Drug haul: Peppa Pig lunchbox parcel hid ketamine intended for New Zealand

Peppa Pig.

Packaging for a Peppa Pig lunchbox that hid ketamine is one of the novel smuggling methods detected by customs officers in Belgium - and this one was headed to New Zealand.

Veteran customs officer Pol Meuleneire was speaking to the AFP news agency about the changes in his job when he discovered the illicit lunchbox.

The lunchbox itself was innocent, but the heaviness of the packaging gave the game away.

Inside, packed into a corrugated plastic parcel divider, was ketamine - an anaesthetic often misused as a party drug.

In an Easter twist, Meuleneire also found ‘chocolate’ Easter Bunnies that were made from pure MDMA.

The bunnies were trying to hop their way to Hong Kong, but a quick scan revealed that they were made from the drug.

“So you see? It’s pure MDMA,” the 61-year-old said. “So here we have, bumpety-bump, one or two kilogrammes of this. With one kilogramme you make six thousand ecstasy pills.”

In New Zealand use of MDMA and methamphetamine has been found to be on the decline, with cocaine on the rise.

Results from police’s wastewater drug testing in Quarter 3 last year showed a 400g increase in cocaine - or 70 per cent - over the same time frame, with 980g consumed weekly.

NZ Drug Foundation executive director Sarah Helm said anecdotally it heard there was more cocaine available in the community and in places it was not usually seen.

That didn’t mean it was an ongoing trend but was something it was “keeping a watchful eye on”, as cocaine was more addictive than some other drugs such as MDMA.

Recent samples appeared to be higher in cocaine content and less full of fillers like creatine and caffeine, Helm said.

“That alone means this cocaine will be stronger than people will be used to.

“Additionally, we have seen more concerning fillers that have a greater risk of harm such as Procaine, Benzocaine and Lidocaine. This is more akin to the supply we see in the USA and Central America than what our previous cocaine results have shown.”

Cocaine users found it wore off quickly so they tended to re-dose and that increased the likelihood of addiction, Helm said.

Wastewater testing was a “bit of a blunt instrument” because it didn’t reveal details about harm or other behaviours and data captured a point in time, not necessarily what was happening day to day, Helm said.

“A change also doesn’t tell us whether there are more or fewer people using a drug, or whether it’s the same number of people using more or less.”