While a person can be charged with multiple possession offences in a given year, the number of individuals charged with possession has also gone up by 49% since 2023.<\/p>\n
Police have largely maintained a discretionary approach to possession of drugs in recent years, after a law change in 2019 required officers to consider a health-first approach, rather than a criminal one.<\/p>\n
In the years since the law change, cannabis possession charges trended down from a peak of 3719 in 2017, to a low of 2055 in 2021.<\/p>\n
2025 had the highest number of charges since the change.<\/p>\n
Of all convictions for cannabis offences, including possession, cultivation and supply, 82% came alongside other charges unrelated to cannabis.<\/p>\n
But the number of people being convicted of only cannabis offences is rising too \u2013 with 506 last year, compared to 387 convictions recorded in 2023.<\/p>\n
Rise in charges corresponds to rise in use – Police<\/p>\n
Director of the National Organised Crime Group Detective Superintendent Greg Williams says wastewater testing in the Auckland and Northland region shows cannabis consumption spiking in July 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at that charging data, it actually perfectly almost reflects what looks like a significant increase in cannabis consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he says the charging data doesn\u2019t reflect the number of warnings officers have given to people found in possession of the drug.<\/p>\n
Enforcement action is playing a part in reducing consumption, Williams said, with wastewater data suggesting a drop in cannabis use in Auckland shortly after police executed more than 100 search warrants on organised growers from September to November last year.<\/p>\n
Those operations led to police seizing more than 10 tonnes of cannabis plants.<\/p>\n
Greg Williams, head of the National Organised Crime Group, says the rise in charges roughly reflects a rise in use. Photo \/ Marty Melville<\/p>\n
He says the large-scale growing operations, often controlled by gangs, provide significant cashflow to supply other harder drugs.<\/p>\n
Williams said it is noteworthy the majority of possession charges go alongside other criminal charges and drug addiction often leads to further offending.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s very similar to methamphetamine, where we do find people being charged with possession of utensils and methamphetamine when they\u2019re caught committing other offending.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says cannabis has the highest amount of social harm of any drug in the country because of the scale of its consumption.<\/p>\n
Greens co-leader Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick suggested a link between rising charges and the coalition Government coming to power in late 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is exactly what happens when you have a Government that says it wants to be tough on crime without thinking through the consequences of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery clearly we have heard a Government that is intent on continuing to fan the flames of the war on drugs. Clearly, the drugs are winning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greens’ co-leader Chloe Swarbrick says a rise in charges is linked to the new Government. Photo \/ Marty Melville<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to reckon with reality, and we know that the majority of New Zealanders will have consumed cannabis by the time they are 21 years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also know hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders are consuming cannabis on a semi-regular basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question really is whether we think that is something that should absorb police, courts and criminal justice system time, effort and energy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police Minister Mark Mitchell says charges for cannabis possession are an operational decision for police.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur police do an outstanding job at enforcing the law, including for cannabis possession, which is illegal. These numbers are indicative of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ethan Griffiths is a political reporter with Newstalk ZB, based in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. He joined NZME as a print journalist in 2020, previously working as an Open Justice reporter in the Bay of Plenty and Wellington, and as a general reporter in Whanganui.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While a person can be charged with multiple possession offences in a given year, the number of individuals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13212,83635,17285,1873,2959,78,83644,111,43,139,69,37967,1436,1515,61,1237,1530],"class_list":["post-345639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-13212","tag-8year","tag-cannabis","tag-charges","tag-high","tag-in","tag-increasing","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-possession","tag-rise","tag-surge","tag-to","tag-two","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345639","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=345639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}