Speaker by Various Artists

Here are several of the original news stories, uploaded here in comments for reasons of readability.

Gathering poppies, undated.

In 1980 I bought a small cottage in Waitati north of Dunedin, summer was amazing, the vege garden turned out to be full of “self seeded” poppies, one morning they were all gone ….

"Self-sown" poppies that disappeared in the early morning were also a feature of Berhampore and Newtown in Wellington... I recall neighbours nodding sagely and talking about the "Newtown Gardener".

Great slice of (sad, bad, mad) local history - thanks "Rex" and Russell :)

My sister had a fruit orchard in Napier. One sunday afternoon a car arrived at the gate and 3 guys got out, jumped the fence, and ran right around the house picking every poppy head that they obviously knew was there. Sister ran out but missed them all as they jumped back into the car and down the road. Cops called. Nothing done about it.

For almost two years it was so easy to get methadone in Dunedin that some people moved to Dunedin from other parts of the country (particularly Christchurch)

Bringing with them a fair portion of the ChCh skinheads I recall.

You could also find self sown poppies in the back blocks of Central Otago. They have probably all been plowed under to make way for Vineyards or arable pasture nowadays.

It'd be interesting to have an overview of how much damage the Muldoon era's authoritarian populism and contempt for evidence-based professional research and expertise did when it came to drug policy in the seventies and early eighties. Is there such a reference available?