Speeding across our border

Successive governments have tinkered with fighting crime but their efforts are no match for the transnational onslaught of meth.

- Danyl McLauchlan

The War on Drugs - now in its sixth decade - grinds on, with little danger of peace breaking out.

Wastewater testing indicates methamphetamine use in New Zealand is at unprecedented highs. There are record drug seizures at the border.

A report in March from a ministerial advisory group on transnational, serious and organised crime says Customs intercepted 55kg of meth in the 2013/14 financial year. By 2023/24, they were stopping an average of 92kg of meth per week.

The 2023 seizure in Auckland of a record 713kg of methamphetamine concealed in maple syrup, intended for Australasian distribution, led to last week's sentencing of a New Zealander living in Melbourne.

Prices have never been lower, indicating vast quantities of the drug are making it through customs and flooding the market. Supply creates its own demand: more meth and lower prices mean dabblers become habitual users, with consequences for their physical and mental health, their families and communities and the already unravelling fabric of the nation.

Recent years have seen the radical transformation of New Zealand's drug economy.

In 2011, the Key government reclassified pseudoephedrine as a controlled substance in response to a sequence of ram raids on chemists and a general desire to get tough on drugs after an allegedly lax Labour term of government. The gangs responded by importing meth, connecting New Zealand's loose network of tinny houses and clan labs with transnational criminal organisations.

Our steadily increasing trade volume made us an easier target for smuggling.