You've heard the speeches. You've seen the headlines about gangs and methamphetamine. But here's the number politicians aren't talking about: 642 people were charged with drug offences in Auckland in 2024/2025 — up from 361 the year before. (Source: Ministry of Justice, drug-offences — 2d.People charged court outcome)

That's not a slight uptick. That's a 78% surge in twelve months.

To put that in perspective: we're now prosecuting more people for drug offences in Auckland than at any point since the justice system started publishing this data in its current form. The previous high-water mark was in the years just before COVID, when charges hovered around the mid-500s. Then the pandemic hit, court backlogs grew, and prosecutions dropped. We all assumed that was temporary disruption.

It wasn't.

What's striking is how sharply this reverses the trend. In 2020/2021, Auckland charged 489 people. By 2023/2024, that had fallen to 361 — a 26% drop. Police were still making arrests. Courts were still processing cases. But fewer people were being formally charged and taken to court.

Then something changed. Maybe it's resourcing. Maybe it's prosecutorial strategy. Maybe it's a genuine spike in offending. The Ministry of Justice data doesn't tell us why — it only tells us what. And what it tells us is that we've swung dramatically in the opposite direction.

This matters because drug prosecutions are a policy choice, not just a crime statistic. Different governments, different Police commissioners, different prosecutors — they all make different calls about what gets charged and what doesn't. When you see a 78% jump in a single year, you're not just watching crime trends. You're watching the justice system change how it responds.

Auckland is home to roughly a third of New Zealand's population. If this pattern holds elsewhere — and the data suggests it does — we're talking about hundreds more people moving through the courts, more legal aid applications, more prison sentences, more families disrupted.

And yet, outside the justice sector itself, barely anyone's noticed. The public debate is still focused on violent crime, ram raids, retail theft. Drug prosecutions don't make the Six O'Clock News unless there's a big bust or a celebrity involved.

But 642 prosecutions means 642 court cases. It means 642 decisions about whether someone gets diverted to treatment or sent to prison. It means the justice system is now processing nearly double the drug cases it was handling just two years ago.

That's not a footnote. That's a fundamental shift in how we're dealing with drugs in this country — and it's happening without any real public conversation about whether this is what we actually want.