Glass pipes designed for smoking methamphetamine are still being sold openly across the counter in Northland shops, more than five years after a national ban was supposed to take them off the shelves, drug and addiction workers say.
A recent investigation by RNZ, published on 17 June, found the pipes for sale in vape stores, two dollar shops and even some dairies in two Far North towns. In Kaikohe, reporters found glass pipes for sale in one of three vape stores visited, two of three two dollar shops and one of two dairies. In Kerikeri, a town not usually linked with the drug, they were easier to find again, turning up in all three two dollar shops checked along with a vape store and another small retailer.
The pipes ranged in price from about 11 to 25 dollars. In some shops they sat on open display by the till, in a few cases next to novelty items aimed at children. They are often labelled as ornaments, glassware or tobacco accessories, a description that addiction workers say is a thin cover for what the items are really used for.
Rhonda Zielinski, chief executive of the Whakaoranga Whānau Recovery Hub in Kaikohe, said the open trade made no sense in a region that has spent years confronting a serious methamphetamine problem. “I think the government should be able to stop the sale of those items. I mean, they’re drug paraphernalia,” she told RNZ. “It just seems insane to me, particularly when there’s been so much attention on Kaikohe about being the meth capital of the world.”
Tia Ashby, chief executive of the Ngāpuhi health provider Te Hau Ora o Ngāpuhi, said retailers and suppliers leaned on creative descriptions to keep selling. “I’ve been told that it’s a mini glass ornament. I’ve been told it can be used as a herbal utensil,” she said. The reality, she argued, was plain to anyone working with whānau affected by addiction.
“They may be labelled as glassware, ornaments or tobacco accessories, but we need to be honest about what many of these items are being used for,” Ashby said. “But retailers should not profit from items that cause serious harm to the community.”
The frustration is sharpened by the fact that the law already appears to cover the problem. The Misuse of Drugs Prohibition of Utensils Notice 2020 makes it illegal to import, sell or supply pipes intended for methamphetamine use. The difficulty, the RNZ report found, lies in enforcement and in the way the pipes are dressed up as harmless trinkets to slip past the rules. Health officials and addiction services want the existing law applied consistently, and any loopholes that allow the sales to continue closed off.
Customs has a role in stopping the pipes reaching the country in the first place. Anthony Davis, the agency’s northern inspections manager, said importers often tried to smuggle the items in by misdescribing them or hiding them inside legitimate shipments, and that Customs used intelligence, data analysis and technology to screen incoming freight. Once the pipes are in the country, though, the job of keeping them off shop shelves falls to police, public health officials and councils.
The investigation landed just days after a run of major drug enforcement in the north. Police arrested dozens of alleged methamphetamine cooks and dealers in operations spanning Northland and Auckland, seizing around 10 kilograms of the drug and roughly 200,000 dollars worth of product. For communities like Kaikohe, the contrast between that effort and the easy availability of smoking pipes a short walk away is hard to square.
Northland has been open about the scale of its problem. Wastewater testing and frontline services have repeatedly placed the region among the worst affected in the country, and recent RNZ reporting has detailed children growing up in the shadow of addiction. Community activist Wiremu Keretene, from Kawakawa, is among those who have pushed local shops to stop the trade, an effort that echoes a campaign in the same town several years ago that persuaded stores to clear the pipes from sale after a quiet word from locals.
That history points to one of the few tools that has worked so far. When residents have approached store owners directly and asked them to pull the pipes, many have agreed, removing the items without any need for a prosecution. It is a slow, shop by shop approach, and it relies on the goodwill of individual retailers rather than the force of the law.
For the addiction workers who deal with the human cost every day, that is not enough. They argue that a product banned under national rules should not still be sitting on counters next to lolly bags and toys, and that leaving the job to volunteers and goodwill sends the wrong message in a region trying hard to turn the tide. The NZ Herald has reported similar concerns from residents in Whangārei, who have urged shops to either hide the pipes or stop stocking them altogether.
The question now is whether the authorities named in the law, the police, councils and public health units, will start using the powers they already have, or whether the trade will carry on in plain sight until enough locals walk in and ask, one shop at a time, for the pipes to come down.
What do you think should happen to shops selling these pipes? Have you seen them on sale where you live? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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