{"id":107875,"date":"2025-10-29T23:32:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T23:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/107875\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T23:32:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T23:32:10","slug":"canadian-super-labs-driving-meth-trade-to-new-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/107875\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian \u2018super labs\u2019 driving meth trade to New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Haines said meth is exported to New Zealand from Canada because it\u2019s the most lucrative market.<\/p>\n

\"CanadianCanadian investigative journalist Avery Haines says Canada is one of the biggest drug exporters of methamphetamine to New Zealand and Australia in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason why they want to get meth to New Zealand is because there\u2019s almost nowhere else on Earth where they can make more money.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just so profitable, even though it seems like such a far distance to go, you know, 10,000 kilometres away to make that shipment feels like a very long way.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year, authorities seized 713kg of methamphetamine concealed in maple syrup containers<\/a> shipped from Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that the two largest meth busts in New Zealand\u2019s history both came from Canada, hidden in the food supply, which is terrifying, beer and maple syrup.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2023, 21-year-old Aiden Sagala died in hospital after drinking a can of meth-laced Honey Bear House<\/a> Beer.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s maple syrup meth import was thought to contain roughly a year\u2019s supply for every addict<\/a> in New Zealand, which could have sold for hundreds of millions of dollars on the streets.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy question to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, our federal police service, was \u2018what did you do once New Zealand police shared all of that documentation of those two massive busts?\u2019<\/p>\n

\"PerPer capita meth consumption by region for Q2 (April, June, July) this year. Source: Police wastewater testing<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the answer is \u2018nothing, it wasn\u2019t our investigation\u2019. So I reached back out to Greg Williams, who is the superintendent in charge of National Organised Crime in New Zealand, who said, \u2018no, we shared all of this information with the RCMP\u2019. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I would imagine there should be a lot of outrage and frustration in New Zealand for the way that Canada is not investigating, reverse engineering, the people who are shipping it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haines also spoke about the difference between Canada\u2019s and New Zealand\u2019s drug issues, and she said Canada\u2019s crisis with fentanyl and opioid addiction has taken over the streets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had read all about your wastewater testing doubling in a one-year period, about how every community is impacted by meth. And in my travels, I couldn\u2019t see the crisis the way that I see Canada\u2019s drug crisis so in my face.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd in New Zealand, what I found is that it was so hidden. And I think because it has been so normalised and people are able to survive doing meth for much longer than they are fentanyl or a toxic drug supply, which is what we have.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I saw just this extraordinary community, this lovely, vibrant neighbourhood. It\u2019s not the same kind of drug crisis that we have in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jaime Lyth is a multimedia journalist for the New Zealand Herald, focusing on crime and breaking news. Lyth began working under the NZ Herald masthead in 2021 as a reporter for the Northern Advocate in Whang\u0101rei.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Haines said meth is exported to New Zealand from Canada because it\u2019s the most lucrative market. Canadian investigative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6726,13312,77632,77631,34521,4189,3401,1874,71,12898,27160,1868,117,111,43,139,69,415,313,61,584,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-107875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-become","9":"tag-canadian","10":"tag-crossborder","11":"tag-damning","12":"tag-destination","13":"tag-driving","14":"tag-drug","15":"tag-found","16":"tag-from","17":"tag-investigation","18":"tag-labs","19":"tag-meth","20":"tag-new","21":"tag-new-zealand","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-newzealand","24":"tag-nz","25":"tag-prime","26":"tag-super","27":"tag-to","28":"tag-trade","29":"tag-zealand"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}