fewer takers and the epidemic, in New York for example, never really took off, at least not in the dimensions it had in California.
The disarmingly simple explanation for this phenomenon was that the horror stories about what the drug can do to people had arrived on the East Coast in advance of the drug.
This meant that the "pushers" of methamphetamine in the East could no longer sell the drug, as they had in California as a "drug with no downside".
The Stellar Trust undertook research to find out about teenagers' attitudes to methamphetamine.
We needed to evaluate adolescent attitudes because it was this age group where all the addiction damage was happening in countries where the meth epidemic was advanced.
The research company which did the job had to get parental consent to do the study but we were very fortunate to access one of the very few New Zealand researchers who had experience in this type of investigation.
This research proved both reassuring and alarming.
The alarming aspect of this now eight year old study was that four "drugs" were at that time "normalised" amongst teenagers.
This meant that there was little or no social pressure from other teenagers to abstain.
Nicotine in the form of cigarettes was generally acceptable (though there were complaints about the cost) as was alcohol. Many of these young people mentioned their parent's alcohol consumption. Amongst the illegal drugs both marijuana (universally known as "weed") and ecstasy were also normalised to some degree.
The reassuring aspect of this research was that methamphetamine or P was certainly not acceptable and in no way normalised. Many of the young people in the study could recount horror stories of addiction, job loss, marital breakdown, family collapse and health problems.
These were exactly the kind horror stories that slowed and eventually stopped the spread of the drug in the USA.
I met many P users many while involved with the Stellar Trust.
All wanted to end their addiction so I was pleased to note that some of the proceeds of crime money will also go to extra rehabilitation beds.
Police activity to slow the spread of the drug is essential, but the media has a crucial role in regularly reminding us of the many ruined lives P leaves behind.
Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is CEO of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.
