Drug crime falls in nation's 'cannabis capital'

Cannabis convictions have almost halved in Northland, but police are still pulling out huge amounts of the plant in the region, such as this haul near Oromahoe last growing season. Photo / Peter de Graaf

The number of cannabis convictions in Northland courts has halved over the past five years, with police pre-charge warnings partly responsible for the fall.

Ministry of Justice records show cannabis-related convictions in Whangarei District Court dropped from 196 five years ago to 95 in the last financial year.

At Kaikohe District Court, convictions fell from 139 to 54 over the five-year period, and, at Kaitaia District Court, convictions fell from 95 to 44.

The convictions included dealing, trafficking, importing, exporting, manufacturing, cultivating, possessing, using and other illicit drug offences.

Possession and use convictions had the most significant decreases in each of the courts. Northland police issued 696 warnings last year - mostly for disorderly behaviour in public, theft and drugs.

Northland District Police spokeswoman Sarah Kennett said she believed all crime had dropped.

"Since the 2008/2009 fiscal year, there has been a 20 per cent drop in recorded criminal offences," she said. "The reduction in the number of cannabis-related offences in this time period is in line with the reduction in overall recorded crime."

Northland has a reputation as the cannabis capital of the country, with more plants found in the region than any other. Last season, Northland police seized more than 46,000 plants. Ms Kennett said the operations put a large dent in the illicit drug trade and reduced the harm caused in Northland communities, particularly to young people.

"We continue to target those who grow, manufacture and supply illicit drugs including marijuana," she said. "We also rely on the public to help us locate drug growing or dealing operations and a lot of our information comes from people making calls anonymously to the Crimestoppers line."

She said it was too early to assess the effect of last year's synthetic highs ban on cannabis-related offending. Figures from this summer's cannabis recovery operation were also yet to be released.

Nationally, district courts convicted more than 25,000 people for marijuana-related offences over the past five financial years.

The total number of convictions decreased each year from 7329 in 2010 to 3480 last financial year.

New Zealand Drug Foundation executive director Ross Bell believed greater use of pre-charge warnings by police was also behind the drop.

"The simple explanation is police are processing people differently," he said.

"I think there's a small decrease in the number of people using cannabis but not big enough to account for those numbers."

Mr Bell said greater education around the harms of substances had turned some people off the drug.

"We've seen in some of the surveys that have been conducted in secondary schools that a whole lot of risk-taking behaviours - cannabis use, tobacco use, alcohol consumption - are coming down, so that seems to be a cultural shift. People are getting a whole lot of messages around tobacco - it's expensive, there's age restrictions, there's horrible pictures. Young people seem to be picking up an associated message that any kind of smoking isn't healthy."

Mr Bell believed broader education around substance harm and the importance of being healthy would further bring the numbers down. He did not think changes to police enforcement or the availability of synthetic cannabis would have much of a reduction effect.