 | Pot Culture: TV3 Doco ''HIGH TIMES'': When drugs and Kiwis get together |
 The DominionPost, 18 July 2005
By CHALPAT SONTI
Tim Shadbolt rues the increasing popularity of cannabis - all it has done is increase the price for other users such as himself.
The Invercargill mayor's observation is one of many from prominent people in a three-part television documentary examining the history of New Zealand's illicit drug scene.
High Times, the brainchild of director and researcher David Herkt, starts with the arrest of Anna Hoffman for selling marijuana to an undercover policeman in Auckland about 1960. It was the first such arrest in New Zealand.
Herkt said the need for a social history of an issue that affects many New Zealanders was self-evident.
"It's a great subject, and no one's ever done it before," he said.
This was largely due to a reluctance to face up to the subject, surprising because New Zealanders were among the biggest drug users per capita.
The documentary, which cost $400,000 and took a year to make, also traces the evolution of police tactics to cope with rapidly changing methods of drug manufacture and distribution.
"That's probably just as interesting - how they've changed from a bunch of larrikin cowboys back in the 1960s (when the first drug squads were formed) to a much more focused unit by the 1980s," Herkt said.
Starting with Hoffman's arrest, High Times travels the path of lsd and methamphetamine abuse in the 1960s before examining the first big-time New Zealand drug lord, Terry Clark.
The man better known as Mr Asia fascinated Herkt.
"You could say he pioneered the franchise concept in New Zealand. He started his heroin franchises about the same time the first McDonald's opened in New Zealand in Porirua in 1975."
The "No 8 wire" mentality also shone through. When police stopped the importation of heroin in the early 1980s, drug users invented homebake.
Wellington is well covered. The first episode gives time to the Haining St opium dens and the eclectic mix of people, including drug users, who used to hang around the Duke of Edinburgh pub in the 1960s.
One lesson Herkt learned was the cyclical nature of the reaction to illegal drugs.
"Whether it was marijuana back then, or lsd or heroin or P, it's always been the same. A new drug appears, there's this overblown drama and hysteria, then it falls off."
Despite the light-hearted nature of the documentary, Herkt insisted it was not pro-drug propaganda.
Several users, including prominent musicians Larry Morris and Graham Brazier, talk about the destructive effect drug use had on their careers.
Criminologist and former drug user Greg Newbold comes face-to-face with the undercover policeman who busted him.
"It's really for people to make up their own minds. I'm not going to say the law's wrong or anything - this is just a practical and accurate view of what's happening out there. But whatever your view, it's like Greg Newbold says - `people just want to get out of it'. It's a rule of human nature."
TV3 screens the first episode of High Times at 8.30pm on Thursday 21 July 2005.
(c) Fairfax New Zealand Ltd
[The other two parts screen on Thursday 28 July and Thursday 4 August]
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