Category: Topical

It’s vital a proactive approach is taken to minimise these risks

With Auckland operating at Alert Level 4 and the rest of the country at Alert Level 2 we know how important it is to manage the Covid risks while still maintaining Health and Safety and Food Safety initiatives, minimising risk and harm illegal drug hazards pose to your staff, products, business operations and the environments you operate in. It is also important to us that we continue to operate in a safe manner protecting ourselves and our clients during any Alert Level while still being highly visible.

In order to provide a proactive drug screening presence, while minimising Covid risks we can offer some alternative drug screening options that reduces person to person contact. Our handlers are experienced, flexible and adapt to site specific safety procedures.

Screening utilising drug dogs reduces the need for unnecessary close contact with staff whilst deterring the presence, and effects, of drug hazards onsite.

NZDDS Advice: The best way to deal with a drug issue – is not to have one!

Over time the effectiveness of a regular/random gate screening programme with the drug dogs becomes obvious when someone carrying drugs will see our drug dog teams and simply turn around and leave the site. The reason is simple – they do not want to lose their drugs, so they will leave. Often these people are willing to do a drug test, usually confident they will pass, but they are not so willing to walk past a drug dog carrying drugs on their person – and that is where the wheels fall off.

While we try to assist those clients who find themselves in the position of finding drugs in their workplace, covering the whole of NZ it is often logistically impossible for us to attend such incidents at short notice and the delays can be costly.

Our advice to clients who have an interest in food and product safety – put a proactive gate screening programme in place that deters people bringing their drugs onto your site or getting anywhere near your product.

Do you have an interest in keeping drugs out of your workplace – Contact us today!

Founder Janet Williams said the company gets its dogs not from pedigree-breeding programmes, but from the pound.

To read more click here

“We’re similar to a smoke detector in a hallway,” she says. “We’re advising the building managers that there’s something of interest and they maybe need to follow up on it.” Over the course of an hour all 158 rooms in one downtown apartment building are checked for drugs. The dogs don’t go into the rooms, but will respond if they get a whiff from under the door.

To read more click here:

Last year a stray dog named Brutus, found and looked after by Whangarei SPCA staff, was chosen to sniff out bombs in some of the world’s war-torn danger spots after his talent for sniffing things was recognised by SPCA staff. And now another pooch rescued by the SPCA is on his way to becoming a top drug-sniffing dog. Buddy was only six months old when his owner handed him in to the SPCA because his barking was sparking complaints in the city about six months ago. But the SPCA staff immediately recognised that he could have what it takes to become a detector dog…….
To read more about Buddy click here

We’re right in with the action following the real scenarios that unfold as a result of these dedicated hardworking dogs that work for the Police, Corrections Service, Customs, and Ministry for Primary Industries, Aviation Security, New Zealand Detector Dog Services and the Department of Conservation. Tune in to TV One to see one of NZ Detector Dog’s teams in action at 7:30pm on Monday 26 August 2013.

NZ Police & Customs Methamphetamine seizure statistics show that 3kg seized in 2003 rose to 941kg in 2016. Meth to the value of $30 million was intercepted at the borders in 2016 rising to $250 million in 2018

The NZ Police National Wastewater Testing Programme results for the second quarter of 2020 showed that over the April to June 2020 period:

An average of 9.9 kgs of methamphetamine was consumed per week nationally.

The Bay of Plenty, Eastern and Northland police districts had the highest per-capita methamphetamine use. In a targeted Police operation carried out in Kawerau Police found 600 active Meth users in a community of 6,000 people.

The results showed an overwhelming dominance of methamphetamine with nationwide use equating to $1 billion a year and an estimated $20 million per week in social harm.

In The New Zealand Illicit Drug Harm Index 2020: Research report the total cost of personal harm to people who use drugs in New Zealand is now estimated at $813.1 million, with most of that cost relating to premature death at $484.8 million. Of the illicit drugs included, methamphetamine caused the most harm at $404.5 million. 016 An increase from 2016 in reported deaths from 75 to 107.

Fast forward to 2022 –these stats will have only increased and doesn’t include the cost of harm to businesses.