Positive tests for cocaine use in New Zealand workplaces have had a near 70% bump in a year, new data shows, part of a longer-term surge researchers say has been driven by record global production and increasingly efficient trafficking through the Pacific.
The Drug Detection Agency (TDDA), New Zealand's largest workplace drug testing provider, reported cocaine accounted for 2.8% of all positive results in the second quarter of 2026, up 68.5% on the same period last year.
TDDA chief executive Glenn Dobson said the data suggested cocaine use, which had eased after a record surge, was climbing again.
"TDDA data is showing that cocaine retreated from Q4 levels, which peaked over Christmas and New Year, but is roaring back in Q2," he said.
"It is becoming increasingly likely that cocaine, buoyed by cartels and other South Pacific drug trade activity, is something employers even in white collar industries need to worry about."
New Zealand's cocaine use hit an all-time high in the last quarter of 2025, according to recent police wastewater testing, overtaking MDMA for the first time.
An estimated average of 9.4kg of cocaine was consumed nationwide each week in that period, 98% more than the average of the previous four quarters, with every district recording higher-than-usual use.
The rebound also followed a broader trend identified by Massey University's SHORE and Whāriki Research Centre, whose latest New Zealand Drug Trends Survey found the proportion of people describing cocaine as "easy" to get had risen from 17% in 2018/19 to 43% in 2025.
The proportion using cocaine at least weekly over the same period rose from 6% to 10%.
The Massey researchers, led by Professor Chris Wilkins, linked the trend to record-breaking coca cultivation in Colombia, which they said accounts for two-thirds of global production.
Global cocaine production reached an all-time high of 3708 tonnes in 2023, a 34% increase on the previous year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which has identified cocaine as the world's fastest-growing illegal drug market.
Pacific drug superhighway
Cocaine was primarily trafficked to Oceania from South America via Pacific nations such as Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, the researchers said, en route to Australian and New Zealand markets that pay some of the highest street prices in the world.
The average price of a gram of cocaine in New Zealand was $360 in 2025, according to the survey, with the lowest prices reported in Taranaki and Northland and the highest in parts of the South Island.
Cocaine was not the only substance on the increase, with amphetamine-type stimulants (meth, MDMA) representing 32.7% of positive tests, up 5.2% year on year.
Cannabis remained the most commonly detected drug, present in 64.4% of positive tests, up 1.7% year-on-year. Opioid detections fell 14% to 18.2% of positive tests.
Regionally, TDDA's data showed sharp increases in cocaine detections in Canterbury, Otago, Hawke's Bay and Manawatū-Whanganui, while methamphetamine detections rose most sharply in Southland, Otago and the Bay of Plenty.
Dobson said stimulants posed a risk to safety in workplaces due to their impact on decision making.
"Cocaine and ATS interfere with the way the brain judges risk, producing misplaced confidence and slower decisions at exactly the wrong moment," he said.
"On safety-critical sites, where a small margin or a split second can be the difference, that combination can turn deadly fast."
SHARE ME