NZ “Meth Crisis” Highlights Failure of Prohibition. Can We Change?

Methamphetamine use in Aotearoa New Zealand “hits record high,” according to a recent report on wastewater testing. Despite the fact that police and customs seizures of meth have tripled in recent years—the New Zealand Herald helpfully provides a list of “Big busts”—the drug is cheaper than it’s ever been.

This neatly encapsulates the abject failure of prohibition to impact drug supply or demand. 

It is right to be concerned about harms to people using methamphetamine. What most reporting ignores is that these harms are largely caused by prohibition. 

By driving meth underground, we clearly don’t eliminate it. But we do compel people who use it to buy it in risky environments; to ingest it with little idea of the dosage or purity; and often to avoid seeking help (if they want it) for fear of stigma, exclusion and arrest.

Like Pavlov’s dog, the programmed response of influential voices to news of the latest “drug crisis” will be a call for tougher, more invasive prohibition policies.

Like Pavlov’s dog, the programmed response of influential voices to news of the latest “drug crisis” will be a call for tougher, more invasive prohibition policies. Such calls for action are always loud and usually heeded, despite the evidence that this approach is ineffective and has devastating consequences for individuals, families and communities.

Endlessly repeating the same pattern for 50 years and imagining that—on this occasion, unlike all the other occasions—the results of prohibitionist policies will somehow be different is, to be frank, utterly deluded. Some would describe chronic, obsessive and harmful patterns of behavior despite adverse consequences as a sign of addiction. Are we addicted to prohibition?

That people use psychoactive drugs should not be a concern in itself. Virtually everyone uses drugs. Around 600,000 New Zealanders use cannabis, for instance, which is still largely banned here. And when it comes to state-approved substances, alcohol and caffeine are such central components of our daily routines that it is rare to see a gathering that doesn’t involve one or the other. 

People can and do develop difficulties with drugs of all kinds. But thankfully, as data even from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime show, the majority of people who use any drug do not experience substance use disorder (SUD). For them, our focus should simply be on making drug use as safe as possible.

The minority with SUD matter very much, of course, and we should seek to reduce levels of addiction. Yet it’s a complex issue to address, with many factors at play; the solutions are not straightforward, even if it is readily apparent that banning drugs is not one of them. 

In contrast, the solution to damaging drug policies is self-evident. A rational response would be legalization, regulation and drug laws rooted in evidence and experience, rather than ideology. 

As far back as 2011, the New Zealand Law Commission recommended that the 1975 Misuse of Drugs Act be rescinded and replaced with a new health-based law. 

Yet it seems we can’t stop ourselves from lurching back to default prohibition. 

As far back as 2011, following a three-year review of our drug laws, the New Zealand Law Commission recommended that the 1975 Misuse of Drugs Act (MoDA) be rescinded and replaced with a new health-based law. 

To this day, however, despite the review, the MoDA remains much the same. Tweaks include giving police discretion over personal possession arrests, and making medicinal cannabis legal—but only via a GP and at considerable expense. 

These small adjustments have had limited benefit to those most affected by 50 years of the MoDA: the poor, people with chronic unmet needs and Indigenous people. Māori arrests for cannabis possession have proportionately increased. Lots of people can’t afford to purchase medicinal cannabis via the pharmacy, while a “green fairy” who provided cheaper medicinal cannabis to people in need, without prescription, was recently busted.

The introduction of drug checking in New Zealand has been one remarkable, bottom-up achievement. The NZ Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Act 2021 was made possible because activists at festivals, where people use drugs to enhance their experience, delivered drug checking despite legal complications. 

That service, we should remember, is only necessary because our laws prevent quality controls on these drugs.

The drugs are already here to stay. Legalization is about moving them out of the shadows and into a responsible, accountable market.

Measures to alleviate some of the harms from prohibition seem to have reached the more privileged sections of society, leading to more leverage in parliament. But such measures, valuable as they are, don’t address the elephant in the room. 

Our addiction to prohibition continues. It is out of control, never satisfied, always wanting more. It leads to secretive use of drugs and increased risk of overdose and disease. It means incarceration, and criminal records denying people opportunities for work, housing, loans and travel. It causes a violent illicit trade, ecological damage from crop spraying, spiralling financial costs to the public and widespread human rights violations.

This cannot continue. We need to address the harms that prohibition perpetuates by ensuring a safe, regulated supply and the legal right of adults to possess, cultivate or produce any substance for personal use. 

The drugs are already here to stay. Legalization is about moving them out of the shadows and into a responsible, accountable market with consumer rights, proper labeling and reliable information and advice. 

We can learn to live with methamphetamine and any other drugs that people want to use, if only we recognize that our failed, harmful obsession with prohibition has always been the main problem.

 

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Photograph by Vince via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0