New Zealanders told to check letterboxes for meth

Holiday-home owners in a picturesque region of New Zealand's South Island are being warned to check their letterboxes for hard drugs.

Meth dealers are reportedly using unoccupied property in Central Otago, one of the country's most famous wine-growing areas, as drop-off points.

Last month, the tranquil town of Clyde - population 1,000 - became the centre of a drug swoop worth NZ$200,000 (£115,000) after large amounts of ecstasy were sent to empty holiday homes to be collected by dealers.

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"Another man in Clyde was charged with importing and selling methamphetamine," Radio New Zealand reports.

More commonly associated with "pinot noir and adventure sports", Central Otago makes for an unlikely backdrop for a drugs empire, says The Guardian.

However, according to a senior police officer, drug crimes have skyrocketed, increasing by a hundredfold in the last five years, something the official attributes to the region's large transient population.

"With the rise in popularity of methamphetamine and the ease of ordering drugs off the internet, we have seen a sharp rise in people dealing hard drugs such as P [methamphetamine], MDMA, ecstasy and LSD," said detective senior sergeant Malcolm Inglis.

Local MP Jacqui Dean told Radio New Zealand it was a stark reminder that some of the region's seemingly sleepy communities concealed a dark underbelly.

She said: "Just round the corner in a nice little town near you, there are some hard drugs and there are some people there who'd be only too happy to sell those hard drugs to you or to your children."

Central Otago's mayor, Tim Cadogan, also admitted the cases had been a "wake-up call" to the scale of the problem in the area.

"In the past, holiday homes have usually only been targeted for petty thefts like raiding the wine cellar, so this is new," he said.