The New Zealand Drug Foundation’s 2025 report, Safer Drug Laws for Aotearoa New Zealand: Evidence to Inform Regulatory Change, is a major evidence-based review arguing that New Zealand’s 50-year-old Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 (MoDA) has failed to achieve its goals and should be replaced with a health-centred, evidence-driven legal framework.

Core Thesis

The report asserts that criminalisation has not reduced drug use but has deepened harm—particularly for Māori—while blocking access to effective health interventions. It calls for a new regulatory model that treats drug use primarily as a social and health issue, not a criminal one.

Historical & Policy Context

The MoDA, influenced by mid-20th-century UN conventions and US policy, became law in 1975.
It enshrined prohibitionist drug control and criminal penalties that persist despite global shifts toward harm reduction.
A 2011 Law Commission review recommended repealing MoDA and creating a new health-led Act, but its proposals were largely ignored.
Limited reforms (like 2019’s police-discretion amendment and 2021’s legalisation of drug checking) show isolated progress, not systemic change.

Key Evidence of Failure

Rising drug harms: fatal overdoses have surged to roughly three per week (2024), mainly from opioids and adulterated synthetic substances.
Drug use increasing: wastewater data show record methamphetamine, MDMA, and cocaine use.
Prices falling: meth and heroin prices have dropped dramatically since 2002, indicating abundant supply despite strict laws.
Māori inequity: Māori make up over 50 % of drug-related imprisonments and experience double the overdose mortality rate of non-Māori.
Treatment gaps: more than 350 000 adults have unmet addiction-treatment needs.
Criminalisation costs: tens of thousands of people bear lifelong convictions that limit employment and wellbeing.

Health & Social Consequences

Hospitalisations for drug poisoning exceed 500 per year, and stimulant-related cases have grown six-fold since the mid-1990s.
Over 1,200 overdose deaths occurred between 2016–2024.
Substance dependence strongly correlates with long-term benefit receipt and poverty.
Drug harm rankings show alcohol as the most damaging substance overall—worse than most illegal drugs.

Public and Expert Support for Reform

2022 polling: 68 % of New Zealanders support rewriting MoDA for a health-based approach.
UN and global health experts now widely endorse decriminalisation and regulated supply to improve human-rights outcomes.
Coroners, the Law Commission, and the Human Rights Council have all urged review of NZ’s outdated laws.

Proposed Path Forward

The Foundation recommends:

Repeal and replace MoDA with a new Act administered by the Ministry of Health.
Decriminalise personal possession and use, redirecting police and courts toward diversion, education, and treatment.
Establish a licensing framework to regulate lower-risk substances and enable harm-reduction services (e.g., drug checking, supervised consumption).
Embed Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles to ensure Māori leadership and equity in policy and service design.
Create an independent, evidence-based authority to regulate substances and adapt swiftly to emerging drugs.

Conclusion

The report paints a stark picture: Aotearoa’s drug laws have created harm rather than prevented it. After five decades of prohibition, the Foundation argues that a shift toward regulation, public-health interventions, and Māori-led solutions is the only way to make drug laws “safer for all New Zealanders.”