Tracking the Pacific Drug Highway

In this feature for New Lines Magazine, Sean Williams and Kevin Knodell discuss how Mexico’s two largest organized crime organizations—the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion—have expanded meth and cocaine operations into New Zealand and Australia, exploiting the same currents and trade winds that Indigenous people across Oceania have sailed for centuries. Various island nations—including Fiji, Tonga, Samoa—serve as transit points. This “Pacific Drug Highway” connecting Latin America to lucrative markets across a vast ocean has stimulated the gang and criminal network in New Zealand, increased corruption among local island officials, and created an addiction crisis across the region. A troubling, eye-opening look at the global drug trade.

The cartels move drugs across the Pacific Islands hidden in yachts, shipping containers, fishing vessels or planes as they move along a winding map of different routes, frequently changing hands to make them even harder to track. By 2030, container tonnage in the Pacific is expected to increase nearly 250% over 2000 figures. 

Even in the European ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp, authorities are only able to search 8% of containers. In New Zealand, that figure is 2%. In some Pacific Island nations, it’s closer to zero. For this reason, busting shipments is almost entirely reliant on human intelligence, which becomes tougher if cartels pay off or threaten workers. According to Berry, cartels can lose 9 out of 10 shipments and still make a profit. And besides, they’re still innovating.