Govt makes little progress rolling out meth rehab programme

There's widespread dismay the Government hasn't yet widely rolled out a highly successful programme to stop people using methamphetamine.

During the 2020 Election Campaign Labour leader Jacinda Ardern promised to roll out Northland's Te Ara Oranga programme to "4000 more people in regions like the East Coast and Bay of Plenty where meth use is high".

Ardern said her Government would spend $38 million over four years expanding the programme, but nearly two years on and there's very little progress.

On Thursday Health Minister Andrew Little refused to say when the Government would roll the programme out telling 1News, "when we have announcements to make on it then we will make those announcements".

"It was a promise it remains a promise and we have a three year parliamentary term to do it in."

Little said the Government also funds other methamphetamine harm reduction programmes around the country.

But the National Party's health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti doubts the Government will be able to reach 4000 people within four years given nothing is up and running at this stage.

Reti says it beggars belief that, "we're not utilising the most well tested and tried methamphetamine programme in New Zealand".

The Greens' drug law reform spokesperson Chlöe Swarbrick said the Government would be much better off paying to roll out Te Ara Oranga to help methamphetamine users than funding the police to carry out aerial cannabis recovery operations.

"This is game changing there is no other intervention that we have seen in this country that has the same level of efficacy when it comes to reducing drug harm and criminal offending," she told 1News.

In response to a Parliamentary written question recently Little told Reti that work to localise the Te Ara Oranga programme in the Eastern Bay of Plenty is now starting to be developed, "and until this stage is complete it's not possible to speculate on how many people the programme will reach in any given location".

The Drug Foundation's executive director Sarah Helm says while it's good news something is happening, the foundation is frustrated with the lack of haste from the Government.

"Te Ara Oranga has an incredible return on investment and efficacy so it reduces criminality by about 34% among the people who have been through the programme."

Those on the frontlines working with people who use P are also growing impatient at the slow rollout of Te Ara Oranga by the Government.

Tommy Wilson from Tauranga's social support group, Te Tuinga Whanau, said they would start helping people today if the Government provided the resourcing.

"There's a war you know and we're at the battlefront and we need the resources to the frontline and it needs to happen now, it's an epidemic."

Meanwhile the amount of methamphetamine Kiwis consume continues to rise, ESR's senior scientist Andrew Chappell monitors the country's wastewater for drugs.

He told 1News that before Covid we were measuring about 15 kilograms and week and that that's now risen to 17 or 18 kilograms a week, one week they detected 20 kilos.