New Zealanders told to check letterboxes for meth
Dealers target empty holiday home in South Island winelands as drop-off points for drugs
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
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.
Article continues belowThe Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
"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.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
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.