About 1.1 tonnes of methamphetamine was found concealed in containers in the Fijian town of Nadi last year. Photo: Supplied/ Fiji Police
A transnational crime expert says New Zealand and Australia's status as the "cash cows" of the Pacific methamphetamine market is a driving factor in the drug crisis facing the region.
Jose Sousa-Santos, associate professor of practice at the University of Canterbury's Pacific Regional Security hub, told Pacific Waves the "red flags" were evident at least five years ago.
Fiji, Tonga, Sāmoa and Papua New Guinea are grappling with surging methamphetamine use in their communities. Alongside that are the health and socio-economic problems associated with the drug. Fiji has declared an HIV outbreak, which has been linked to needle sharing among drug users as well as sexual transmission of the virus. Between 2023 and 2024, HIV cases increased 281 percent in the country to 1583 new cases.
Sousa-Santos said countries like Fiji and Tonga were being used as transport hubs for the flow of methamphetamine and cocaine from North and South America, and southeast Asia, to Australia and New Zealand. Precursors of the drugs were also transported away from New Zealand and Australia through the same route.
Previously, that drug smuggling occurred with little impact on the smaller Pacific nations.
"Chinese triads, cartels would always move the drugs through [and] their method was always to pay facilitators - either commercial elites ... people connected to the government, or in other high-levels of Pacific society ... in money."
The set up resulted in "no real overflow" into Pacific communities, Sousa-Santos said.
About five years ago, that changed with facilitators being offered drugs like methamphetamine as payment instead of cash.
"This is where we started to see the development and the growth of a local market, not just in Fiji, but in Tonga and other Pacific Island countries," Sousa-Santos said.
"Because if you're being paid in drugs, by selling those drugs, you can make more than the agreed upon amount."
It resulted in drug markets in Pacific nations growing "exponentially," he said.
"Fiji has really shown us just how quickly the situation can evolve and the impact that it can have on society, communities, and even in [the] infiltration of law enforcement and the corruption of agencies that are tasked to deal with these issues."
In May, local police seized nearly 5kg of methamphetamine at Nadi airport. The group of men charged with allegedly attempting to smuggle the drugs into the country included several police and border officers.
"That involved two members of the Fijian Counter-narcotics Bureau and the head of Customs intelligence," Sousa-Santos said.
The methamphetamine parcel came through the east coast of Africa, he said, and had a connection to Nigeria.
"What it shows is that these smaller criminal entities within the Pacific themselves have started to reach out and create their own lines of trafficking to feed the local markets.
"And that is a whole new dimension which is very troubling for the Pacific."
Sousa-Santos added that while the local methamphetamine markets in places like Fiji were too small to appeal to international drug cartels, they were being maintained by smaller Pacific criminal entities that had established themselves in the region.
"[Pacific criminal entities] realise that the markets are large enough for them to be profitable enough, and they're reaching out to new players, small players to import methamphetamines into Pacific Island countries."
Deportees from the US, Australia and New Zealand were part of that dynamic.
Sousa-Santos said while it was just a small number of deportees involved in criminal activity, the circumstances of the methamphetamine and drug trade across the region had resulted in a "perfect storm".
"A small number of these criminal deportees [have] not been able to reintegrate back into society, especially ones with criminal backgrounds that are not able to understand the culture, the languages, [and had] no opportunities of work.
"[They have] started to reach back to the criminal counterparts from the countries which they were deported. These deportees brought a new set of tactics ... which Pacific law enforcement was not used to dealing with, and they added aspects and an evolution to drug smuggling activities and criminal enterprise in the region which previously didn't exist."
Any solutions to the ongoing crisis had to be holistic, Sousa-Santos said.
This included strengthening the regional security architecture and working with different authorities and levels of law enforcement locally and across the region. For example, having Interpol engaged was just as important as the involvement of traditional community leaders at the grassroots level, he said.
"When you look at the issue of drug usage and criminality in Pacific Island countries and Pacific Island states themselves, the approach has to be different. It has to be culturally appropriate. It has to be context specific."
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