Cocaine And Vaping Rising In Popularity – Survey

Morning
Report

Kiwis are smoking less and
snorting more than in the past, new data has
revealed.

Cocaine availability and use is rising,
while vapers outnumber smokers of traditional cigarettes for
the first time in the latest annual New Zealand Drug Trends
Survey (NZDTS).

Massey University has been asking
thousands of New Zealanders about their drug habits annually
since 2017.

Lead researcher Professor Chris Wilkins
says the latest survey has found increased availability of
cocaine, particularly in Auckland, Northland and Bay of
Plenty, and increased cocaine use across the whole
country.

Their anecdotal evidence was reflected in
wastewater drug testing and police seizures.

Wilkins
said cocaine was one of the few drugs in the survey whose
price had not dropped.

Cannabis was the most widely
used illegal drug, with seven in 10 respondents having
consumed it in the previous six months. Second was MDMA
(ecstasy, 45 percent), LSD/psychedelics (45 percent),
cocaine (23 percent, up from 12 percent), ketamine (19
percent) and nitrous oxide (18 percent).

All were well
behind alcohol use, at 86 percent.

Use of vaping
products leapt from 48 percent in the previous survey to 64
percent, ahead of tobacco, which fell from 58 to 50
percent.

Meth was most popular in Manawatū-Whanganui,
Waikato and Northland, while MDMA and ketamine use were
highest in Otago, Wellington and Canterbury. Cocaine use
increased in all regions, but was particularly available in
Auckland, Northland, Waikato, Taranaki and the Bay of
Plenty.

“You have seen coke production increase kind
of year on year since around 2018, 2019, so it sort of
suggests that they are looking to expand,” Massey University
researcher Robin van der Sanden told Morning
Report.

“There’s a lot of coke floating around, so
they are perhaps more inclined to serve small, kind of
peripheral markets, like New Zealand.”

LSD and other
psychedelics were getting cheaper, the NZDTS found, “perhaps
reflecting new digital supply sources including social media
and darknets, and interest in therapeutic use”. as well as
loosening restrictions in the United States and
Australia.

“We’ve seen an increase in availability and
some decline in price, but I think that’s really been driven
by curiosity and just popularity of psychedelics on the back
of that kind of wave of interest in the therapeutic
benefits,” van der Sanden said.

Restricted
availability due to supply constrictions and concerns over
the size and potency of MDMA pills appears to have stunted
its growth in New Zealand.

High on their own
supply

Cannabis availability is getting higher, the
survey found, and prices have “marginally declined”, as more
people grow their own at home.

“Think about how prices
in the legal economy have gone since 2017, and costs all
gone up by five, 10, 15 percent – whereas these illegal
market drugs have actually declined in the regions of, you
know, anything from 10 to 35 percent.”

The 2024 survey
was conducted between February and July, and spoke to 10,781
users “with recent experience and knowledge of drug use and
drug markets across the country”, which “broadly
[represented] the demographic profile and regional
population distribution”, though skewed slightly younger
than New Zealand as a
whole.

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