A recovering drug addict, who marks three years drug-free this month, says her mother taking her daughter away was the reality check she needed to turn her life around.
"It wasn't good, I had a lot of hate and animosity towards my parents for taking daughter," Morgan Davis said. "My state of mind at that stage was that I blamed everybody else for my decision."
In 2018 June Reti feared for her daughter, who was trapped in a violent relationship and selling drugs
"Having a gun pointed at her head. Having holes punched in the wall. She didn't tell us," June said. "If she had told us at the time, it would have been a different story."
Losing her daughter
Morgan says she didn't make much money when she was selling drugs I didn't make much money selling drugs but was given money. "Men would give me stacks of cash, like 10 thousand dollars."
Reti said the difficult decision to take her granddaughter away from her daughter made Morgan turn a new leaf.
"We had a whānau meeting and her father said to her: 'This is what we want you to do. We want you to give up your house, we want you to stay with mum and go to rehab,"'she said.
"Her father said in a meeting if you [Morgan] don't do these things, we're going to take the baby."
Morgan admits she first started smoking dope at 11 years old. By the time she was in high school, she was hooked on Meth.
Rural meth crisis
"I had been smoking meth for 13 years. It started off innocently," Morgan said. "By the time I was 17 I was a full-on meth addict."
Meanwhile, the New Zealand Herald is reporting that struggling rural towns are taking the brunt of New Zealand's methamphetamine crisis.
Analysis of police of national drug use data reveals that small regional centres with high levels of deprivation — including Kaitaia, Ōpōtiki and Wairoa — have been saturated by meth in recent years, recording weekly per capita consumption more than double the national average.
The Herald obtained two years of wastewater test results that police have used to monitor consumption of illegal drugs around the country since late 2018.
Two decades after P took hold here, the data shows, New Zealand has failed to curb its devastating popularity. Thousands of users collectively spend more than $500 million a year on the drug, fuelling a lucrative criminal trade, causing extensive social harm and putting enormous strain on communities.