Is New Zealand on the brink of a cocaine problem?

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1. 0:06Speaker 1: Kia ora, I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is The Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Cocaine
2. 0:16Speaker 1: use appears to be surging in New Zealand. The latest NZ Drug Trends Survey reveals the proportion of people reporting
3. 0:25Speaker 1: cocaine use has almost tripled since 2017, while the price of the drug has fallen by nearly a third. Researchers say we could be in the honeymoon phase where cocaine
4. 0:37Speaker 1: looks increasingly normal, affordable and consequence-free before the serious harms of addiction start to emerge. So, how big is New
5. 0:46Speaker 1: Zealand's cocaine problem becoming? And where is this trend heading?
6. 0:51Speaker 1: Today on the front page, Massey University professor Chris Wilkins joins us to break down the numbers. So, Chris, the
7. 1:00Speaker 1: headline figure is pretty striking. Cocaine use among survey respondents has risen from 11% in 2017-2018 to to 31% this year.
8. 1:11Speaker 1: How significant is this increase?
9. 1:14Speaker 2: Well, I think it is pretty significant, particularly if you look at just this last year, there's been a real steep rise. So it had been increasing quite steadily, but
10. 1:25Speaker 2: in this last year, there's been a really steep rise.
11. 1:27Speaker 2: Our survey, New Zealand Drug Trends Survey, the good thing about it is this is very consistent with the wastewater testing data that you might be more familiar with. So That increased it from about 3.1 kilos per week now
12. 1:39Speaker 2: to up to just over 9 kilos per week at the end of last year. So again, a three times increase.
13. 1:47Speaker 2: So I think that is pretty significant. And also, you know, we've been hearing a lot of anecdotal stories about people saying, well, I'm seeing a whole lot more cocaine around, you know, at bars and at parties as well.
14. 1:58Speaker 1: So you describe New Zealand as being in the honeymoon phase of cocaine use.
15. 2:03Speaker 3: What exactly do you mean by the honeymoon phase?
16. 2:06Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mean, this comes out of, if you think about drugs as in a product life cycle, So initially, you know, a new product comes out. People are very enthusiastic.
17. 2:17Speaker 2: They are curious about it. They want to try it.
18. 2:20Speaker 2: And there's almost no negative feedback loop. So, you know, we haven't got a cultural history of cocaine use here in New Zealand. So, you know, I think we have
19. 2:32Speaker 2: this perception of cocaine as this glamorous Hollywood drug thing.
20. 2:37Speaker 2: And that means we're probably underestimating the risk a little bit.
21. 2:41Speaker 2: But then over time, over many decades, you start to hear more about the problems people are having with addiction,
22. 2:49Speaker 2: mental illness and all kinds of life problems. A good way to illustrate that is with methamphetamine. We've now had two decades of methamphetamine use, and I think increasingly, nearly
23. 3:01Speaker 2: everyone's clear that this is a really harmful drug and it's very associated with addiction, but that learning actually takes a number of years to come about. With cocaine now,
24. 3:13Speaker 2: I think we've probably got our rose-tinted glasses on too much.
25. 3:18Speaker 3: Does that surprise you, though?
26. 3:19Speaker 1: Because if you think of cocaine, you might immediately think of, oh, in like the 80s movies or something like Wolf of Wall Street.
27. 3:26Speaker 3: It's been around since then. So why now?
28. 3:29Speaker 1: Why is it still considered kind of like... more glamorous or better than methamphetamines?
29. 3:35Speaker 2: I think, as I said, it's because we haven't had an actual experience. So if you went to North America and Europe, you can, you know, there's the whole cocaine
30. 3:44Speaker 2: thing and the crack thing that we also didn't have here.
31. 3:48Speaker 2: So people in those countries and global regions, you know, no family members and friends who have had serious problems with cocaine and addictions or might have experienced them themselves.
32. 3:59Speaker 2: Whereas in New Zealand, I mean, you know, young people and maybe New Zealanders in general are a little sceptical about sometimes health warnings. And again, they see the Hollywood
33. 4:10Speaker 2: version of this fun drug that, you know, people take, movie stars take, and that's probably their overriding understanding, yeah.
34. 4:19Speaker 1: What else is concerning with this report is that the reported price of a gram of cocaine has declined from
35. 4:24Speaker 1: $ 368 in 2017-2018 to... just at $ 247 this year once inflation over that 10-year period is taken into consideration.
36. 4:36Speaker 3: What could explain the price drop?
37. 4:39Speaker 2: Well, I think it's more like, so the nominal price, the actual sticker price has just remained the same for the last 10 years. So, you know, if you could
38. 4:50Speaker 2: go out and buy anything that you, you know, now at the 2017 price, you'd be pretty happy because we've gone through this massive, you know, cost of living crisis, inflation.
39. 5:01Speaker 2: So what explains that? Well, I think 10 years ago, really,
40. 5:07Speaker 2: cocaine was so rare. It was in some affluent groups who had some contact with the US or Europe. But really,
41. 5:19Speaker 2: every day, New Zealanders had almost no contact with cocaine.
42. 5:21Speaker 2: And now, as I said, we've got to a situation where supply is higher. And that means that it's becoming slightly cheaper and perhaps a little bit stronger as well soon.
43. 5:32Speaker 1: What are the health consequences we should be watching out for as cocaine use becomes more established in New Zealand?
44. 5:39Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's some really important kind of acute effects in terms of extreme paranoia and anxiety that come from cocaine. Also,
45. 5:50Speaker 2: there's some really important, there's a high addiction potential for cocaine. Again, I think people have this perception that it's a manageable,
46. 5:58Speaker 2: harmless drug that But really, the dependency is very similar to methamphetamine. So I guess in a lot of people's minds, it's a separate drug from methamphetamine, but it's a powerful
47. 6:10Speaker 2: psychostimulant just like methamphetamine. And then finally, there's some really important longer-term physical damage, cardiovascular damage, and things like heart attack,
48. 6:22Speaker 2: but also long-term disease to the heart. And you can see that much more overseas when sometimes you hear about
49. 6:30Speaker 2: celebrities who have had major cocaine use having those really serious cardiovascular problems.
50. 6:37Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're kind of yet to experience the serious addiction and social harm seen in more mature markets overseas.
51. 6:46Speaker 1: What have other countries been grappling with when it comes to cocaine use?
52. 6:50Speaker 2: Yeah, so just to put this in context, Australia has had a really massive surge in cocaine supply and use
53. 6:59Speaker 2: so they had one of the biggest seizures they've ever had of cocaine of over two tons of cocaine a
54. 7:09Speaker 2: year or so back so it's a serious market in Australia it has been for much longer than here in New Zealand and it's starting to get it so there's
55. 7:18Speaker 2: been almost a doubling in population use as well so So we're not immune from that. And I think that
56. 7:26Speaker 2: given that drug trends often expand in a viral way, so we can pretty easily end up with a serious problem here.
57. 7:34Speaker 1: Yeah, because I was going to ask how quickly could we start seeing those more serious harms emerge here in New Zealand? Like how long do you think it'll take for that tide to turn from it being this, oh,
58. 7:46Speaker 1: I'm just doing this on the weekend with my mates to, it being quite much more of a serious problem.
59. 7:53Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the key here is availability and supply.
60. 7:57Speaker 2: So the problem, the reason why we've never had Any cocaine problems here in New Zealand is not because we're smarter people or anything like that. It's more that we just haven't had the supply. So it's got to be
61. 8:09Speaker 2: a regular, consistent supply in the kilos. So we're starting to get to that, but we're still quite far behind
62. 8:19Speaker 2: in terms of methamphetamine. So it'll really be determined about how reliable the supply can get. And so that will be a big factor. And then if the price can
63. 8:31Speaker 2: decline a little bit as well, that would really fuel this trend. But if that happens, it can actually happen quite fast. So, and the problem is that services and
64. 8:43Speaker 2: data sources are often lagged by many months and years.
65. 8:46Speaker 2: So that's one of the reasons why we're conducting the online New Zealand Drug Trends Survey is to provide a real heads up and kind of aid preparedness, basically.
66. 8:56Speaker 1: Do you think New Zealand's drug treatment and harm reduction services are even ready for what's coming?
67. 9:01Speaker 2: Well, I think they haven't had much contact with cocaine yet.
68. 9:07Speaker 2: At this scale, some of the fundamental issues are resourcing, having good treatment in different locations and rural locations and
69. 9:16Speaker 2: for different population groups who have got specialised and also groups with specialised needs. like ADHD and neurodivergence and things
70. 9:25Speaker 2: like that. The one thing I would point out is that there's a lot of effort, rightly so, in terms
71. 9:32Speaker 2: of academically measuring treatment effectiveness. But there's relatively less attention on delivery of treatment services. And it seems to me
72. 9:43Speaker 2: there's potential for a lot of innovation there in terms of moving from physical drug treatment places where you have to physically go to a counsellor and have a face-to-face session.
73. 9:54Speaker 2: There's a real opportunity to be more efficient and effective by leveraging off this digital revolution that we've gone through
74. 10:02Speaker 2: in so many areas. And even the AI revolution could be massive in terms of providing people with different levels of help. So not necessarily going into treatment, but just
75. 10:14Speaker 2: advice and some pointers about what you should be avoiding.
76. 10:23Speaker 4: I do believe that cocaine, the phenomena, comes out of the sort of life that we live today. Everything is fast.
77. 10:32Speaker 4: There's fast food, fast cars, and instant on on the TV.
78. 10:38Speaker 4: And people are looking for instant kind of experiences, and cocaine provides that.
79. 10:43Speaker 1: I think part of the pleasure involved here, like Prohibition was years ago, like marijuana was some years ago, is the.
80. 10:53Speaker 4: Excitement of doing something unlawful. For some reason, our people seem fascinated with that.
81. 11:00Speaker 1: If this really is the beginning of a much bigger cocaine problem in New Zealand, what should policymakers start doing right now?
82. 11:10Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is always tricky. So I think some of...
83. 11:16Speaker 2: Early on in these kind of trends, that's when some enforcement, like border enforcement, can actually be relatively more effective because
84. 11:25Speaker 2: you've got less suppliers, more vulnerability of the supply chain to arrest and things like that. Also, prevention and information can be really important because, as I said, I think
85. 11:36Speaker 2: one of the major problems here is people underestimating the risk of cocaine and not appreciating the downstream problems they
86. 11:44Speaker 2: could have. So just providing that information really effectively. And as I said, in terms of treatment, I think there's quite a long way for us to travel here in
87. 11:54Speaker 2: terms of really making treatment more accessible to lots of different groups and be a little bit innovative about it and using things like digital and AI platforms that we
88. 12:05Speaker 2: can really engage with a whole lot more people in a more effective way.
89. 12:09Speaker 3: Yeah, how would you start off?
90. 12:11Speaker 1: I mean, if we were to start off a marketing campaign warning people of the effects of cocaine, I mean, where would you start?
91. 12:19Speaker 2: These kind of campaigns are always... fairly difficult to get the right tone and balance so um i mean you
92. 12:29Speaker 2: don't want to come across uh scaremongering or unrealistic um depictions that people turn off to and then actually it is worse because they don't believe you from then on
93. 12:41Speaker 2: so i mean the kind of if we were going down that route It needs to be very carefully toned.
94. 12:49Speaker 2: And I always like those. If that's what we're doing, I like the ones where you use real people. So
95. 12:59Speaker 2: real people's stories are actually the most powerful thing when it comes to drug addiction stories. where they're authentic, people can see real people talking about actual real problems and
96. 13:11Speaker 2: often coming out the other side better, you know, they're going through treatment and being successful with that. But that's often quite shocking to people because They don't understand that
97. 13:22Speaker 2: there's real casualties involved in drug use and they might not fully appreciate that until they see somebody like themselves with those issues.
98. 13:31Speaker 1: Yeah, or even have the impression that addiction can happen to everyone.
99. 13:37Speaker 3: I feel like sometimes.
100. 13:39Speaker 1: As a society we say, oh, but that's somebody else's problem.
101. 13:44Speaker 1: But if you start doing a drug like cocaine maybe once a month, then it turns into once a fortnight, then you do it. And then it has the ability to snowball, and that's what addiction is.
102. 13:55Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. And when you hear the real-life stories of addiction, it's a real tragedy because you're right. You often see very successful people who come from good families
103. 14:07Speaker 2: and had good upbringings. And the reality of addiction is that you almost lose everything, not just money and possessions,
104. 14:16Speaker 2: but people's trust and their respect in you. And that's really hard to claw back. But having said that, you also very respect people like that who can do the
105. 14:27Speaker 2: work and come out of treatment really determined to have a better life. But it's always, there's lots of tragic stories there.
106. 14:38Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us, Chris. Yep.
107. 14:40Speaker 2: Pleasure, yeah.
108. 14:44Speaker 3: That's it for this episode of The Front Page.
109. 14:47Speaker 1: You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at nzherald.co.nz. The Front Page is hosted and produced
110. 14:56Speaker 1: by me, Chelsea Daniels. Kane Dickey is our studio operator, Richard Martin, our producer and editor, and our executive producer
111. 15:05Speaker 1: is Jane Yee. Follow The Front Page on the iHeart app, or wherever you get your podcasts, and join us next time for another look beyond the headlines.
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