Kerre Woodham: Should we be raising the alarm over drug use?

Remember yesterday when we were talking about the declining rates of hazardous drinking among young people? Good news. And then so many of you positing that it's because they're popping pills and taking other drugs. Bad news. It looks like you might be right.  

The 2024 New Zealand Drugs Trend Survey has found that the price of drugs is dropping, the meth market saturated, and drug use has increased in just about all the regions. The availability of LSD and other psychedelics is growing, prices have been dropping for the past seven years, Kiwis’ cocaine use is up the wazoo —I suppose you could put it up the wazoo, it’s usually up the nose— but that's everywhere in all the regions. Cannabis is everywhere and the price has dropped marginally.  

The fact that meth has reached record-low prices is because new players are entering the market. Just as with anything that you manufacture, doing it yourself in New Zealand is more expensive than importing it from overseas, and that is concerning. Professor Chris Wilkins from Massey University says new players have entered the market and our drugs are no longer just a bit of marijuana growing locally.  

CW: It's a global market, so a lot of the methamphetamine we have traditionally used has come from Southeast Asia, but Australian police are saying that 70% of the meth they now see is actually from North America, South America, actually are Mexican cartels, and they're essentially just like in the other market, they're seeing a market opportunity and they're selling at a cut price.  

MH: There seems to be a tremendous amount of cocaine about the place?   

CW: That's right. So there was another really surprising finding was that the level of cocaine use, level of cocaine availability, obviously in Auckland, but also in Northland, the Bay of Plenty, but really all over in New Zealand and this may well be some overlap with that Mexican cartel and of course, they're in the cocaine trade, and if they're selling meth to New Zealand and to Australia, then cocaine is also another thing that obviously got access to.  

So yeah, the Mexican cartels sending down their meth and saying, “look, hey gift with purchase, you might like to try a little bit of cokie wokie when you’re taking your meth supplies”. So the survey says drugs are becoming increasingly prevalent, but illicit drug users are still in the minority if you believe the New Zealand Drug Foundation. You might think from that report and from what Professor Wilkins was saying that at every party in every town across New Zealand, there are mountains of cocaine and rows of meth pipes lined up on every table like little party favours, but the Drug Foundation says drugs like meth, MDMA and opioids are used by a relatively small percentage of the population.  

According to their figures —self-reporting— 3.6% of the population aged 15 and over used MDMA last year. That's around 152,000 people. 1.1%, around 47,000, used amphetamines, and 0.4%, around 18,000, used opioids. They rely on self-reporting, and the New Zealand Health Survey, which is self-reporting and wastewater testing data – which you think would be more accurate, but surely there must be more people using drugs than those who are appearing in the wastewater or those who are self-reporting? Otherwise, how are so many people able to make a living peddling drugs? Why would the cartels bother sending drugs into New Zealand if it wasn't worth their while? Are we seeing a disconnect between the numbers of people who are self-reporting and the actual trade itself?  

Do we need to know exactly what the extent of drug use is in New Zealand before we can have a conversation about drug use in New Zealand? If there are many, many people, like if it's more than 1%, if we're talking about 10% of the population using illicit drugs, then you'd think it would be time to take the Portuguese approach and decriminalise drugs to control the source and supplies so that it wasn't in the hands of the gangsters and the mobsters. And we really don't want Mexican cartels here, do we? 

But then you can't just take the Portuguese experiment, which has worked in Portugal and import it holus-bolus into your own country. In Canada, in British Columbia, they became the first and only province thus far to decriminalise the possession of a small amount of hard drugs to reduce the barriers and stigma “that bar those with severe drug addiction from life saving help or treatment”. It's running on a pilot basis until 2026, but already it's a disaster. It's come under increasing pressure from British Columbian residents and political opponents, who have called it a harmful experiment with all the drug users out in the streets and slumped over and unconscious, no safeguards for the public, and one that utterly failed to reduce drug overdose deaths.  

Remember the synnies that were doing so much damage, especially among the homeless people? They seem to have self regulated and thought, no, we're not going to use those because we're going to end up dying a horrible death.  

According to the latest Drugs Trend Survey, drug use is increasing across most drugs across all regions of New Zealand. The price is dropping, its hoots wahay, party time as we go into summer. But according to the Drug Foundation, 3.6% of the population using illicit drugs, it's not a huge amount of people, is it? So where are we at? What numbers do you believe? Is it worth having a moral crisis and raising the alarm about the amount of drug use and the cartels moving into here, or is it a relatively small number of people? How is it that 3.6% of the population can support all those gangs and all those cartels? 

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