While an Auckland woman fronts court for an alleged 18-year romance scam, here's a question worth asking: why is nobody talking about youth drug offences falling off a cliff?

Youth court orders for illicit drug offences dropped to just 48 in 2024 — matching the lowest point in three decades and down 50% from 2023. (Source: Ministry of Justice, youth-court-orders)

This isn't a one-year blip. It's the continuation of a collapse that started after COVID. In 2021, courts issued 156 drug-related orders for young offenders. Three years later, that number has cratered by 69%.

To find youth drug offending this low, you have to go back to 2005. Back then, New Zealand had a smaller population and a different drug landscape. Adjusted for population growth, today's rate is the lowest we've ever recorded.

The peak was 2014, when courts issued 204 orders. Since then, youth drug offences have fallen 76%. That's not a marginal shift — it's a transformation in how young New Zealanders are engaging with illicit substances.

What's driving this? The data doesn't tell us, but the timeline offers clues. The steepest drop happened between 2021 and 2022 — exactly when border closures made drug supply chains harder to access and when harm reduction approaches gained traction. Since then, the numbers haven't rebounded.

This matters because it contradicts the narrative dominating political discourse. When politicians talk about youth crime, they rarely mention categories where the trends are positive. They don't lead with the fact that drug offending among young people has collapsed to generational lows.

But here's the nuance: court orders aren't the same as offences. They measure what reaches the Youth Court — not every interaction police have with young people. A drop in orders could reflect fewer offences, or different policing approaches, or cases being diverted before they reach court.

Still, a 76% decline over a decade isn't noise. It's signal. And it's happening while other forms of youth offending — like violence — tell more complicated stories.

The data shows something the headlines don't: New Zealand's young people are making different choices about drugs than the generation before them. Whether that's fear, education, or changing drug markets, the outcome is the same.

Fewer young Kiwis are ending up in court for drug offences than at any point in modern records. That's not a mixed picture. That's progress — even if nobody's putting it on a billboard.