Organised crime and drug trafficking surge in the Pacific – are we in danger of becoming a narco-region?
The meth lollies made world headlines. In August last year, the Auckland City Mission unwittingly bundled pineapple-flavoured sweets laced with methamphetamine into food packages and distributed them to dozens of families. The laced lollies were a potentially lethal dose: three people who consumed the sweets were hospitalised. Perhaps unsurprisingly, police believe the tainted confectionery was unintentionally donated to the mission.
In August this year, a separate investigation led to charges against a man for importation of 3g blocks of meth disguised as Rinda pineapple sweets, manufactured in Malaysia. The man, 32, will appear in the Auckland District Court next April.
In June, police and Customs staff dismantled a Wellington-based drug syndicate, seizing 23kg of methamphetamine and more than 1000 MDMA pills. In July, Customs intercepted two unaccompanied bags from Malaysia, each containing vacuum-sealed meth blocks valued at $22.6 million.
A week later, they discovered 20kg of methamphetamine concealed in vacuum-sealed green tea pouches imported by a passenger arriving from Bali. In late August, at another meth operation in the Hutt Valley, police seized firearms, cash, drugs and pipe-bomb materials.
In September, police raided 120 properties around Auckland linked to Vietnamese organised crime groups using the houses as cannabis nurseries. The police confiscated 10 tonnes of the drug: it took four container trucks to ship it away.
That same month, the National Cyber Security Centre recorded 1315 incidents of scams or fraud over a three-month period with direct financial losses of $5.7m.
Most of the New Zealand economy suffers under conditions of recession and high inflation but illicit drugs are cheaper and more plentiful than ever. In the past seven years, the price of food has increased by 37% while the cost of cannabis has gone down by 10%, MDMA (ecstasy or molly) by 26.6% and methamphetamine by 36%.
The decrease is driven by supply: recent years have seen a radical transformation in the scale and sophistication of organised crime, domestically and across the wider Pacific.
The nation is awash with drugs manufactured, imported and distributed by groups that operate more like multinational conglomerates than street gangs.
And according to a series of studies published by a ministerial working group on transnational organised crime, they are linked to the epidemic of fraud and the exploitation of migrant workers.