New Zealand Customs officers seized 39,196 meth pipes, cannabis bongs and other drug utensils at the border in the first seven months of 2026, more than the 37,068 they seized in the whole of 2025 and about 25 times the 2024 total, according to figures released to RNZ and published on 20 September.
The jump has been steep and sudden. Customs seized 5,599 utensils in 2023 and only 1,515 in 2024. Then the count went to 37,068 in 2025 and has already passed that with five months of 2026 still to run.
Over the same period the number of separate seizures has gone down, not up. Customs recorded 88 seizure operations in 2023 and 88 again in 2024, then 61 in 2025 and 46 between January and July this year. Fewer seizures catching far more items points to much bigger consignments arriving at the border, which is the conclusion RNZ drew from the data.
Importing or selling these items has been illegal for more than a decade. The Misuse of Drugs (Prohibited Utensils) Notice was first issued in 2014 and updated in 2020, when the current version was published in the New Zealand Gazette. It bans the import and sale of meth pipes, hash pipes and cannabis bongs, and it describes the physical features of each type of pipe so a seller cannot get around the rules by calling them ornaments, herb pipes or tiny flower vases. The maximum penalty is three months in jail or a $1,000 fine for an individual, or a $5,000 fine for a business.
Owning a meth pipe is covered separately by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. Possession is illegal, but police have to prove the person intended to use the pipe to smoke meth.
Jared Nicholson, the northern inspections manager at Customs, told RNZ that banned utensils can come in through any route, whether air cargo, mail, sea freight or passenger bags. Officers use intelligence and risk assessment to pick out goods and people of concern and then carry out targeted searches.
“By seizing prohibited drug utensils at the border, Customs helps prevent them from being used to administer drugs or sold for criminal profit,” he said. “Customs takes the illegal importation of drug utensils seriously.”
Nicholson said the yearly totals can swing depending on how many commercial-sized shipments are caught. Customs could not say how many of this year’s utensils were meth pipes and how many were for cannabis, because some can be adapted for either drug.
One case shows how large a single shipment can be. In March 2026 Customs stopped a sea container at the Port of Auckland that had been sent from China. According to a Customs statement on 4 May, it held about 1,600 three-litre canisters of nitrous oxide, 21,400 meth utensils and 219 kilograms of illegal tobacco. That one container carried the equivalent of more than half of this year’s seven-month utensil total. Three men aged 35, 39 and 44 appeared in the Manukau District Court on 30 April on charges including importing and possessing prohibited goods and defrauding Customs revenue, and investigators searched business premises in Botany, Massey and Warkworth the next day.
In a separate case in May, RNZ reported, an Auckland couple was sentenced over the large-scale import of thousands of illegal weapons, bongs and meth pipes. The 50-year-old man received eight months’ home detention and the couple’s company was fined $45,000.
What gets past the border is easy to find in shops. In June, RNZ reporter Peter de Graaf visited vape stores, $2 shops and dairies in Kaikohe and Kerikeri and found glass meth pipes on sale in roughly two-thirds of them. Prices in Kaikohe ran from $14 to $25, and in Kerikeri from $11. Most shops had no age limit and some kept the pipes on the counter beside children’s novelty items. Most shop assistants said they did not know what the pipes were for.
Rhonda Zielinski, chief executive of the Whakaoranga WhΔnau Recovery Hub in Kaikohe, told RNZ at the time that the situation was “absolutely ludicrous”. She said you could buy “all the paraphernalia you require from a $2 shop, a dairy, or even Temu” in a town that police had just targeted in major meth busts.
That reporting also exposed how unclear the law was to the people meant to enforce it. RNZ’s questions about whether selling meth pipes was legal were passed between government departments and ministers, and it took a briefing paper prepared for Health Minister Simeon Brown to confirm that selling drug utensils is against the law. RNZ found confusion among police, politicians, councils and retailers alike.
The figures land as the Government puts more money into its response to methamphetamine. As Newswire reported on 17 September, it has launched a $1.6 million “F. Meth” advertising campaign after its first anti-meth videos fell flat.
Critics of the utensil ban argue that stopping pipes at the border will not fix New Zealand’s drug problem, a point RNZ put to Customs. Nicholson’s answer was that reducing drug harm needs action on several fronts at once, and that seizing the tools is one of them. People caught importing on a serious or commercial scale can be investigated and prosecuted.
What the numbers cannot show is how many pipes are getting through. Customs works on intelligence and targeted checks rather than opening every parcel, and the shop shelves RNZ found in Northland earlier this year suggest plenty still reach retailers. A seizure count that has risen 25-fold in two years could reflect better targeting, much larger shipments, or both. Customs has not said which.
Anyone with information about illegal imports can contact Customs confidentially on 0800 WE PROTECT (0800 937 768) or report anonymously through Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Have you seen meth pipes or bongs for sale in shops where you live, and should retailers face tougher enforcement? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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