By 1news.co.nz
Cocaine seizures are on the rise in New Zealand off the back of a bumper year last year and a massive Pacific operation earlier this year.
Data exclusively released to 1News reveals that for 2020 and 2021, relatively small quantities of cocaine were seized at the border – just 12.6kgs and 65kgs, respectively. The seizures ramped up last year, with Customs finding nearly a tonne – 949kgs – across 128 incidents.
But for figures just to May this year, our stats have blown out to 3538 kgs.
February’s Operation Hydros accounting for much of that figure. The joint operation with police and Customs saw the Royal New Zealand Navy’s Manawanui picked up 81 bales floating in the ocean worth $580 million.
But experts from the United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime told 1News the figures reflect the boom at a global level. Coca cultivation soared 35 per cent from 2020 to 2021 and that product needs to find new markets.
Research officer Antoine Vella said while the drug had been traditionally associated with affluent countries in North America, South America and Western Europe, that was changing.
“New Zealand was not one of them but cocaine is a bit like a squeezed balloon, if I can use a metaphor, in the sense that it’s concentrated in a few places, but we are slowly beginning to see ripple effects, spillovers, at a global level. So everywhere you look you’re beginning to see cocaine show up in places where it did not traditionally show up,” Vella said.
While our cocaine market is dwarfed by the amount of methamphetamine that is imported and consumed, it is growing.
Police data for the last quarter for 2022 found New Zealanders were consuming 1.6kgs of cocaine a year. The executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, Sarah Helm, said that amounted to a 50% increase but off a very small baseline.
She was worried about the quality of what was being consumed.
“We have seen an increase in our drug checking clinics and it’s been mixed with things like benzocaine, which in big quantities can be incredibly harmful,” she said.
It’s expensive, too.
The market price ranges anywhere from $350 to $500 a gram, Helm said.
