Living among the dead: My journey into the heart of New Zealand’s meth crisis

New Zealand, where they call meth 'P' for pure, is in the grips of a meth crisis. (Jerry Vienneau/W5)

Warning: This article contains imagery and discussions of drug use.

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND — Victoria leads me through a cemetery on a chilly winter night in Auckland, New Zealand. I use my cellphone to light our way. Despite the temperature, Victoria is barefoot and slips on the muddy path as we wind past graves and crumbling tombstones.

A cemetery is for the dead. But this is where Victoria lives.

Victoria, 41, has been addicted to methamphetamine for almost half her life. It’s a particularly nasty drug. Highly addictive, users say it steals your soul. New Zealand, where they call meth “P” for pure, is in the grips of a meth crisis. Wastewater testing shows consumption almost doubled in one year.

Victoria takes me to an underpass at the edge of the cemetery, so low we have to crouch to reach her makeshift living area. She pulls out a surprisingly clean white duvet and arranges it neatly on the dirt floor so I have a place to sit. Then she pulls out a small plastic bag containing a minuscule amount of white powder. Meth.

As she prepares her hit with a rolled-up bill and a glass pipe, I ask Victoria about her regrets.

“Probably prostitution,” she tells me. “That’s one of my biggest regrets. I’d steal money from my mum. And my teeth were removed because they were breaking and all falling apart.”

“I think it’s just robbed me of my pride.”

Victoria scoops a small amount of meth into the pipe and then flicks her lighter. “Just melting it, you don’t want the pipe to go black.”

She inhales deeply and exhales slowly. I ask her what it feels like.

“Do you know what it feels like? Power,” she says. “Do you know what power feels like?”

She takes another hit.

The Canada connection

Detective Superintendent Greg Williams runs the New Zealand Police’s National Organized Crime Unit. He calls meth’s impact “devastating.”

“Every community in this country is impacted,” he says.

This small island nation is a target for international organized crime, and increasingly, the drug pipeline leads back to Canada. Between 2020 and 2024, New Zealand seized more meth from Canada than from anywhere else in the world.

“There was just this tonnage coming our way out of Canada,” Williams says. “You have a reasonably dynamic organized crime environment in Canada. ... From what we’re seeing - the scale of it - you’ve got some really significant sophistication up there.”

He never expected Canada to be part of this story.

“Organized crime is setting itself up in places where it believes it can produce tonnage and then believes that it can ship from those countries,” he says. “They’re making big coin here.”

New Zealand is considered the “golden nugget” for meth producers. There is a huge demand, and prices are amongst the highest in the world. Meth in Mexico costs about $500 a kilo; in Canada, $10,000. And in New Zealand? A staggering $300,000 a kilo.

For Victoria, the cost of meth has much more than a dollar value. She’s lost everything to the drug.

Breaking down, she tells me, “I can’t keep doing it. I’m so tired. No one cares.”

More on this story:

• Part 1: Meth disguised as Canadian beer kills 21-year-old in New Zealand
• Part 2: ‘That’s just shocking’: No charges for Canadian meth exporters after 21-year-old dies in Auckland
• Part 3: Canada’s cartel footprint: RCMP names 7 syndicates active in Canada
• Part 4: ‘Leave right now’: Man confronts W5’s Avery Haines outside Hells Angels clubhouse