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Peter Drury / stuff
New Zealand’s harsh shutdown in March and subsequent border checks hit organized crime operations, police say.
The year of Covid-19 hit the methamphetamine trade in New Zealand, police say.
Information released by the National Drug Intelligence Office shows that the amount of illegal stimulant seized in 2020 was significantly reduced to just 23.7 kg.
In the previous year, 615.5 kg were found.
The numbers cover seizures from both police and customs.
The manager of the National Office of Drug Intelligence, Detective Inspector Blair Macdonald, said that, following border restrictions, it was more difficult to get methamphetamine into the country and more difficult to distribute once here.
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“No one was able to move around the country,” Macdonald said. Stuff.
“We really saw a tightening of availability across the country, particularly on the South Island.”
Waikato experienced a significant drop in 2020, with 4.3 kg seized compared to 220.6 kg in 2019.
However, the huge figure in 2019 was due to a police raid in which 216 kg of methamphetamine was seized, with two men from Hamilton and one from Rotorua arrested.
123rf
In New Zealand in 2020, 34,326 equivalents of MDMA tablets were seized [file photo].
However, not all drug seizures decreased. MDMA, for example, is on the rise, a trend Macdonald said has been in play since 2018.
Between 2018 and 2019 they had seen a 600 percent increase in seizures of MDMA, Macdonald said, and in 2020 they seized 34,326 tablet equivalents of the drug. In 2019, 28,997 were seized.
He said organized crime groups were targeting New Zealand because prices here were higher than in other countries.
Each pill costs about $ 40, but Macdonald said they were also seeing it increasingly in powder form.
From time to time they would come across pill presses in New Zealand, but he said they mostly came into the country in pill form.
Rosa Woods / Stuff
Detective Sergeant Tim Leitch, with some of the drugs, gold and weapons seized in a nine-month methamphetamine operation in 2019.
“What we tell people is that the safest use of drugs is not to use drugs, but if people make those decisions, they have to be very careful about what they use.
“All illicit substances are not regulated, you cannot assume that because you bought MDMA you have it.”
He said that by working with Know Your Stuff, a drug verification service, they were aware of all kinds of things that were being sold as MDMA.
Meanwhile, two other substances that had remained strong despite the Covid-19 lockdown were LSD / NBOME and GHB / GBL.
LSD / NBOME tabs saw an increase in seizures in 2020 and Macdonald said that while NBOME had gone out of style, this year it was being noticed again.
“Both have remained strong compared to the other substances, which have decreased due to Covid.”
He thought this was partly because LSD was a niche drug and many of the users were tech-savvy, so they could get it on the dark web.
The amount of LSD / NBOME seized in the country had doubled, with 8,540 tablets seized in 2020 compared to 4,170 in 2019.
The increase in GHB / GBL was less pronounced with 21,148 ml seized in 2020 compared to 23,165 ml in 2019.
The cannabis head / leaf had also seen an increase in seizures in 2020, with 673,934 g seized compared to 510,729 in 2019.
Only 501 g of cocaine were seized in 2020, up from 24.8 kg in 2019.
