How cocaine use has skyrocketed to an all-time high in New Zealand – and why

Source: Radio New Zealand

Explainer – Cocaine isn’t cheap, but its use is skyrocketing in New Zealand according to new figures. What’s driving the snowstorm?

Until relatively recently, cocaine was somewhat of a rarity in New Zealand, explained Massey University professor Chris Wilkins, leader of the drug research team at SHORE & Whariki Research Centre.

“In those times that you most associate with cocaine in the ’80s and ’90s, New Zealand really didn’t have almost any cocaine,” he said.

Our geographical and trade isolation shielded New Zealand when cocaine had its big cultural moment in those decades.

But things have changed – a global glut has now led to a surge in demand in New Zealand.

Police recently released wastewater testing figures that showed cocaine use has hit an all-time high.

The latest wastewater figures were collected between October and December 2025, and testing sites cover up to 77 percent of Aotearoa’s total population.

The testing calculates drug use from the concentration of each drug’s biomarker detected in the water and reflects the amount of pure drug being consumed, the National Drug Intelligence Bureau says.

The figures showed methamphetamine use continues to be high, averaging about 34.7kg per week.

But it’s cocaine that showed the biggest proportional jump of all.

“We are seen as a lucrative albeit small market” for cocaine dealers, said Sarah Helm, executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation.

So how much more cocaine are we using?

While cocaine use is still less overall than methamphetamine or cannabis, it’s the size of the rise that has drawn attention.

Cocaine nearly doubled in a year, rising to an estimated 9.4kg of use per week – 98 percent, or 4.7kg, above the average amount consumed the previous four quarters.

That’s a lot of cocaine.

Part of this is simply because there’s a lot more of it out there.

“From the global level, there’s been a real glut in coca production,” Wilkins said. Cocaine comes from the leaves of the coca plant and is primarily produced in South American countries like Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.

But there’s another reason for the rise.

In New Zealand, cocaine has sniffed out an image that it is somehow safer and hipper than methamphetamine or other drugs. Iconic images like Al Pacino’s cocaine kingpin in Scarface and white powder hitting the dance floors in American pop culture mostly passed Aotearoa by in the 1980s.

“It was (seen as) a very exotic drug,” Wilkins said. “Of course, it was associated with that kind of Hollywood glamour.”

“Cocaine I think at the moment is presenting itself as a kind of cleaner, healthy, more manageable drug, and that’s basically driving demand at the moment.”

NZ Police Assistant Commissioner Corrie Parnell told RNZ that there’s a “strong demand” for cocaine.

The New Zealand Drug Trends Survey is an anonymous online survey of 8883 people conducted in 2025 designed to provide an annual snapshot of drug market trends. It’s not a representative sample but it’s described as “broadly representing the demographic profile and regional population distribution” of New Zealand.

And what it’s got to say about cocaine use backs up the wastewater figures.

The number of those surveyed saying cocaine was “easy” to get jumped from 17 percent in 2018-19 to 43 percent in 2025, while the proportion of those using cocaine at least weekly increased from 6 percent to 10 percent over the same period.

Just 23 percent of respondents to the survey said they’d used cocaine in the last six months – but that’s higher than pretty much every other type of illegal drug other than cannabis (69 percent) and MDMA (35 percent), and far higher than meth (11 percent).

The Drug Use in Aotearoa 2023/24 Report released last year also backed up the steady rise – just an estimated 1kg per week of cocaine was consumed by New Zealanders in 2019, compared to the more than 9kg estimated in the new wastewater figures.

Is it because it’s cheap?

Just the opposite, actually. New Zealanders pay some of the highest prices for cocaine in the world.

The average price per gram of cocaine was $360 a gram, according to the drug trends survey, just above meth at $334/gram and far more than MDMA or ketamine.

“The growth of the cocaine market has occurred over the space of a few years and has largely occurred without significant reductions in street level pricing,” Parnell said.

“This indicates strong demand for cocaine, as dealers are able to offload increased quantities without dropping the price.”

Who’s using all this cocaine?

The New Zealand Drug Trends Survey carried some surprises.

Respondents who said they’d used cocaine in the past six months were overwhelmingly European (74 percent), male (66 percent) and financially pretty well off.

Seventy-nine percent of those surveyed worked full or part time, and 42 percent of them made more than $80,000 a year.

“It’s kind of like almost a sign of affluence and status in New Zealand just because it’s so exotic,” Wilkins said.

“The affluent association with cocaine kind of presents this veneer that it’s a high-end drug and that it can be used quite manageably. But if you do go to North America and Europe, there’s pretty clearly a lot of people that have problems.”

Cocaine use has particularly skyrocketed in Auckland, Wellington and the Bay of Plenty, police said.

Is this just specific to New Zealand?

“New Zealand continues to be an attractive market for organised criminal groups to supply drugs due to the high profit margins,” Parnell said.

“New Zealand and Australia continue to have the highest prices for illicit drugs in the world. As is the case globally, there is a large supply, consumption is high and pricing is stable.”

But cocaine is booming worldwide – the United Nations’ World Drug Report 2025 said cocaine was the world’s fastest growing illicit drug market. It said cocaine use grew from 17 million users in 2013 to 25 million users in 2023.

“Police have seen an increase in large volumes of cocaine seized” with police and Customs Service operations, Parnell said.

“The increase in supply is part of a global trend and has been driven by record levels of coca cultivation, increasingly efficient methods of cocaine production, and diversification of supply chains into New Zealand,” Helm said.

“In an unregulated black market, we are at the mercy of these global changes that can alter our drug supply very quickly.”

Cocaine traffickers are breaking into new markets across Asia and Africa, the UN report notes.

“The vicious violence and competition characterising the illicit cocaine arena, once confined to Latin America, is now spreading to Western Europe,” it said.

Global instability is “empowering organised crime groups and pushing drug use to historically high levels,” the UN noted.

“The glut of supply means that cocaine is being pushed into countries that haven’t had much presence of cocaine before,” Helm said.

Is cocaine truly as dangerous as other drugs?

“New Zealand culture is kind of cocaine naive … in that it has probably an exaggerated or inflated perception as a harm-free drug and a better alternative to methamphetamine,” Wilkins said.

New Zealand has had three decades to see how methamphetamine use causes harm that is “pretty cemented in the public culture,” he said.

“It looks risk free, but there’s really serious problems with cocaine related to short-term effects in terms of agitation and violence and sometimes psychosis by heavy users, and also the longer term effects on cardiovascular health and things like that.”

Like any other drug, cocaine carries risks, Helm said.

“Cocaine carries a higher risk of addiction and harm than some other drugs that New Zealanders may be used to, like MDMA, so we are concerned that the community may be less aware about what to look out for to stay safer.

“For example, mixing cocaine and alcohol can be risky as they combine to make a substance called cocaethylene, that can put more strain on your body, particularly your heart.

“Moreover, some substances like cocaine have a ‘compulsive redosing effect’, where the person taking it has an increased urge to consume more. This, coupled with its short-lived effects, adds to the risk of addiction.”

Police said that cocaine use across sample wastewater sites in the last quarter of 2025 would equate to an estimated weekly social harm cost of $3.5 million, as calculated by the New Zealand Illicit Drug Harm Index.

People need to be informed and seek out information about the health risks, Wilkins said.

“At the moment now (cocaine) is kind of in this honeymoon phase,” meaning it’s harder to communicate any dangers in a credible way, as people often rely on information from their peers and there hasn’t been as much negative experience with cocaine here.

“In terms of harm, it’s a lot to do with how frequently you’re using and how much you’re using it,” he added.

“If you’re just using a drug once a month, once every six months, the risk of you having problems is much lower than weekly or daily use.”

People should also keep in mind what their underlying risks are, in terms of health conditions and their mental health.

How you use cocaine is also a factor in the harm it can cause, Wilkins said.

“Nasal use has physical issues, but it’s probably the low risk option, whereas smoking cocaine, of course, crack, really changed the image of cocaine in North America and other places.”

Smoking or injecting cocaine are “extremely high risks,” he said.

“If people plan to use cocaine, we’d advise visiting thelevel.org.nz for tips on how to stay safer,” Helm said.

So what is New Zealand doing about all this cocaine?

Parnell said police are focused daily on enforcement of drug laws.

“Our message to the community is that we can all play a part in reducing the social harm and misery that drugs cause by reporting any suspicious activity or information which may help us to stop those involved in these types of crimes.”

Large shipments of cocaine have been seized at ports and Operation Matata, a joint Customs/police operation, targeted a syndicate smuggling drugs through unattended baggage at Auckland Airport.

“This operation resulted in eight associates from the TwoEight Brotherhood arrested. Twenty consignments of methamphetamine and cocaine were seized, weighing 630 kilograms and 112 kilograms respectively,” Parnell said.

There have also been massive cocaine seizures intercepted in the Pacific by other nations.

Parnell said police are working with many agencies and community groups to tackle the drug problem.

“One initiative to break the cycle of harm is the Resilience to Organised Crime in Communities (ROCC) programme, a collaborative, community-led initiative designed to address the social conditions that enable organised crime,” he said. “The programme recognises that enforcement alone is not enough.”

The drug foundation has also called for a “fundamental shift” in drug policies.

Helm said that current laws aren’t doing the job.

“For the past 50 years, New Zealand’s approach has been to focus heavily on banning the drug and then undertaking supply busts and criminalising people for using drugs, but this is clearly not working,” she said.

“Across every measure, this approach has been a failure – not only has drug use continued to grow and diversify, but addiction has increased, overdoses now claim three lives a week, and more new potent drugs are entering the market.

There needs to be more investment in help and harm reduction, she said, and the foundation has also issued a report calling for changes to drug laws.

“We need to learn from the evidence and stop making the same mistakes,” Helm said.

She said other countries can also lead the way.

Two decades ago, Portugal removed criminal penalties for drug use and increased their investment into health and harm reduction,” she said, as a result overdose death rates fell and pressure on the justice system eased without an increase in drug use.

“No one has all the answers on solving drug issues, but it’s very clear that our current approach is not it.”

Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey recently told RNZ it was “incredibly important for the health system to step up and respond to the harm caused by drugs”.

The Ministry of Health has put forth a four-year action plan to reduce addiction.

Doocey said the government had no intention of liberalising drug laws.

“Our focus is on strengthening prevention, reducing overdose harm, and improving access to treatment and recovery support.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand