November 30, 2022
Mob drug rehab better than most
The man behind a Hawke’s Bay marae-based Kahukura drug rehabilitation programme says National MPs and mainstream media are trying to sabotage the good work being done there.
The Kahukura programme targeting Mongrel Mob whānau got funding from the Justice Ministry’s Proceeds of Crime Fund.
A story last week claimed it had been running for a year without evaluation, and National police spokesperson Simeon Brown says he’ll put up a private members bill to stop public money going to gangs.
Harry Tam says the Ministry of Health has dragged the chain in appointing an independent evaluator, but the programme’s own monitoring shows remarkable success, with a third of those doing the eight-week residential course reducing their use of methamphetamine.
“Particularly with meth rehabilitation, having one third of people that haven’t relapsed is a remarkable result – in fact it’s better than most – and having 100 percent graduation rate is a remarkable result because P is a very addictive substance and it takes many times for people to go through rehabilitation to actually beat it,” he says.
Mr Tam says while National says it wants to see innovation to beat crime, it promotes ideas that won’t work like boot camps rather than programmes like Kahukura which do work.