In 2019, before COVID, 35 people were charged with cocaine offences in New Zealand. That number felt about right for a country where cocaine was expensive, hard to get, and mostly a curiosity in crime statistics.

Then the pandemic hit. Borders closed. Police focused on domestic matters. And when the numbers came back in 2021, cocaine charges had jumped to 47. A blip, maybe. Except they kept climbing.

By 2023, 63 people faced cocaine charges. This year, that number hit 107 — a 70% surge in just twelve months. (Source: Ministry of Justice, drug-offences — 2b.People charged drug outcome)

If you'd predicted in 2019 that cocaine prosecutions would triple within five years, most drug policy experts would have laughed. Cocaine was never New Zealand's drug. We had meth. We had cannabis. Cocaine was what happened in Miami and London, not Tauranga and Dunedin.

Something fundamental changed. The most obvious explanation: supply. When borders reopened, so did trafficking routes. But the scale of the increase suggests more than just availability. It suggests demand that wasn't there before, or at least wasn't visible to prosecutors.

This isn't about a few high-profile busts inflating the numbers. These are individual people being charged — 107 separate prosecutions in a single year. That's two people every week facing cocaine charges in New Zealand courts.

For context, LSD charges went from zero to 28 this year — significant, but still a fraction of cocaine's surge. Cannabis charges doubled. But cocaine's trajectory stands apart. It's not a spike. It's a sustained climb that shows no sign of slowing.

The political conversation hasn't caught up. When politicians talk drugs, they still reach for meth statistics and cannabis reform. Cocaine barely rates a mention. Yet the courtroom data tells a different story: cocaine is no longer a boutique drug for the wealthy few. It's crossed into the mainstream of New Zealand's drug economy.

The jump from 63 charges to 107 in one year means something shifted in 2024. Maybe enforcement priorities changed. Maybe a major supply network got exposed. Or maybe — more likely — the drug that was once too expensive and too hard to find simply isn't anymore.

Either way, the numbers don't lie. Cocaine in New Zealand isn't a minor issue anymore. It's tripled in five years, and last year it exploded.