KEY INSIGHTS

From Q4 2018 to Q4 2022 NZ Police ‘New Zealand Drugs in Wastewater Programme’:

• Meth consumption has decreased in the last two quarters but still accounts for ~2/3 (65%) of drug consumption (based on mg/day/1000 people)
• MDMA (ecstasy) = just over 1/4 (26%)
• Cocaine = 8%, but this is a significant increase from 5% in the previous quarter
• Fentanyl barely registers (only a small trace for Bay of Plenty in Q4, 2022), and has legitimate uses in the community.
• Heroin has not been detected at any site since testing began.
• Cannabis consumption data is currently being tested in two Police districts, but is not ready for public release.

When we look at territories:

• Waikato, Tāmaki Makaurau (Greater Auckland), and Northland have the highest total drug consumption per capita.
• Canterbury, Tasman, and Southern have the lowest total drug consumption per capita.

• Northland and Waikato have the highest meth consumption.
• Southern, Wellington, and Canterbury have the highest MDMA (ecstasy) consumption, despite all three regions being in the bottom three for drug consumption overall.
• Tāmaki Makaurau (Greater Auckland) has the highest Cocaine consumption.

KEY QUESTIONS

1. What drug insight surprised you most from this data set?
2. Do we want to reduce recreational drug use in New Zealand? If so, how will we achieve this?

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Have your say

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Full data analysis
Please contact us if you would like the complete OIA and research.

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Other notes:

• All available information has been published.
• Q = quarter.
• OIA response letter:
  • “The Drugs in wastewater programme tests for indicators of consumption of methamphetamine, MDMA, cocaine, fentanyl and heroin from all Police districts. The quarterly district results for methamphetamine, MDMA, cocaine and fentanyl have been provided in the attached spreadsheet.”
  • “Please note that fentanyl has legitimate uses in the community. It is not possible to differentiate between fentanyl consumed for legitimate reasons and fentanyl used illicitly. A number of other caveats to the data are noted in the spreadsheet – please read these carefully.”
  • “Heroin has not been detected at any site since testing began. Accordingly, no results are available for heroin. This does not necessarily mean that heroin is not being consumed, just that we cannot detect it in the current quantities consumed.”
  • “Limited sampling for cannabis consumption is carried out from two Police districts. However, as discussed, this data has not been provided as it may not give a fair representation of cannabis consumption rates. There are a number of limitations to the cannabis data that the National Drug Intelligence Bureau and the Institute of Environmental Science and Research are working through to understand. These limitations include
    determining whether comparison between sites is possible with the current extraction method. At this stage, we are unable to comment on whether this data will be available in the future. This will depend on its suitability as a comparison data set.”
• Caveats from the NZ Police provided within the OIA data set:
  • “The discipline of Wastewater Based Epidemiology, including the New Zealand Drugs in Wastewater Programme, adheres to ethical guidelines that focus on preventing the use of this technique to harm or stigmatise communities. Please take care when using this data to ensure it is not reported in a harmful way.”
  • “Wastewater samples are taken as 24-hour composites, for seven consecutive days each month. Samples are then filtered, and the drug biomarkers are extracted by solid phase extraction and analysed.”
  • “Drug use is calculated by the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) using methods supported by international research.”
  • “The per capita consumption is calculated using the estimated total catchment population provided by each individual wastewater treatment plant. Per capita consumption estimates are expressed as milligrams per day per 1000 people (mg/day/1000 people).”
  • “The total load consumed is calculated from the concentration of each drug biomarker detected in the wastewater. This is only reflective of the pure drug being consumed and does not include cutting agents and binders, as they do not contribute to the biomarker concentration. Therefore, the quantities of consumed drugs reported are reflective of the amount of active illicit drug consumed, not the total quantity of each commodity consumed. Total load consumption estimates are expressed as grams per week (g/week).”
  • “District refers to the combination of results from the sites tested within each district only.”
  • “All Site refers to the combination of results from the 34 – 36 sites tested that month across New Zealand.As District and All Site results are specific to the sites tested, they cannot be extrapolated to represent the whole district or whole country. For example, if three sites in one district record high methamphetamine consumption, this does not mean every town in the district will have high methamphetamine consumption.
  • “On occasion some sites are unable to sample. These impact the total load reported when aggregated to All Site totals. Where this has occured, imputed estimates calculated from the respective site’s average consumption over the last 12 months have been used.”
  • “Quarters are per calendar year (Jan – Mar, Apr – Jun, July – Sep, Oct – Dec).”
  • “Please note, fentanyl has legitimate use in the community. It is not possible to determine legitimate use from illicit use.”
• Other notes from correspondence with the NZ Police:
  • It is fair to use the label “MDMA (ecstasy)” for MDMA
  • “MDMA use is associated with night life (and likely by proxy student populations who populate the nightlife). It is unlikely MDMA is consumed instead of methamphetamine. Methamphetamine and MDMA tend to be consumed by different cohorts wanting different effects.”
  • “The Police boundaries can be found here: https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/structure/police-districts Please remember, the wastewater data relates to those sites tested within a district, not the entire district.”
  • The Māori name Tāmaki Makaurau is used only for Auckland, and English names for the rest “because there are 3 Police Districts within the greater Auckland region. For Police, Tāmaki Makaurau is our naming convention for the whole region capturing those 3 Districts. We can’t break the wastewater data down to match the 3 Districts as the wastewater catchments follow the pipe infrastructure and not the Police District boundaries.”
  • “We use 20mg as a common dose for methamphetamine, 125 mg for MDMA and 100 mg for cocaine. These dosages are estimates and do not account for changes to purity, physiological tolerance to a substance, or very heavy use. A common dose is the dose at which the effects and nature of the substance is quite clear and distinct; the subject’s ordinary awareness slips and ignoring its action becomes difficult. The subject will generally be able to partake in regular behaviours and remain functional and able to communicate, although this can depend on the individual.This graph shows the estimated average number of common doses of methamphetamine, MDMA and cocaine consumed per week each quarter across all sample sites. Converting the quantity consumed (grams per week) to number of common doses per week highlights the higher number of doses of methamphetamine consumed when compared with MDMA, even though the number of kilograms detected may be similar. Please note that multiple doses of methamphetamine can, and likely will be, consumed in one sitting. This is a point of difference when comparing with MDMA where only one or two doses are likely to be consumed at one time. Consumption behaviour and desire to re-dose varies between drugs in general. Because methamphetamine is typically consumed in binge-like sessions, the larger number of doses consumed does not necessarily mean more people are consuming it.”
• We chose colours to try and best represent each drug as best as we could:
  • Blue for meth after the blue meth in the popular TV series ‘Breaking Bad’
  • Bright yellow for MDMA (ecstasy) to reflect it being known as a party drug.
  • Grey for Cocaine as that was the closest to white we could get without using white. White is not great to use on white background graphs, and using a black border makes it misalign with the other colours on stacked column graphs.
  • Pink for Fentanyl as it often comes in bright colours.
• All numbers are provisional and subject to revision.

Thank you to the Factors who helped pull this together.

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SOURCE:

• OIA response. Please contact us if you would like the complete data and research.

Data published by New Zealand Police
(c) Crown Copyright
Licensed for use under the creative commons attribution licence (BY) 4.0

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Did we make a mistake, or have you got smarter data?  Let us know.