A university town festival-goer. A music event attendee in Wellington. Someone at a summer gathering in the Bay of Plenty. Twenty-eight New Zealanders were charged with LSD offences in 2024/2025. (Source: Ministry of Justice, drug-offences — 2a.People charged by drug type)

The year before, that number was zero.

Not a small increase. Not a modest uptick. A jump from zero charges to 28 charges in twelve months. It's the kind of spike that doesn't happen by accident — it happens when police change what they're looking for, or where they're looking for it.

LSD has never been a major enforcement target in New Zealand. It doesn't fuel the gang economy like methamphetamine. It doesn't drive the violent crime that dominates headlines. It's a niche drug, associated more with music festivals and university experiments than organised crime. So why the sudden attention?

The data doesn't tell us whether LSD use actually increased, or whether police simply decided to start charging people for it. That distinction matters. If use is stable but enforcement is up, these 28 charges represent a policy choice — a decision to allocate limited police resources to a drug that's never been a public health crisis.

Compare it to cannabis, where charges have been climbing steadily despite years of decriminalisation debate. Or methamphetamine, where enforcement remains intense. LSD's sudden appearance in the statistics looks less like a drug trend and more like an enforcement trend.

Here's what we know: those 28 people are now in the justice system. Some will get diversion. Some will get convictions that follow them for years — affecting job applications, overseas travel, housing. For a drug that's rarely linked to harm beyond the user themselves, that's a heavy price.

The broader pattern in drug enforcement data is one of inconsistency. Police charge thousands for cannabis while politicians debate legalisation. They crack down sporadically on party drugs like MDMA and LSD. Meanwhile, the drugs causing the most social harm — methamphetamine, synthetic cannabinoids — dominate both enforcement and public concern.

What changed in 2024/2025? Did police receive intelligence about LSD supply chains? Did they start testing more festival-goers? Did a specific operation target psychedelic drugs? The Ministry of Justice data doesn't answer these questions. It just shows the result: 28 people charged, where there were none before.

That's not nothing. It's 28 lives intersecting with the justice system. And it's a reminder that drug enforcement in New Zealand isn't driven purely by harm or prevalence. It's driven by decisions — about where to focus, what to prioritise, who to charge. This year, for reasons the data won't explain, LSD made the list.