While Parliament debated whether New Zealand's cannabis laws needed tightening, police were already doubling down. Cannabis charges jumped from 12 cases in 2023/2024 to 25 cases in 2024/2025 — a 108% surge that tells a very different story than the one dominating headlines.(Source: Ministry of Justice, drug-offences — 1b.Charges by drug type outcome)

Here's the tension: politicians spent 2024 arguing over whether cannabis enforcement had become too lenient. Meanwhile, actual enforcement intensified at a pace we haven't seen in years. Someone forgot to tell the police the debate was still happening.

This isn't about whether cannabis should be legal. That's a separate conversation. This is about the gap between political rhetoric and what's actually happening in courtrooms. When charges double in a single year, that's not drift — that's a policy shift, whether anyone wants to call it that or not.

Twenty-five charges might sound small. But in the context of drug prosecution trends, it's significant. These are cases that made it all the way to formal charges — not warnings, not diversions, not informal police discretion. Each one represents hours of police time, court resources, and a person now navigating the criminal justice system.

The timing matters. This surge happened during a year when cost-of-living pressures dominated public concern, when violent crime statistics got endlessly debated, when police resources were supposedly stretched thin. Yet cannabis prosecutions — for a drug most New Zealanders think should be either decriminalised or legalised — more than doubled.

Nobody in Parliament highlighted this trend. It didn't feature in law-and-order speeches or drug policy announcements. The enforcement happened quietly while everyone argued about whether enforcement was happening at all.

You could argue this is good enforcement — that police are cracking down on drug offences as intended. Or you could argue it's a waste of resources during a year when serious crime needed attention. Either way, voters deserve to know it's happening.

The 108% increase raises a simple question: if the law hasn't changed, and public opinion hasn't shifted toward stricter enforcement, why are charges doubling? Someone, somewhere, made a decision about priorities. That decision is playing out in courtrooms right now, whether or not it ever made it into a press release.