P-labs found in Kiwi baches
Kiwis baches are being contaminated by strangers’ makeshift methamphetamine laboratories in a practise known among criminals as a ‘‘cook-a-batch’’ holiday.
Holidaymakers from hell are trawling popular accommodation booking websites to find sites to house their mobile P-labs – coating walls and carpets in noxious chemicals that can cost in the up to $50,000 to strip and decontaminate.
Accommodation sites assure the practise is rare, but Bookabach.co.nz encourages its hosts to insure and install antimeth alarms.
P-tainted houses must be decontaminated because, according to the Ministry of Health, remnants of the cooking process at high levels may pose health hazards via inhalation or skincontact exposure – with effects thought to include organ failure, respiratory illness, cancer, neurological disorders, and birth defects.
Massey University’s most recent drug survey found users were paying about $100 a ‘‘point’’ (0.1 grams) for methamphetamine in 2013 – the same year police seized more than 30kg of the highly addictive drug. It is usually smoked or injected as ‘‘P’’ and is an attractive trade for dealers due to its ease of production and high profitabilty.
‘‘Wellington police are aware of the use of a rental Bookabach-type accommodation we know has been used for drug related activity,’’ Detective Senior Sergeant Tim Leitch confirmed.
Meth cooks were attracted to booking online for the privacy factor: ‘‘TradeMe, Bookabach – anywhere you can book a house out of the view of prying eyes with a degree of anonymity and where you’re not going to attract attention to yourself.’’
Meth Solutions owner Miles Stratford, who advises victims, said the practice was known among the criminal fraternity as a ‘‘cook-a-batch’’ holiday.
In the past two years his business has evaluated 2500 properties where owners suspected meth contamination, and referred about 500 for testing or cleaning.
One of Stratford’s Northland client received an internet booking from an ‘‘Auckland family with a child’’.
The bach owner grew suspicious when they received a cash deposit via a Whangarei bank and had someone check on the ‘‘family’’ who turned out to be ‘‘a couple of tattooed guys lying around in the sun’’, Stratford said.
The bach tested positive for P manufacture.
A Rotorua client decided the decontamination cost was so great they sealed their tainted bach, saying they would deal with it later, Stratford said.
If the discovery is properly notified the title is usually added to the local council’s clandestine laboratory register, and its history appears on LIM reports, Stratford said. ‘‘That remaining stigma has a negative effect as far as property value is concerned.’’
Several families learned that the hard way, after a Northland crime family syndicate were arrested in 2012 for the practice.