One of the leaders of the fight to ban legal highs has spoken of his horror over a teenage girl prostituting herself in return for synthetic drugs.
TV presenter turned political hopeful Te Hamua Nikora has revealed the sickening plight of a 15-year-old from his hometown of Gisborne who is being paid with legal highs for performing “sexual favours” on adult men.
The girl’s case has come to light after one of her caregivers approached Nikora’s Mana Party office in Gisborne. Nikora is standing for Mana in the central North Island Maori electorate of Ikaroa-Rawhiti.
“We had someone who looks after her . . . come to see us to say she was down there [in the central city] performing sexual favours on men so they would go in and buy her that sort of stuff,” Nikora told Sunday News.
“When we have a young girl down here who is performing sexual favours for guys to go into the shop to buy that stuff . . . that makes me sad, that makes me angry. It makes me want to talk to these fellas and let them know how I feel about it.”
Nikora has taken a leading role in the nationwide campaign to ban legal highs after seeing first-hand the damage that addictions to the substances has caused.
He said the East Coast and Poverty Bay regions were rich with young sporting, musical and cultural talent.
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But too much of that youthful potential was “going down the gurgler” due to the impact of over-the-counter synthetic drugs, illegal substances and alcohol abuse.
The case of the teenage addict in Gisborne made Nikora even more committed to do everything in his power to have legal highs outlawed.
“I feel for this girl, that she is so addicted to it that she is doing stuff like that to get the product,” he said.
Nikora said some of those hooked on synthetic drugs clearly couldn’t afford their addictions.
Too many people were getting “messed up” due to their reactions to the drugs, as well as the financial stress of their habit.
He said the human cost of legal highs was visible to anyone who travelled through central Gisborne.
“We have got a beautiful river that runs through our city,” Nikora said. “And the riverside down next to the shop that sells synthetic highs is covered with people who look like something out of a zombie movie. That is fully out in the public . . . you have got kids who walk around there and see these people looking like zombies.”
Nikora said the growing issue of people’s reliance on legal highs was further highlighted by a large crowd that gathered outside a Palmerston North outlet during the Easter weekend.
About 100 people lined up outside preparing for the shop’s opening shortly after midnight last Saturday. Public holiday trading laws prohibited the shop from opening on Good Friday.
Meanwhile, the Gisborne District Council has conceded it can’t ban the sale of legal highs in its jurisdiction, which stretches from East Cape in the north, to Tiniroto and Muriwai in the
In the lead-up to last year’s local body elections, Gisborne mayor Meng Foon said he would prepare a bylaw prohibiting their sale in his district.
Foon last month told the Sunday News he was committed to the move, which had the backing of many members of the East Coast and Gisborne community.
But last week the Gisborne District Council released its “Draft Psychoactive Substances Policy” for public consultation and it states that under current legislation “Council cannot ban the sale of psychoactive products”.
The documents stressed that “we are doing everything in our power to get the law changed. Mayor Meng Foon is going to Wellington for a law change along with 22 other mayors.”
The council said that if the move was unsuccessful, it was imperative that it had in place a policy restricting the areas where legal highs could be sold.
Its “Draft Psychoactive Substances Policy” outlined two areas; the “preferred option” was in an industrial subdivision. A second proposal was on Gladstone Rd, Gisborne’s main street, as it was “highly visible and any antisocial activities arising from using legal highs could be monitored by police and people passing by”.
The proposal also includes restrictions on the hours any approved retailer can sell the substances. The council is also looking to amend the Public Places Bylaw to prohibit the use of approved synthetic drugs in public places.
‘The first inhale and, boom, I was wasted’
Political hopeful Te Hamua Nikora knows first-hand the perils of using synthetic cannabis.
Nikora tried smoking one of the variations of legal highs several years ago after he had stopped smoking cannabis. He had previously been a cannabis smoker for about 20 years.
The Mana Party candidate thought synthetic cannabis would be better because it was deemed a legal substance. And as it was at that time for sale at dairies, bars and liquor wholesalers, he believed it was safer for his health.
But nothing could have prepared him for his mind and body’s reaction to his first, and only, taste of the legal high.
“The first sesh I ever had on it, it freaked me out,” Nikora said. “With marijuana it creeps up on you and you slowly get stoned. With this stuff here, the first inhale and, boom, I was wasted.
“I was freaking out in the room with my bros, freaking out holding the wall going, ‘Wow’. They were looking at me going, ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’. And I was going ‘Earthquake’ . . . but I was the only one experiencing an earthquake at that time.”
For some time after that experience, Nikora said he had a “yucky smell” coming out of every pore of his body. It is an unpleasant odour that he said he smelt on many other people he meets who smoke the variety of synthetic cannabis substances currently on sale.
He is now committed to campaigning for legal highs to be banned.
“That was my bad experience with it and I was a seasoned weed smoker since I was 14 years old . . . I had been smoking for over 20 years by that time,” he said.
“Now that I have stopped it all and I can look back and see how it affected me, I don’t want to be affecting other people like that.”
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Prostitution a new low for legal highs
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