Wednesday, December 16, 2015



John Key is still losing his "war on P"

Back in 2009, John Key launched a "war on P", in the form of his Methamphetamine Action Plan. An important part of the plan was regular progress reports, tracking the price, purity and availability of methamphetamine, so we could see if the police were in fact winning.

So how are they doing? Badly, just as they always have. Six years after launching it, the price, purity, and availability of methamphetamine are unchanged. In other words, Key's much-vaunted "war" has achieved absolutely nothing.

This is supposed to be an empirically-based policy. The empirical results show that it is a failure. Will Key accept this? Or will he just keep throwing good money after bad, wasting more police time and effort in the hope that the results will be different this time? Sadly, I expect it will be the latter - which is the very definition of insanity.