Speaker 1: Kiota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the.
Speaker 1: New Zealand Herald.
Speaker 2: It'll come as no surprise to anyone when I tell
Speaker 2: you that meth is a serious problem in New Zealand.
Speaker 2: Wastewater testing results show the consumption of the drug in
Speaker 2: New Zealand more than doubled in the second half of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four to the.
Speaker 1: Highest levels ever recorded.
Speaker 2: At the same time, the New Zealand Drug Trend Survey
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four showed the average price of a gram
Speaker 2: of meth declined from five hundred and sixty three dollars
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen eighteen to three hundred and sixty dollars
Speaker 2: last year. Meanwhile, wastewater testing in Oportiki shows meThe use
Speaker 2: there has halved after police raids on an alleged mungol
Speaker 2: mob drug ring. Today Day on the Front Page, Harold
Speaker 2: investigative reporter Jared Savage is with us to run through
Speaker 2: the state of myth in our country. Jared, Look, it
Speaker 2: comes as no surprise when we say myth is popular
Speaker 2: in New Zealand, but just how prevalent is it?
Speaker 3: It's ticking in the number one drug of choice in
Speaker 3: New Zealand. It has been for quite some time, about
Speaker 3: the past twenty twenty five years or so, but you know,
Speaker 3: we've really seen a big surge in the consumption of
Speaker 3: myth late last year. So the police and ESR scientists
Speaker 3: sort of worked together with wastewater testing, so it gives
Speaker 3: sort of it's not the only way of working out
Speaker 3: how much myth has been consumed, but it is an
Speaker 3: objective scientific measure by which you can sort of see
Speaker 3: whether the trend is going up or down. And so
Speaker 3: for about the past six years they've been running this
Speaker 3: program and sort of use just fluctuated sort of between
Speaker 3: ten to twenty kilos per week, and there were some
Speaker 3: big sort of factors in the ten kilo at the
Speaker 3: lower limit that was when New Zealand was a complete
Speaker 3: lockdown during early twenty twenty, and then the peak of
Speaker 3: twenty kilos it was about a year later when the
Speaker 3: world had opened up a little bit there was a
Speaker 3: bit more travel and freight coming back and forth. But
Speaker 3: of course Auckland was in lockdown at that point and
Speaker 3: there was a lot of people similarly using meth during
Speaker 3: that time, and it peaked at about twenty kilos, so
Speaker 3: between ten and twenty kilos over the past sort of
Speaker 3: six years and normally in the middle of that, sort
Speaker 3: of hovering around the sort of the fifteen kilo mark,
Speaker 3: and that's where it was in June last year, just
Speaker 3: over fifteen kilos, and then from July to December last year,
Speaker 3: the wastewater testing showed a huge increase, so going from
Speaker 3: fifteen kilos each week to thirty kilos each week for
Speaker 3: the second half of last year, and it peaked in
Speaker 3: October with about thirty nine nearly forty kilos of myth
Speaker 3: being consumed each and every week last year. So you know,
Speaker 3: it's doubled, it's doubled from the peak, and it's doubled
Speaker 3: from what has sort of historically been this sort of
Speaker 3: traditional midpoint that we've seen. And it's it's quite an
Speaker 3: alarming discovery that we've found through the wastewater data.
Speaker 1: What can we put this down to?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's hard to sort of explain exactly why
Speaker 3: why people are consuming more, and there are lots of
Speaker 3: reasons that people would use drugs, but it's really comes
Speaker 3: out of simple economics. Talking to various researchers and the
Speaker 3: police experts as well. Essentially, the world is a wash
Speaker 3: with drugs. There is a huge amount being produced overseas
Speaker 3: and that has been since to New Zealand an increasingly
Speaker 3: large amount. So the market here is saturated. It's been
Speaker 3: flooded with metham betamine and other drugs, but mostly metham betamine,
Speaker 3: and that has led to more supply equals cheaper prey
Speaker 3: equals more consumption, and that's pretty much what it boils
Speaker 3: down to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was surprised to read somewhere. I think I
Speaker 2: showed the average price of a gram of math declined
Speaker 2: from about five hundred and sixty odd dollars in twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen to three hundred and sixty last year, So that's
Speaker 2: going to have something to do with it.
Speaker 3: A So that's right. So that's the you know, that's
Speaker 3: that prices come down, and that's those figures come from research.
Speaker 3: To my massive University professor Chris Wilkins is the lead
Speaker 3: researcher in New Zealand and has done so for twenty years.
Speaker 3: And you know they interview anonymously drug users regularly and
Speaker 3: that's how they update those figures there. So if it's cheaper,
Speaker 3: you can if you're a user of methanbenaman and it's cheaper.
Speaker 3: You can therefore use more of it for the you know,
Speaker 3: and not spend any more money. And so that's the
Speaker 3: cheaper prices have come from the market being flooded and
Speaker 3: more myth being used. Chris Wilkins was interviewed with the
Speaker 3: story and he said all the metrics going in the
Speaker 3: wrong direction on this, and he described it as a
Speaker 3: wake up call.
Speaker 2: Well, we already know that cartels overseas have been eyeing
Speaker 2: up New Zealand for years now. Hey, we've got syndicates
Speaker 2: based in Southeast Asia and more recently actually the Mexican cartels.
Speaker 2: Just in November, a Columbia led global operation thwarted the
Speaker 2: plans of six subs carrying fourteen hundred tons of drugs,
Speaker 2: one of which was headed to Australia and New Zealand.
Speaker 4: The Columbian Navy says it's intercepted a Narco submarine bound
Speaker 4: for Australia. Official say it's the third such vessel ceased,
Speaker 4: indicating a drug smuggling route across the Pacific.
Speaker 5: A coordinated effort in the multinational orient Strategy led to
Speaker 5: the seizure of over fourteen hundred tons of narcotic substances.
Speaker 5: Of these, two hundred and twenty five tons of cocaine
Speaker 5: stood out, which would represent more than five hundred and
Speaker 5: seventy four million doses on our streets.
Speaker 1: Now that's huge.
Speaker 2: So no cartel would risk the capture of that larger
Speaker 2: shipment of drugs if it didn't think the risk was
Speaker 2: worth the reward.
Speaker 1: Hey, well that's right.
Speaker 3: And I mean in New Zealand for a long time,
Speaker 3: we are a small We're a small market, you know,
Speaker 3: compared to the rest of the world. But a lot
Speaker 3: of these organizations see sort of Australia and New Zealand
Speaker 3: together as sort of a one to a one two stop.
Speaker 3: So obviously our big brother across the tasmin much bigger market,
Speaker 3: but also commands quite high prices. So even though the
Speaker 3: prices have come down in New Zealand, it's still high
Speaker 3: by comparison internationally. So it's a small market but seen
Speaker 3: as lucrative. So that is why we're being targeted by
Speaker 3: Mexican CATAUS Southeast Asian organized crime groups who work candy
Speaker 3: glove here with sort of organized crime figures here, including
Speaker 3: sort of the outlaw motorcycle groups you know, in particular
Speaker 3: sort of you know, the common Cero's and some of
Speaker 3: those other five x one gangs that have really elevated
Speaker 3: that they've got true international connections with these groups overseas,
Speaker 3: and that's elevated the supply and that's led to what
Speaker 3: we're seeing here with with far greater consumption. Literally the
Speaker 3: figure is doubling last year.
Speaker 2: Now you mentioned these cartels work hand in hand with
Speaker 2: local gangs. Here, tell me a little bit about a Portaki.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a Portoki is a small town in Easter
Speaker 3: made plenty and last year sort of garnered a few
Speaker 3: headlines because there was quite a big drug bus down
Speaker 3: there involving the mongrel mob. And I don't think they
Speaker 3: would have been working hand in glove with the cartels,
Speaker 3: but somewhere along the supply chain that that myth had
Speaker 3: been getting into a poto Key. And like many smaller
Speaker 3: real towns around around the country, they are sort of
Speaker 3: disproportionately affected by methan betamine. Their sort of average per
Speaker 3: capita consumption is often far greater than the national average.
Speaker 3: So you know, there's some big headlines last year about
Speaker 3: this this raid, these raids, this COVID investigation called Operation
Speaker 3: high water in a podoquy, and that led about twenty
Speaker 3: odd members of the Mong the Barbarians Chapter and their
Speaker 3: associates being being arrested and charged with various drug dealing
Speaker 3: and money laundering offenses. Now that's all before the courts
Speaker 3: and you know, yet to be proven. But what the
Speaker 3: wastewater shows is that after those raids was a dramatic
Speaker 3: decrease in methectomy consumption and a podokey. So I think
Speaker 3: in the month leading up to the raids it was
Speaker 3: around about one hundred and nineteen grands per week was
Speaker 3: being consumed in a podige, which is a bear in
Speaker 3: mind a small town of about five or six thousand people.
Speaker 3: Following month that dropped down to sixty six grands, so
Speaker 3: nearly hard So whilst the rest of the country was
Speaker 3: going up, a podokey went down following the raids, and
Speaker 3: then the next month that went down again to fifty
Speaker 3: four grands a week, again while the rest of the
Speaker 3: country went up. And so you know that indicates that
Speaker 3: sort of strong and fours does have an impact in
Speaker 3: terms of in terms of consumption because obviously they're cutting
Speaker 3: off the supply or the major supply into the town
Speaker 3: because members of the Munger Mob and at the same time,
Speaker 3: the police are also kind of being that. They run
Speaker 3: a program called the Revilliance to Organize Crime and Community.
Speaker 3: So that's it's called ROCK ROCC and that's where like
Speaker 3: dedicated police stuff sort of work hand in hand with
Speaker 3: community community leaders and NGOs and EWE to sort of
Speaker 3: support sort of meth harm production program. So they'll go
Speaker 3: and do a big raide, you know, and years gone by,
Speaker 3: you know, the police would that was their job. They
Speaker 3: would go and do that and sort of walk away
Speaker 3: to the to the next, to the next operation. In
Speaker 3: this case, they're working in there with with local families
Speaker 3: to make sure that you know, they're getting food on
Speaker 3: the table, getting their kids to school, getting how it
Speaker 3: preferred into the meth amphetames, sort of education programs and
Speaker 3: rehab that that kind of work there on the head
Speaker 3: of the Rock Program. Infected Jock o Keep said it's
Speaker 3: been about seven hundred and twenty thousand and funding been
Speaker 3: guarded to sort of keep supporting the work that the
Speaker 3: local groups, the local community leaders and ewi's are already doing. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: there is a glimmer of hope out there, and of.
Speaker 1: Course at the borders as well.
Speaker 2: They're ramping up looking for these importations of drugs. And
Speaker 2: when I think about recent history that there've been some
Speaker 2: pretty big busts. I'm thinking over the last five six years.
Speaker 3: He oh, absolutely every year there seems to be another
Speaker 3: record breaking drug bust. I mean I've been reporting on
Speaker 3: this these issues about fifteen years. Back then, one kilo
Speaker 3: was quite a quite a big deal. The record back
Speaker 3: then and for many years was back in two thousand
Speaker 3: and six was ninety five kilos of methamphetamine coming in
Speaker 3: from China. That was a huge deal. It was seen
Speaker 3: as an outlier for about ten years, and then we
Speaker 3: saw five hundred and one kilos sort of wash up
Speaker 3: on the beach that famous case Operation Frontier up in Northland.
Speaker 3: And then from then, I mean now five hundred kilo
Speaker 3: stezias are almost routine. So certainly one hundred kilos is
Speaker 3: a routine now and so we're seeing four or five,
Speaker 3: six hundred. I think the biggest at the border Caesar
Speaker 3: is about seven hundred and thirteen kilos that was hidden
Speaker 3: inside maple syrup bottles which had been imported from Canada.
Speaker 3: Although it's I guess it's suspected that the myth would
Speaker 3: have been transshipped from Mexico up to Canada and then
Speaker 3: to New Zealand where it was caught. So we are
Speaker 3: seeing huge, huge amounts of you know, busts happening every year,
Speaker 3: I guess, And people might look at that and go, oh,
Speaker 3: that's great, we're catching more. Well, I think the opposite
Speaker 3: is true. We're catching these bigger amounts because more is
Speaker 3: being seent here and that sort of you know, and
Speaker 3: that has been sort of born out in the wastewater
Speaker 3: of data that we seeing where we're stopping more than
Speaker 3: ever at the border, but we are consuming way more
Speaker 3: than ever, And I guess that shows how saturated the
Speaker 3: market really is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and criminals can get really tricky in how they
Speaker 2: try and conceal these drugs as well. I remember once
Speaker 2: heading to customs and actually seeing the myth that was
Speaker 2: concealed inside batteries of these golf carts that were being
Speaker 2: imported from the US.
Speaker 1: I think that was about twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: So what are some of the strangest ways you've seen
Speaker 2: meth trying to be concealed?
Speaker 1: I mean, maple syrup's got to be one of them.
Speaker 3: Oh, look, there. You know, there are so many ways
Speaker 3: to conceal myth or other drugs. Honestly, the mind boggles
Speaker 3: at how many there have been. It's almost only limited
Speaker 3: by your imagination. Probably the best concealment I've seen was
Speaker 3: where myth was mixed in with like a concrete like
Speaker 3: substance and then poured into an umbrella stand. So they
Speaker 3: were being imported in the country as umbrella stands, and
Speaker 3: the organized crime Syndicate it had sent people to New
Speaker 3: Zealand set up these businesses to import umbrella stands amongst
Speaker 3: other furniture, and when it got here, they were then
Speaker 3: breaking up the umbrella stands with you know, drills and
Speaker 3: hammers and bits and pieces, and then running it through
Speaker 3: a fairly complicated sort of process to break it back
Speaker 3: down into myth and then being sold. I think it
Speaker 3: was about one hundred and eighty kilos or something. It
Speaker 3: was a big amount, But that's probably the best concealment
Speaker 3: I've seen. But I mean, of course, another trend that
Speaker 3: we've seen of later is organized crime groups not even
Speaker 3: needing to hide or conceal the myth anymore. You know,
Speaker 3: there's been some quite well documented cases of corruption within
Speaker 3: the airports and at the port of Auckland, the port
Speaker 3: of Turnongar, where you know, these prime groups and outlaw
Speaker 3: motorcycle gangs have insiders working there. Cramped insiders who are
Speaker 3: you know, are paid to essentially facilitate the smuggling of
Speaker 3: the drugs straight in. And often the drugs aren't even hidden,
Speaker 3: they're just sort of boxed up normal cardboard boxers. But
Speaker 3: if you've got someone in there who can move things
Speaker 3: around and get it out of the warehouse before it
Speaker 3: can be checked and so on, they're no one is
Speaker 3: having a door into the country. And it's often as
Speaker 3: simple as that for these groups.
Speaker 2: And we often talk about math, but also I see
Speaker 2: that the cocaine has had an uplift in use in
Speaker 2: this country. The latest NZED health survey noted there was
Speaker 2: an increasing availability of cocaine in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: It found an increase in the number of users. Two
Speaker 1: point four.
Speaker 2: Percent of adults used cocaine in the past year. Historically
Speaker 2: that figure has been around zero point five percent.
Speaker 1: Of the population. So are we seeing more cocaine get
Speaker 1: through as well?
Speaker 3: Yes, we are in a big proportional increase, but still
Speaker 3: small compared to myth but I mean, cocaine has been
Speaker 3: on the rise here the last few years. I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess it doesn't have quite the same stigma as myth.
Speaker 3: That's probably seen as a bit more of a white
Speaker 3: collar party drug, but sexier perhaps in those circles. And
Speaker 3: that's the myth is coming through in the same supply pipelines,
Speaker 3: So the cocaine is coming through the same supply pipelines
Speaker 3: as meth and beeta means obviously cocaine comes from South
Speaker 3: America through Mexico, with the same kind of cartels there
Speaker 3: bringing it in and supplying it here to the outlaw
Speaker 3: motorcycle gangs and many of whom had the origins in Australia,
Speaker 3: where cocaine is a much bigger market, so they're kind
Speaker 3: of bringing in the cocaine and trying to establish the
Speaker 3: market here. It has grown from a small base in
Speaker 3: the last few years, and we've definitely seen that more
Speaker 3: and more. I mean, you know, again HARKing back showing
Speaker 3: my age here, but HARKing back set of fifteen years ago,
Speaker 3: cocaine was a very tiny amount and we're now seeing
Speaker 3: some quite large shipments coming into New Zealand, often rivaling
Speaker 3: the size of some of the meth some of the
Speaker 3: meath shipments that we're having though the suspicion is is
Speaker 3: that a big chunk of those cocaine shipments coming here
Speaker 3: to New Zealand have then been transshipped to the bigger
Speaker 3: market in Australia as well. So it's all part of
Speaker 3: the same organized crime ecosystem that we're seeing with methban pedimen.
Speaker 6: This type of offending is not new globally. We known
Speaker 6: about it, We've seen it before in New Zealand, we've
Speaker 6: seen it in this operation and we will see it again.
Speaker 6: To defeat this, we've got to look at our engagement
Speaker 6: internationally in challenge and sharing that we're doing with our partners,
Speaker 6: for example home Land Security Investigations who are looking at
Speaker 6: the other end of this investigation, to look at both
Speaker 6: ends of this. The overarching commitment we've got in an
Speaker 6: ever changing risk environment is this is not just a
Speaker 6: law enforcement problem. We are reaching out to our industry
Speaker 6: partners to make sure that they have the tools and
Speaker 6: the information available to them to also strengthen the supply chain.
Speaker 2: And you've spoken to authorities about this, I mean, what
Speaker 2: do they say. They must just feel like they're drowning.
Speaker 2: Do we just have to hope, hope that they're just
Speaker 2: keeping on top of it all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think they're definitely. The police and
Speaker 3: customers at times probably definitely feel like they're the little
Speaker 3: boy with his finger in the dike holding back the dam.
Speaker 3: You know, this is a huge problem, and not just
Speaker 3: a New Zealand, but around the world. Everyone is on
Speaker 3: the same page that really. Whilst law enforcements still needs
Speaker 3: to be tackling the high ends, you know, the high
Speaker 3: end suppliers, and obviously a lot of money can be
Speaker 3: made from them, so tackling those high end suppliers must continue.
Speaker 3: But like you know, you take out it, you take
Speaker 3: out a crime syndicate, well somebody else will replace them
Speaker 3: and sort of fill that vacuum quite quickly. So I
Speaker 3: mean everyone's on the same sort of page. Around We
Speaker 3: need to be tacking the demand for drugs as well,
Speaker 3: and a lot of that comes back to treating meth
Speaker 3: using and meth addiction in particular as a health issue,
Speaker 3: not necessarily locking people up, but sort of referring them
Speaker 3: into health programs to sort of get the help and
Speaker 3: the counseling that they need, but also probably far greater
Speaker 3: education amongst children basically not just teenagers, but children around
Speaker 3: the harm that can be caused by METAM better mean
Speaker 3: and particular and really getting into that sort of prevention space,
Speaker 3: we would need far more sort of resources being put
Speaker 3: into that. At the moment in comparison, it would be
Speaker 3: a bit of a drop in the bucket. So yeah,
Speaker 3: there's no solution to this. And I don't think there's always
Speaker 3: going to be a demand well drugs and there's always
Speaker 3: going to be people wanting to make money from supplying them,
Speaker 3: so keeping that high in enforcement is crucial. But yeah,
Speaker 3: far more money needs to be sort of directed towards
Speaker 3: health and education programs, particularly in the smaller rural communities
Speaker 3: that you know, further further away from the big centers
Speaker 3: where you might have more sort of drug rehab help available.
Speaker 3: And it's often the smaller towns that they are the
Speaker 3: ones getting the hit the hardest.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Jared Pleasure as always.
Speaker 3: No problem.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzedherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our sound engineer.
Speaker 1: I'm Chelsea Daniels.
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Speaker 1: And tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.