The children caught in New Zealand’s meth crisis

Saturday, 28 March 2026

The Government has just announced a new $50 million plan to fight the scourge of methamphetamine. But millions of dollars recovered from the criminals who drive the trade already go back to helping communities. JOANNE NAISH reports on those most in need of help ‒ families.

When Vin Parker was 14, he thought it was a normal part of life for his mother’s car to be fire-bombed by a gang member.

By then, he had been living for three years in a world shrouded by his mother’s methamphetamine addiction.

Now 18, he looks back on that time and remembers only violence and neglect. “[No] … role model or shit role models,” he says. “No routine, no structure.”

Meth use, and costs, are on the rise in New Zealand. Wastewater testing has shown record levels of consumption nationally. The rate doubled in 2024 and stayed stubbornly high last year. According to the NZ Drug Trends Survey, methamphetamine has also almost halved in price over the last eight years. In 2023, social harms from all illicit substances were estimated to cost more than $1.9 billion.

Much of that is to other people. In 2020, methamphetamine was identified as a contributing factor in almost half of all Oranga Tamariki care placements. At the 2023 census, nearly 14,000 grandparents said they were raising grandchildren, up from fewer than 10,000 in 2018. A survey in 2017 found that 43% of respondent grandparents who raised grandchildren were doing so because of parental substance abuse. The only drug cited by grandparents was meth.

Vin Parker is among them. He spent months living with extended family members while his mother, Nikita Case, was racked by addiction. In that time, he rarely saw her.

“It was pretty hard but you get used to it. I had food and a roof over my head but it took its toll on my behaviour and school. I started wagging school and not really caring about my life.”

When his mother got off drugs, she was labelled a ‘nark’ and terrorised by a gang, culminating in the arson attack on her car while she, Vin and her other son slept inside the house.

“It was so normalised that sort of stuff. I just thought this is how people go about. I was just waiting for the next attack.”

So normalised, in fact, that Vin reacted badly when his mother tried to get out of that world.

“I was so used to chaos that when positive things started happening I was shocked and didn’t really get on board with it. I was still so stuck in old ways I moved out of Mum’s.”

Case had turned to meth while grieving her twin brother Howie, who died in a car crash in 2019. She started selling to fund her habit, leaving Vin with family members.

“I couldn’t love myself,” she says today. “I couldn’t look after him. That’s my biggest regret. I didn’t realise it was that long but my son tells me it was nine months and he saw me three times. That breaks my heart.”

“When you’re deep in addiction you start losing yourself. Not all at once, [but] slowly. You wake up one day and you don’t even recognise who you are any more.”

Reducing the harm

When the criminals who drive New Zealand’s drug trade are caught, police will often seize their assets. Anything derived from the proceeds of crime is up for grabs ‒ property, vehicles, basic possessions. Often, they amount to millions of dollars.

The money is then diverted to the government’s aptly named Proceeds of Crime Fund to help reduce crime-related harm. This includes funding drug treatment programmes and police and Customs’ efforts to reduce trafficking. Since 2019, $180.9m has been allocated to projects, including $8m specifically for meth harm reduction. Last year, the Ministry of Health got $5.9m for its Methamphetamine Demand Reduction Campaign.

The Salvation Army also got $1.5m last year through the Ministry of Social Development to set up a meth harm reduction programme in Motueka.

The army’s Nelson-Tasman housing manager Jaap Noteboom says the money would help pay an alcohol and drug clinician and two peer support workers. They would run prevention education, including in schools, and help recovering addicts and their whānau. Two-week or 12-week community programmes were available, or people could be referred to a residential programme in Christchurch.

Noteboom says the well-being and safety of children is paramount.

“We see meth having a huge impact on people’s health. They lose weight and have issues with their hair, skin and teeth. It can also cause their behaviour to be quite irrational and unpredictable and it can have a huge impact on their brain function.

“For children that means it impacts on what should be a secure attachment and their daily care, routines and getting to school. Most of [an addict’s] focus goes on meeting the physical need for the next high.”

‘I prayed with the kids that their mum would go to jail’

One couple from the rural West Coast, who did not want to be identified, knew this well. They raised their three grandchildren for four years while their daughter was in either the grips of a meth addiction or jail.

A police officer’s warning still echoes in their minds: “She’ll be dead in a gutter.”

They say the drug transformed their “lovely girl” into a completely different person. Windows in the home she shared with her three children, then aged 2, 3 and 8, were blocked with mattresses. She became “skin and bone”. Cannabis plants filled the garage and were sold to fund her addiction.

“She saw us as an enemy,” the grandmother says. “She’d say things like, ‘You're dead to me’ and spat in her father’s face.”

The oldest boy cooked spaghetti and baked beans for his younger siblings,“ she says. ”His bed sat on a lean, one leg broken. A metre away, a cannabis plant grew in a wardrobe.

“They had to live in that…We felt very, very helpless. She had no desire to do anything and you couldn’t talk to her.”

The grandmother tried to help by ordering groceries, cleaning the house, dropping off firewood and taking the children on weekends.

Eventually, the grandfather made the difficult decision to call the police on his own daughter. Officers found the cannabis-growing operation and she was arrested. He doesn’t regret what he did.

“It was the hardest thing…but it was the only way to cut off the supply,” he says. “I prayed with the kids that mum would go to jail. I knew the only hope we’ve got against this satanic drug is her getting sent to the jail.”

She was, and it changed everything.

After a custody battle (the biological father of the two youngest children wanted them only) the grandparents won the right for all three kids to live with them.

“They were so happy and safe, warm,” says the grandfather. “They had good food. I think that was a big thing. They could go back to being a kid.”

After her release from prison, their daughter never used again. She got a job and the grandparents helped her buy a house where all three children now live.

The children, now teenagers, excel at sports and show no interest in drugs or alcohol. Their daughter recently applied for a position as a peer support worker, helping others struggling with addiction or children affected by substance abuse.

“Losing the children was the hugest thing,” the grandmother says. “She said [to me], ‘I believe all of that happened to me for a reason, Mum’.”

‘They have to want to fix it themselves’

Lesley Hamel, 61, has been raising her nearly 7-year-old grandson on and off since he was 8 months old. That was when she and her husband realised their youngest daughter was beset by substance abuse and unable to care for a baby.

“It’s quite surprising how many grandparents are raising grandchildren,” she says.

Hamel runs monthly support meetings in Christchurch for Brave Hearts, a national organisation supporting families affected by addiction.

“It affects all types of families. For a lot of people, [it’s about] knowing they’re not alone and having a safe space to share what’s really happening in their lives.”

Caring for grandchildren requires constant navigation, she says. Her own grandson was still too young to fully understand his circumstances. They would tell him more when he was older.

“It’s hard for him to understand and it’s a difficult conversation to have when we know he adores his mum and spending time with her. We have always worked hard with her to give her opportunities to prove herself and she’s stepping up.”

Hamel’s older daughter is also an addict, mostly to methamphetamine. At school, university and dance, she was an over-achiever, but that did not make her immune. In 12 years of addiction she has attended four rehabilitation programmes and had multiple prison and hospital stays.

When she almost died in a car accident, Hamel hoped it would be her daughter’s rock bottom. It wasn’t. There have been deeper lows since. Every phone call Hamel gets from an unidentified number still brings a pang.

“It’s horrendous. You can’t help but say to yourself, this is the one. This is the police saying they’ve found her dead. Having that hanging over your head every single day of your life, that is a level of stress most people just cannot comprehend.”

Hamel has run Bravehearts meetings in Christchurch for three years. She said it was common for parents of addicts to wonder what they did wrong or could have done better. “Being able to share with people that understand how you’re feeling is the load lightened for many people.”

New peer support services in EDs were encouraging, she said, but more needed to be done to support addicts and their families in acute crises.

“It’s not only hard to know what to do or who to turn to for help, but there are simply not enough of the right resources available when you find them.”

Bravehearts was born out of founder Erin Scarlett O'Neill’s own 17-year struggle with her son’s methamphetamine addiction. It now serves hundreds of families across New Zealand. Grandparents raising grandchildren are a large chunk of those seeking help.

Scarlett O'Neill's son is now 10 years clean, university-educated and living in his own home.

“If you told me that this was possible 10 years ago, I would never have believed it,” she says. “So it doesn’t matter how low they get or how bad it is, you never give up hope.”

She encourages family members to establish firm boundaries and address their own mental health issues, including anxiety and the effects of family violence.

“You can’t fix it. They have to want to fix it themselves.”

Her son’s turning point came when she moved to Mount Maunganui and began prioritising her own well-being. “The police had said your son’s going to kill himself with this. And I thought if I carry on like this, I’m going to die too. I was getting ill.”

She advocates for a therapeutic rather than criminal approach to addiction treatment, based on models like Te Whare Tapa Whā. Shame prevents many families from seeking help.

“A lot of people won’t talk about it because they worry about the stigma,” she says. “This is nobody’s fault, but it needs fixing.”

Taking action

Last week, the Government launched its Action Plan to Prevent and Reduce Substance Harm. It includes increased access to community-based support services, building the addiction workforce and boosting intensive treatment services in the regions hardest-hit by meth. It has also added $20m to addiction services every year this term and last year announced a $30 million meth action plan that included a new peer support service in emergency departments.

The need, sadly, is not abating. An Oranga Tamariki report last year found 79.2% of children in care had a parent who had used drugs in the child’s lifetime, compared to 17.3% of children nationally.

Drug Foundation executive director Sarah Helm says increased supply and lower prices for methamphetamine are causing more and more harm.

“We need to prepare for further increases in use and invest in harm reduction and health services, so people can access them early and get support. This includes specialised support for parents while pregnant and after birth.”

Helm welcomed the Government’s action plan and its strong focus on early intervention and peer-based support.

Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says progress is already being seen as a result of the funding including the addiction workforce growing by 11% and vacancy rates among drug and alcohol counsellors dropping from more than 14% to 5.5% in the two years to September.

“Too many New Zealanders are affected by addiction every year, whether through harm to themselves or others.

“Having a parent who is going through addiction can massively negatively impact a child.

Freedom fighters

For Vin Parker, getting a job, Muay Thai boxing and military training showed him a different side of life.

“I think [change] all comes from within. For me it was going outside, going for a walk on the beach things like that. Finding a hobby helps you find better role models.”

His mother, has been off drugs since 2022. Addiction destroys families, she says, but there is hope. She is living it.

She is deeply proud of the young men her boys are becoming. She has completed studies herself and now works as a reiki practitioner. She has taken her boys on their first family holiday.

“Life wasn’t always easy for my boys. They saw things growing up that kids shouldn’t have to see.

“[Addiction] steals years from people…No one gets clean because someone else wants them to. They get clean because something inside them finally decides they want a different life. Freedom is possible.”

She encouraged others to reach out for help from someone with lived experience or a GP.

“The truth might feel confronting, but it’s also the thing that sets you free.”