DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Crime is evolv­ing in T&T and younger peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly Gen­er­a­tion Z (nine to 24-year-olds), are sus­cep­ti­ble to new of­fences due to tech­nol­o­gy, eco­nom­ic de­pri­va­tion, so­cial me­dia and the on­go­ing ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

This was the sen­ti­ment ex­pressed by the head of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI) crim­i­nol­o­gy de­part­ment, Dr Randy Seep­er­sad, who told Guardian Me­dia he was not sur­prised by the dis­cov­ery of a metham­phet­a­mine (meth) lab at The Res­i­dences at South Park, San Fer­nan­do, on Thurs­day.

Spe­cial Branch po­lice of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at one of the mod­ern lux­u­ry apart­ments around 6 am.

Dur­ing the search, they found com­po­nents as­sem­bled in the form of a se­cret lab­o­ra­to­ry.

A state­ment from the TTPS said of­fi­cers al­so dis­cov­ered cash, pre­cur­sor chem­i­cals and pack­ets of crys­tals of var­i­ous sizes re­sem­bling meth—a high­ly ad­dic­tive stim­u­lant that can cause de­pen­den­cy af­ter just one use.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed States Na­tion­al In­sti­tute on Drug Abuse, meth-users are at an in­creased risk of in­fec­tions such as HIV and he­pati­tis B and C. Long-term use can lead to den­tal prob­lems, itch­ing that can cause skin sores, changes in brain struc­ture, mem­o­ry loss, para­noia and more.

Speak­ing in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Seep­er­sad said this dis­cov­ery points to a new kind of drug on the mar­ket which could have dele­te­ri­ous ef­fects on the pop­u­la­tion re­lat­ed to vi­o­lence and crime.

He added that it can put a strain on the health­care sys­tem and shat­ter fam­i­lies as ad­dic­tion of­ten does.

This lab, Seep­er­sad said, could al­so be one of many.

“There could al­ways be more. If some­body has the tech­nol­o­gy to do it and the know-how, chances are they could have dis­sem­i­nat­ed that in­for­ma­tion to oth­ers. But it’s a very, very dif­fi­cult thing to de­tect,” he not­ed.

“It is very, very trou­bling be­cause it means that if some­body is man­u­fac­tur­ing it, it will get out there in­to the en­vi­ron­ment, youths will start to use it, some peo­ple may even be­come ad­dict­ed to it and that’s where the dan­ger comes in,” he added.

The dan­gers Seep­er­sad is re­fer­ring to, arise from the de­mand cre­at­ed for the drug if it was be­ing sold to con­sumers. He said this could give birth to more labs to close the gap caused by the loss of this one.

“Once you cre­ate a de­mand for some­thing, then there’s go­ing to be the need for sup­ply­ing it and if there’s a sup­ply vac­u­um—let’s say you man­age to de­tect one meth lab and you take it down, but there’s a sup­ply vac­u­um—some­body else is go­ing to come in and fill that vac­u­um so there’s a very, very re­al dan­ger of de­vel­op­ing an ad­dic­tion among cer­tain groups of peo­ple for that par­tic­u­lar prod­uct,” he said.

The crim­i­nol­o­gist fur­ther urged par­ents to be frank with their chil­dren about the dan­gers of drug use or risk los­ing them to ad­dic­tion. This, as he ac­knowl­edged that some drugs cause an al­most im­me­di­ate ad­dic­tion as the high fades quick­ly, lead­ing users to take re­peat­ed dos­es.

“We have to talk to our chil­dren, tell them about drugs, ed­u­cate them, don’t hide it. Talk to them about peer pres­sure and let them know that that one try, as tempt­ing as it might be, that one try some­times is all it takes to pull you down a path,” he cau­tioned.

Mean­while, Seep­er­sad is call­ing on the TTPS to work with the pub­lic to in­crease the de­tec­tion of crimes, in­clud­ing drug-re­lat­ed of­fences.

“It goes both sides—on the side of the pub­lic and the side of the po­lice—to re­al­ly clamp down and to de­tect not just drug-re­lat­ed crimes but oth­er types of crimes when they oc­cur.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the TTPS yes­ter­day for fur­ther up­dates on the meth lab dis­cov­ery but re­ceived no re­sponse.