NZDF is committed to reducing and preventing the social and health harm caused by illicit and licit drugs in New Zealand.

La NZDF está dedicada a reducir y evitar los efectos negativos sociales y de salud causados por el uso de drogas legales e ilegales en Nueva Zelanda.

Le travail de la NZDF vise à réduire et à éviter les conséquences négatives sociales et sanitaires causées par l’usage de drogues légales et illégales en Nouvelle Zélande.

New Zealand Drug Foundation (NZDF)

A new report released today says Māori are three times more likey to die from a drug and alcohol overdose and highlights the need for a by Māori for Māori policy approach.

The New Zealand Drug Foundation report charts the non-intentional overdose deaths in Aotearoa between 2017 and 2021.

The analysis of coronial data shows an increase in fatal overdoses, which is not accounted for by the population growth over this period.

Māori Public Health organisation Hāpai Te Hauora says the NZ Drug Foundation report highlights concerning outcomes for Māori that must be proactively addressed in any policy response or risk worsening inequities.

"We commend the NZ Drug Foundation for raising awareness of these issues and reporting on key ethnicity data which show our people are three times more likely to die of an overdose than non-Māori," Hapai CEO Selah Hart said.

Aotearoa / New Zealand: Māori three times more likely to die from drug overdose, report reveals

For as long as most of us can remember, the United States has led the charge in the global “War on Drugs”. This disastrous 50-year-old experiment in criminalising people who use drugs while spending billions on law enforcement has caused untold harm and suffering across the world (including New Zealand), especially for Black people, Indigenous peoples, and people of colour.

So even though Biden’s announcement will only affect the relatively small number of people with federal cannabis convictions (most minor cannabis offences are prosecuted at a state level), the fact it came from a serving US president is momentous, and signals the latest in a global shift away from the catastrophe of prohibition.

Over the weekend we launched a petition calling on the New Zealand government to decriminalise cannabis and follow Biden’s lead by pardoning cannabis use and possession convictions. 

Why Aotearoa / New Zealand should decriminalise cannabis and overturn convictions

By the NZ Drug Foundation and the Helen Clark Foundation

Harmful methamphetamine use has become a serious and intractable health issue in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past 20 years, and it is the country’s most feared and stigmatised substance. While Aotearoa New Zealand has turned increasingly towards a health-based approach to drug use over the past several years, no comprehensive analysis has been undertaken about what that might look like in the context of methamphetamine use.

This paper begins by providing an overview of how methamphetamine is used, by whom and why, how big the market is, what the harms are that it causes, and how it is currently regulated. We then recommend how we can reduce those harms by better implementing what the evidence tells us about how to lower demand and support people better using a mix of psychosocial, cultural, and pharmacological approaches.

While only around 1.2% of New Zealanders use methamphetamine each year, according to the New Zealand Health Survey, the relatively low overall number of users hides the significant health, social, and economic impacts of dependent use. While methamphetamine is used in every community in Aotearoa New Zealand, the negative impacts are particularly severe in communities with high pre-existing levels of deprivation and where prevalence of use is significantly higher than the population average. Wastewater testing shows highest per capita methamphetamine use in rural towns in Northland, Bay of Plenty, and Hawkes Bay.

Māori use methamphetamine at a higher rate than non-Māori, and are criminalised for its use at a disproportionately higher rate. The flow-on impacts of colonisation and ongoing systemic racism lead to Māori being more likely to suffer from mental health and addiction issues, and generally from poorer health overall. That means that methamphetamine use takes a higher toll on Māori, who also face greater barriers to accessing appropriate healthcare. In addition, Māori face cultural impacts from high methamphetamine use that are not experienced by other groups. Community leaders have highlighted the negative impacts from high rates of methamphetamine use as one of the most significant issues facing Māori communities.

Methamphetamine is a strong and addictive stimulant. While the majority of people may use it occasionally over a long period without serious health effects, others can rapidly become dependent and find it extremely difficult to stop using it.

The social and economic impacts of methamphetamine in Aotearoa New Zealand are significant. Large profit margins have led to the development of highly sophisticated distribution networks. In some parts of the country, these networks market methamphetamine aggressively, using many of the same tactics as the alcohol industry, such as freebies, discounts, and targeted advertising. These networks aim to introduce new users to methamphetamine, and to increase use among those who already use.

Anecdotally, methamphetamine has in many places replaced, or partly replaced, cannabis as a key source of income for some gangs and other organised crime groups.

It is clear from local and international evidence that attempting to reduce harmful drug use by focusing on reducing supply alone does not work – where there is demand for a drug, someone will always step in to sell it for a profit. Arresting a dealer or intercepting a large amount at the border may dent supply temporarily, but never for long. It is also clear that aggressively marketing a drug can help to increase demand (alcohol is a good example of this phenomenon).

Historically, our approach to reducing harm from methamphetamine use in Aotearoa New Zealand has primarily been to focus on the supply side: coming down hard on dealers, and attempting to stamp out international trafficking and local manufacture. At the same time, we have punished people who use the drug and provided too little, if any, treatment and other support options. Support is often only available to those who are already severely dependent, or who enter the criminal justice system.

The public discourse is now starting to acknowledge that controlling use through enforcement alone has been largely unsuccessful and that drug use should be treated as a health and social issue. Prosecuting individuals for their use is neither effective, nor compassionate. A programme in Northland – Te Ara Oranga – has successfully piloted an approach where police, health staff, iwi, and local NGOs work together to address social issues, and help people access help, rather than prosecuting people for their use.

To get on top of problematic methamphetamine use in Aotearoa New Zealand we need to increase the focus on innovative, and proven, ways to reduce demand. We also need to help people who experience methamphetamine addiction to extricate themselves from a toxic illicit market. People who are addicted often become trapped by debt and turn to dealing or other crime to support their own use.

First, we propose a comprehensive approach to prevention, harm reduction, early intervention, and accessibility of treatment services. In this paper we examine some of the different interventions that could achieve that – such as rolling out the Te Ara Oranga approach nationally.

Second, we propose a pilot to test whether a stimulant substitution treatment model tailored to the Aotearoa New Zealand context could help individuals move away from the harmful impacts of contact and involvement with the illicit methamphetamine market, thus making it easier for them to access support and treatment, and get their lives back on track.

In our proposed pilot, a substitute stimulant – or where this is ineffective, methamphetamine itself – would be provided in tightly controlled circumstances to people who have become addicted and have struggled to achieve abstinence, despite having been through two rounds of treatment. Methamphetamine addiction treatment is often successful at helping people reduce their use but does not always help them achieve full abstinence, or maintain abstinence in the long term. This proposal could help both those who have found treatment to be unsuccessful and those who have found it to be partly successful. Prescribed stimulant substitution could help both groups to avoid interaction with the illicit market and the risks that entails.

Our proposal is modelled on highly effective and well-evidenced experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand with opioid substitution treatment, with heroin-assisted treatment in Switzerland and other places, as well as recent experiences in Canada, where drugs such as amphetamines and opioids have been provided on prescription to dependent users.

Much of this paper relies on international literature and data because there is relatively little data in Aotearoa New Zealand on this topic. There is obviously a need for caution in assuming international data will apply in Aotearoa New Zealand in the same way. We have preferentially sought out Australian literature where nothing is available from Aotearoa New Zealand because of the broad cultural similarities between the two countries.

Minimising the harms from methamphetamine

What would you want police to do if they found your child, relative or best friend in possession of cannabis or other illicit drugs?

Most people we talk to say they would like their loved ones to have an opportunity to get help if they need it, and to be left alone if they don’t. Funnily enough, no one ever mentions that they’d want them to receive a conviction for drug use. Why would we want it to be different for anyone else’s relative or friend?

Last week the Ministry of Justice released their drug conviction figures for 2021. We now have two full years of data since the government amended our drugs laws to reduce the number of people prosecuted for possession and use of drugs. The jury is in: the new law is better than what was there before. Convictions have fallen by 28% for low-level possession offences in the two years since the amendment, compared to the two years before.

Aotearoa / New Zealand: Who gets a conviction for drug possession, and who gets help?

This report pulls together the latest data from a wide array of sources such as Police, the Ministries of Health, Justice and Education, DHBs, Customs, service and treatment providers, and health surveys.

Our hope is that it provides a useful basis for the public, the media, the health sector and policy makers to debate and develop the solutions we need to see an Aotearoa free from drug harm.

As with every other aspect of our lives, the story of drugs in Aotearoa has been affected by the disruption of Covid-19. We’ve attempted to add caveats where we think 2020/21 data are likely to have been affected by lockdown and border disruptions.

But as we’ve all been grappling with the pandemic, life has continued, and along with it so has drug use, drug harm, hospitalisations, exclusions from school, charges and convictions. There are important stories and trends contained in this report that need our urgent attention.

Māori suffer grossly unequitable outcomes in almost every aspect of this report. Drug-related deaths for Māori are three times the rate for non-Māori (page 22); wāhine Māori are 3.6 times more likely to smoke daily than non-Māori women (page 10) and are 2.7 times more likely to use amphetamines (page 16); only 42% of Māori in addiction treatment were double vaccinated as at late-November – half the rate of the general population (page 27); and Māori make up 48% of those convicted for drug possession offences and 61.9% of those sentenced to prison for these offences (page 48).

Alcohol is still by far the most widely consumed drug and causes the most harm, with 19.5% of adults drinking in a way that’s likely to cause them harm (page 5).

Methamphetamine use remains relatively steady, but its impacts on different communities vary greatly. Women living in our poorest neighbourhoods are 18 times more likely to use amphetamines (including methamphetamine) than women living in the wealthiest neighbourhoods (page 16), but our one-size-fits-all approach to the drug doesn’t take these differences into account.

An estimated 94% of those using cannabis for medicinal purposes, 266,700 people, are still accessing the drug through the black market (page 58).

There are still too many young people entering the youth justice system for drug offences – 913 in 2020 (page 50) when we should be offering health responses first, and too many being excluded, expelled, or suspended from school for drugs (page 53).

Alongside these alarming statistics, there has been some progress for health-led and harm reduction approaches.

New Zealand became the first country to permanently legalise drug checking in December 2021 (page 38), and the healthbased methamphetamine initiative Te Ara Oranga has been expanded (page 40).

Changes to our drug laws in 2019 have seen a reduction in charges and convictions, but far less than hoped (page 45) – and how the new law is applied depends on some factors that should not be relevant, including the type of drug used.

The Drug Foundation launched The Level to provide a range of harm reduction advice direct to people who use drugs (page 38), and many other harm reduction initiatives and services have been seeing positive results (page 38-41), but there is much missing, including safe consumption and overdose prevention services.

These are just some of the stories, data points and trends that you’ll find in the report. As you can see, there is a lot of work we all need to do.

Statistics are useful for helping us to see the big picture, but they also run the risk of detaching us from the real harm and trauma behind them.

As you read this report, please remember that each of these numbers represents real people, real whānau and real communities. They need us to take action. Ngā mihi,

State of the Nation 2022 - A stocktake of how New Zealand is dealing with drug use and drug harm

The NZ Drug Foundation is celebrating the passing of the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2) today, which provides a new permanent legal framework for drug checking services at festivals and clinics.

Executive Director, Sarah Helm, says it is a huge moment in the history of preventing drug harm in New Zealand.

“This is truly a moment to celebrate. It has been over three decades since the last significant gain was made, the creation of the needle exchanges in the late 1980s,” says Helm.

“For years, pioneering drug checking provider KnowYourStuff has been delivering this service with our support, working in the margins of the law at great risk to themselves to prevent harm to others. Today, it’s important we acknowledge the tireless and brave work of these volunteers, particularly Wendy Allison.

Helm says drug checking has proven to be a hugely effective harm reduction tool that saves lives by providing people with accurate information to make safer decisions. She is keen to see access expanded beyond festivalgoers.

“This new law provides a great opportunity to expand availability of services to more vulnerable communities,” she says.

New Zealand: Passage of drug checking law a moment to celebrate

New Zealand has enshrined into law a one-year experiment allowing drug users to have illegal substances tested without penalty to ensure their authenticity and to weed out dangerous chemicals.

The testers will not call the police. The drug users will not be thrown in jail. To tackle an endemic drug problem, New Zealand on Friday became what is believed to be the second country to formally legalize such drug checks, after the Netherlands. The European nation began a similar program in 1999 — though the practice is spreading around the globe.

It is still a crime in New Zealand to possess or sell illegal drugs. But say you’ve acquired an illegal chemical substance and would like to double check that what you have is what you think you have. A New Zealand law allows that.

Last year, as part of a pilot program, the government passed the Drug Checking Act, and the Ministry of Health appointed an independent drug-verification service, KnowYourStuffNZ, to test samples of pills or powders to give users a clearer picture of their chemical makeup, often at music festivals. But until the act became permanent, KnowYourStuffNZ operated in a kind of legal gray zone, where the testing was not widely publicized.

Over time, demand for its services skyrocketed, leaving the organization struggling to keep up. In 2016, it tested 330 samples at nine events, which rose to 1,368 samples tested at 22 events in 2019, according to recent data from Victoria University in Wellington.

Are your illegal drugs pure? New Zealand will check them for you.

Since the first of February this year, anyone in the US state of Oregon caught possessing or using a personal quantity of any controlled drug – including heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine – has been officially not a criminal – or, rather, not liable for criminal prosecution. Instead, they will have the choice of paying a $100 fine or completing a health assessment at an approved addiction recovery centre.

The state government reported late last year, that Oregon had suffered a 40% increase in drug overdose deaths in 2020, in line with with national trends during the Covid pandemic. This dramatic shift from a criminal justice approach for drug users to one centred around health (a move the American Public Health Association called for as far back as 2013, came not from the state's elected politicians, but from the voters themselves, who last September approved Measure 110 by a 16-point margin. The measure also stipulated that funding for the introduction of new healthcare resources, including a a 24/7 telephone addiction recovery centre, would come from Oregon's burgeoning tax revenue from its legalised cannabis market.

The funding component was, says Portland drug reform activist and public radio broadcaster Doug McVay, a political winner". But he also credits an increasingly strong reform movement: "People who use drugs have become vocal and politically active. We've become visible."

McVay says that although Oregon has long led the way on drug policy reform – its needle exchange was one of the first in the US – "conventional wisdom has always been that even talking about decriminalising drugs other than marijuana, let alone legalising and regulating them, is too radical. What Oregon has done is prove that bit of conventional wisdom wrong. Oregon has set an example for the rest of the nation, which becomes apparent when you look at the other states that are now considering broad drug decriminalisation. Politicians in those states need to be bold."

Turning away from the 'war on drugs'

: When the cannabis referendum failed despite being so close, my daughter, having watched me over decades fight for health-based, fair drug laws, wrote something on Facebook that has compelled me to write this as the departing chairperson of the NZ Drug Foundation.

My tamāhine, in justifiable, youthful anger, said the laws we have are ‘’racist, because they unjustly criminalise us as Māori, because they’re outdated … I know everyone will be a bit gutted tonight but I just wanted to say ... I’m really really proud of you, Dad …’’

Her words and the outcome hit me hard and made me realise how deeply personal the lack of progress on drug harm in New Zealand is for me and for many Māori.

Like many young Māori men, I obtained drug convictions in my youth that have haunted me my entire life. Even though it’s been 34 years since my last drug conviction, it’s still making my life difficult.

As one particularly ironic example, when I was asked to speak at the United Nations about drug law reform, it took seven months to get permission to enter the US.

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