Meth use in NZ spikes to record high – except in Ōpōtiki after Mongrel Mob bust

But the next month, use nearly doubled to 29.2kg a week. The trend continued for the rest of the year, with weekly consumption above 30kg each month until December.

A new peak of 39.2kg was recorded in October – nearly double the previous record of 20.6kg in September 2021, during Auckland’s Covid lockdown.

The significant spike in meth use has been labelled “a wake-up call” by New Zealand’s leading drug researcher who, along with police experts, says more meth is being consumed because it is cheaper.

Despite a string of record-breaking drug busts, the local market has been flooded with methamphetamine supplied by Mexican cartels and Asian crime syndicates working with outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Meth is now the cheapest it has ever been, both at wholesale and retail level.

Detective Inspector Tim Chao said the sudden spike in consumption over the second half of last year was unusual.

“But it is mirroring what we’re seeing overseas. The world is awash with drugs.”

More drugs meant lower prices, and lower prices meant more consumption, said Chao, who oversees wastewater testing as the officer in charge of the National Drug Intelligence Bureau.

“It’s simple economics. It’s like buying chips from the supermarket. Previously, I could buy one packet of chips. If supply increases, I can afford to buy two packets. So I’ll consume two packets.”

The average cost of a “point” of methamphetamine – or 0.1g, which is the usual dose – was $78 in 2024, according to the latest findings of the New Zealand Drug Trends Survey conducted by leading drug researcher Professor Chris Wilkins and his team at Massey University.

The average price in 2023 was $89, down from about $100, which stood for many years.

The average price of a gram was $360 in 2024, which has steadily decreased from $563 in 2017, according to the anonymous Massey University survey of more than 10,000 drug users.

Wilkins described the significant decrease in the price and the sharp increase in consumption as a “real wake-up call”.

“It’s definitely alarming. It really does seem a lot of the metrics are going south, really fast,” he said.

“That kind of decline in price is telling us that supply is getting so much deeper. We’ve got a big problem, basically.”

Wilkins agreed with Chao that cheaper meth meant existing users consumed more, but it also increased the likelihood of new users trying the drug for the first time.

The drop in the retail price of methamphetamine in recent years reflected the industrial-scale production and trafficking by global organised crime syndicates, mostly based in Southeast Asia or, more recently, Mexico.

For many years, the largest shipment of meth was 95kg in 2006.

Operation Major dwarfed every other seizure for the next decade and was seen as an outlier until 501kg was found near Ninety Mile Beach in 2016.

Since then, seizures of more than 500kg have become routine. The current record of 713kg was found inside maple syrup bottles shipped from Canada in early 2023.

The biggest bust before that was 613kg discovered at Auckland International Airport by Operation Weirton, a covert investigation into the Comancheros motorcycle gang.

“We used to talk about tens of kilos,” Wilkins said. “Now we talk about the hundreds. That’s a near-exponential change in the amount of meth available when we’re talking about 0.1g being consumed at once.

“I think this is a step-change but it’s been coming for a while. All the metrics are travelling in a bad direction … you almost get desensitised. But I think this is something to be worried about.”

Both Chao and Wilkins said more action was needed to decrease the demand for drugs, rather than relying on law enforcement to stop the supply.

It’s a view backed by Sarah Helm, executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation.

“It’s essential that our response to methamphetamine focuses on reducing demand, not just playing whack-a-mole with supply,” she said.

“Thankfully, we have learnt a lot about why people use methamphetamine over the years and there is plenty of evidence for where we can start to make a difference.”

She pointed to the police-led Te Ara Oranga programme in Northland as a proven health-based model for reducing demand.

“It should be replicated around the country.”

Against the backdrop of the national spike in meth use last year, there was one small town in the eastern Bay of Plenty that bucked the trend.

Consumption of meth in Ōpōtiki decreased by 50% in the months after police raids on an alleged Mongrel Mob drug ring.

Operation Highwater ended in October with the arrests of 28 people connected to the Mongrel Mob Barbarians chapter on charges relating to drug dealing, money laundering, firearms and participating in an organised criminal group.

According to the wastewater data, about 119g of meth was used in Ōpōtiki each week before the raids.

Consumption fell to 66g in November – a drop of 44%.

By comparison, there was a 14% decrease nationally between October and November.

Consumption in Ōpōtiki dropped again to 54g in December – a further decrease of 18% – compared with a 3% increase nationally.

While it is a small sample and many factors can influence drug consumption, police believe there is a link between the investigation and the reduction in meth use.

“In a small location, if you take out 20 of their key [gang] members who are allegedly using and distributing [meth] then you are going to see an impact,” said Inspector Jock O’Keefe, who heads the police Resilience to Organised Crime in Communities (ROCC) strategy.

“We’ve seen an impact over three months of wastewater data and it’s dropped every month, which is fantastic.”

A key part of the strategy is for police to continue working with community and iwi leaders to provide “wraparound” support after covert investigations have ended.

In the case of Operation Highwater, O’Keefe said $720,000 had been secured to fund meth harm and reduction programmes in eastern Bay of Plenty and two police staff had been seconded to support families affected by the raids.

“Getting kids to school, feeding them, helping find accommodation, working with Te Whakatohea [local iwi] – they are incredible too,” O’Keefe said.

“My team cuts through the red tape so people can get the right support from other services and move away from crime and drugs.”

While pleased to see the local wastewater data decrease for several months, O’Keefe said the challenge would be to sustain the progress over a long period.

Jared Savage covers crime and justice issues, with a particular interest in organised crime. He joined the Herald in 2006 and has won a dozen journalism awards in that time, including twice being named Reporter of the Year. He is also the author of Gangland and Gangster’s Paradise.

Chris Knox is the Data Editor and Head of Data Journalism for the Herald.