Police disappointed some retailers still selling illegal meth pipes

Police say it's disappointing there is still readily available access to illegal methamphetamine pipes across the country.

Last month a briefing paper warned the Health Minister that retailers were continuing to sell the pipes.

RNZ's Checkpoint visited five Auckland shops on Thursday and found the banned pipes in three of them, some costing under $10.

Police Assistant Commissioner Corrie Parnell told Checkpoint he was disappointed but not surprised it was so easy to find them still on sale.

"There is still readily available access to methamphetamine pipes across New Zealand. Cannabis is still our most readily and common used drug across New Zealand but more prevalent now and alongside that is use of methamphetamine," he said.

"We have had discussions with officials, we've been raising our awareness with our own front-line staff who are coming across not only methamphetamine pipes but all manner of sort of instruments that can be used with consumption of methamphetamine and other drug commodities."

Parnell said some retailers were deliberately flouting the rules and police were working to crack down on the problem.

"I think there is definitely an awareness you'd be naive to think there wasn't... my personal view is there is no excuse for not having an awareness of instruments able to be sold for illicit use of drugs," he said.

Penalties for anyone selling the pipes range from three months jail to a $5000 fine.

"Our community beat teams and our prevention teams day-to-day within their communities where they are able to take action they will," Parnell said.

"Often they'll have to make a decision around whether it's enforcement action or an alternate resolution pathway, but nonetheless there's an expectation certainly from police executive and police as a whole that where there's an offence we should be having an intervention there and then making a decision around charging or not."

Parnell said a whole systems level approach was needed to address the problem.

"At the upper end you must attack this at the border in terms of transnational organised crime bringing that drug commodity in here in the first place, we work very closely with Customs and right across our other government agencies."