Australasian biker news
Cooking up a toxic mix
25.08.2005
KATHY WEBB
P cooks in Hawke's Bay are creating lethal brews using chemicals stolen from
tanneries, carpet factories and dry cleaners.
Mums, dads and kids all over Hawke's
Bay are sucking up stuff used to clean printing presses or make plastic
packaging.
Richard knows all about this. He used
to make a living as a professional P cook for the gangs who control the
market. Now "totally anti-P" and trying to turn his life around, he has a
blunt warning for people strung up and strung out on what they know as P.
"They're laughing at you."
The gangs are laughing at you because
you're selling your souls for pretty-coloured crystals soaked in toxic
chemicals, he says.
What you're buying is not clean methamphetamine, it's a lethal cocktail, and
the buzz you get for five or 10 minutes is not an amphetamine rush, it's
toxic shock. That's why your brain sinks into a black hole, why you can't
think straight, why you crave the rush again, why it drives you mad. There's
just enough amphetamine in there to keep you awake for three or four days -
that's why you're paranoid and angry - but basically you don't have a clue
what you're doing. You're suckers.
Richard says he never used P - heroin and speed were his thing - but he's
been on the inside of the gangs making millions out of it, and he's turned
out a few batches of it for them.
He's seen how lucrative it is. He can
point out blocks of flats and offices built with the proceeds, and the
lifestyle blocks where those in the know live in fancy homes, the flash cars
they drive, and the private schools they put their kids through.
This boy who was clever at high school
chemistry can rattle off the chemicals and processes that go into making the
purest of P, and he knows what's in the stuff being sold on the mass market.
That's why, now avowedly anti-P, he
wants to put out a warning.
"Half of it is unclean residue they're
calling P. They're smoking toxic residue in a glass pipe, and they're not
even getting an amphetamine rush. It's toxic shock.
"A lot of addicts are not addicted to
amphetamine. It's to the toxins in their bodies. When you remove it, they go
into shock."
The people making most of the money
from P - Hells Angels, Head Hunters and a motor cycle chapter of Black Power
- keep the purest meth for themselves, their closest associates, and the
very top of the market, he says.
Theirs is made from laboratory-grade
chemicals they "source" themselves and provide to the cook, who gets a 35
percent share of the batch.
One batch takes about three days to
make. The last step in the process is to wash the methamphetamine in
chloroform, tolulene or ether.
"Chloroform is the best. You get a
beautiful crystal that looks like rock salt." The best P is kept for select
circles, and the dregs and bad (coloured) batches go to the mass market.
If it's pale orange, it's got
industrial-grade trichloroethylene (dry cleaning fluid) in it, but that
doesn't stop it going on sale with a sales-pitch name.
"Guys sit around laughing and making
up names for bad batches. It it's orange, they might call it 'mandarin'.
They even use food colours sometimes," says Richard.
When dry cleaning fluid is used for
the last wash, and the mixture is put on a baking tray in the sun to
evaporate, or on a rack above the stove, it dries out quickly.
"The gear that comes out is orange or
brown. They're calling that P. It's dirty. There's all sorts of toxins and
crap in there. People are stupid. They're not aware, half the time, of what
they're using, and the dealers are laughing at these clowns," says Richard.
The P made for gangs is given to their
prospects to sell in 10-gram bags. The buyers mix in other things, then
divvy it up into one-gram bags that sell for $800-$1000 each.
"The people who buy that are the
struggling solo mothers and fathers living in the poor suburbs."
They smoke some of their gram and cut
the rest with something else into 13 or 14 "points" and sell them for
$60-$80 each.
"If they're really lucky they'll make
$65 out of it, but most are smoking their profit and use their benefit just
to pay for the gram they bought."
More supplies of P come from a
pathetic mish-mash of addicts and others using whatever ingredients they can
get their hands on. They turn out four-hour concoctions from "labs" in their
car boots, university hostel rooms or home kitchens, using anything from dry
cleaning to wool scouring fluids.
"I read the stories and I'm amused by
their stupidity, and the stupidity of the people buying the chemicals
they're producing.
"Today we're having a tolulene shock.
Tomorrow it'll be acetone or ether, and dry cleaning fluid the day after."
Addled brains and P cooking are not a
good mix. It's a dangerous process at the best of times, so it's not
surprising that every so often a cook and a kitchen go up in smoke.
Richard says it can happen when they
haven't got enough ventilation, the kitchen fills with evaporating gases,
and the cook sits down and lights a congratulatory smoke. Or sometimes,
astoundingly, the cook uses a gas stove. Richard used to sell his services
to whichever gang offered him the most money, the best deal.
Getting the best ingredients was the
first challenge. The gangs have people doing it full-time, armed with lists
of chemicals to look out for.
They might swap a 2.5litre bottle of
chloroform for a 10-gram bag of "gear".
There was a guy in Wellington who was
a "professional burglar and very good chemical supplier".
"He looked like a librarian, driving
old English cars".
He had a nice place in a good suburb
of Wellington and was being paid massive amounts of money. It was the money
that proved to be his undoing, when people became suspicious about his wife
buying vehicles and overseas holidays and paying for them with paper bags
full of money.
"There's that much money mixed up in
this business. Some of the guys at the top are making hundreds of
thousands," says Richard.
One of the chemicals in P is red
phosphorus, used for re-packing shotgun shells.
"Anyone with a gun can get that."
The Maori gangs have cornered the
black market in it, getting big supplies from Hawke's Bay and Northland
where families have big gun cabinets.
Some years ago, P cooks used to drive
to Palmerston North and "knock off" Massey University's bio department to
get clean chemicals, says Richard.
The Smith Salmon laboratories in Hutt
Valley and Takapuna were also on the list, along with the Poukawa research
centre south of Hastings.
Richard's warning about P has come out
of the fact that although it's been around for quite a long time, he's
worried that it's become more widely used and accepted as a social thing to
share. Whole families are entrenched in it, passing the culture from parents
to children, and it's setting the scene for what he believes will be the
next drug plague - Asian heroin. The Asian gangs are now well established
and selling "ice" (another name for methamphetamine) to various gangs and a
wholesaler in Onehunga, he says. They'll use their links to bring in heroin,
and a large slice of New Zealand society is prepped and ready to go for it.
Richard first got into drugs in
Wellington in the 1970s. He was bored at school and more interested in
smoking hash and going skindiving. His home life wasn't too hot, with his
father mixed up in illegal gambling and fencing.
At 15, some friends introduced him to
heroin, which was "easier to get than dope", and he was hooked.
"It had an almost mystical appeal. I
was seduced by the image. I wanted Italian leather shoes, a Rolex and a
fastback Camaro.
"I got those, but I also got prison,
bad teeth, poor circulation, and I can't get a job. It wrecked my life."
Richard went to jail four times.
"Doing jail is like a professional
occupational hazard. Just like a carpet layer gets crook knees, people in
the drug scene will end up in jail or dead.
"You have three choices - go to jail,
clean up, or die."
His first stint was at 18, and he was
terrified.
"Now it holds no fear for me
whatsoever. It's like a friggin' health camp. It's an absolute joke. You get
three square meals a day, you don't have to work, you can take whatever
drugs you want as long as you have the wherewithal. You can have a jug and a
toastie maker and a TV in your cell.
"It should be like a labour camp,
working from 6am to 6pm in an environment you don't want to go back to.
"The biggest thing is your loss of
freedom, but you put on weight, pump weights and come out fit and healthy."
The last time he got out, he had a
home-detention bracelet and a new mind-set. He'd decided it was time to
change his life.
Now middle-aged, he's "totally
anti-P", coming to terms with his past, contemplating his options, and
planning the future for his kids.
"At long last I've become a young
adult.
"If I had my life over again there is
no way I would get mixed up with drugs. I would probably have joined the Air
Force or Army to get some discipline in my life."
Richard would love a real job, but
with a drug and jail history such as his, the chances aren't high, so he's
thinking about university next year.
"I'd be a very clever lab technician,
but they wouldn't give me a job doing that."
He's horrified to hear a young woman's
assertion that tinnie houses are lacing cannabis with P and giving or
selling it to kids outside school gates in Hawke's Bay.
"That terrifies me. That's just very
nasty. It makes me angry. A lot of blokes like me have children, and if they
knew this they would be very very angry."
If he found out anyone involved with P
was hanging around his children, "I would be asking an old acquaintance to
take them away and have a chat with them".
"I don't want my children mixed up
with the drug world."
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