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NZ To Work Closely With Pacific On Stopping Drug 'Super Highway'
New Zealand police will work more with counterparts in Samoa and Tonga to try and stop the flow of cocaine and methamphetamine through the region.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon raised the problem during his visit this week to Samoa where both countries have signed a co-operation agreement to work against the illicit drugs trade.
The Pacific Islands region has been described as a "super highway" of drugs from South America to New Zealand by Luxon who said criminal gangs "keep pushing their product on to our people, and we don't like it".
Several New Zealand police officers will be embedded in Samoa, adding to existing officer placements there and in Tonga, while customs and police will share intelligence and capabilities for surveying trafficking criminal networks.
Regional threat
Police Commissioner Richard Chambers, who is on the Prime Minister's trip to the islands, told Checkpoint the networks were using Pacific Island countries to get their product to the lucrative markets in New Zealand and Australia.
"Frequently we see drugs brought across the Pacific and attempts to corrupt those nations as well. Our job is to work with the Pacific nations to keep drugs out and corruption out."
Chambers said the impact of corruption was being felt in the Pacific through attempts to influence, "not only police officers, customs baggage handlers, port workers, but even government officials as well".
This comes as police in Pacific countries including Samoa, Tonga and Fiji say they are struggling to stem surging drug use, particularly among the young. They have have turned to Australia and New Zealand who have welcomed the chance for more for co-operation in this area.
Innovative
Chambers said drug traffickers had increasingly sophisticated ways of getting drugs through the islands to New Zealand, not simply drop-offs of consignments into the ocean
"They've got some fairly innovative ways of attaching product to the vessels and things like that. So of course, it's not just on the sea. It's by air as well.
"Our job is to disrupt that and lift the capability of law enforcement in the Pacific to help deal with the problem," the police commissioner explained.
To deal with this regional threat, another four New Zealand police will join the two officers already embedded in Samoa in the next couple of months, Chambers said, while there were already four in Tonga and other police personnel in Fiji and other territories too.
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