{"id":559812,"date":"2026-08-05T14:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T14:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/559812\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T14:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T14:10:10","slug":"arrests-after-opium-parcels-found-bound-for-tauranga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/559812\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrests after opium parcels found bound for Tauranga"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cFollowing further inquiries on Thursday and Friday last week, police executed search warrants at 11 addresses in Tauranga, Papamoa, \u014cmokoroa and Te Puke,\u201d Varnam said. <\/p>\n
Police seized a \u201csignificant amount\u201d of opium, steroids, cash and electronic devices.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo men, aged 31 and 36, have been charged with importing opium, one of whom is facing a representative charge of importing 48kg over the past 12 months, while a 38-year-old man has been charged with possession of prescription medication,\u201d Varnam said. <\/p>\n
He said all three men were due to appear in Tauranga District Court in the coming weeks. <\/p>\n
Police became involved after parcels containing 24kg of the class B controlled drug were intercepted by Customs. Photo \/ NZ Police<\/p>\n
This follows an April arrest, when police executed a search warrant at a Tauranga address and located 24kg of opium.<\/p>\n
Varnam said in that case, a 38-year-old has been charged with importing and is currently before the court. <\/p>\n
He said opium is highly addictive and can contain toxic chemicals which are seriously harmful to the body, affecting your brain, gut, liver, lungs, kidneys, skin, eyes and immune system. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe importation and supply of opium is a concern for us, and we will continue to target the people behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the matter is before the courts, police said they could not comment further.<\/p>\n
Police said they are continuing to work with the impacted community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cFollowing further inquiries on Thursday and Friday last week, police executed search warrants at 11 addresses in Tauranga,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,31746,55337,14647,2082,1874,3242,13620,2510,111,43,139,69,275502,230367,274910,1562,63502,1870,80801,1227,46730,3457],"class_list":["post-559812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-arrests","tag-bound","tag-discovered","tag-for","tag-found","tag-large","tag-leading","tag-multiple","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opium","tag-packages","tag-parcels","tag-plenty","tag-route","tag-search","tag-stash","tag-tauranga","tag-warrants","tag-western"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}