Australia and New Zealand have the highest per capita cocaine and ecstasy use in the world, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) World Drug Report 2025.

Three per cent of people between the ages of 15-64 in the countries grouped under the Oceania region used cocaine in 2023, almost double that of the Americas (1.6 per cent) and slightly less than triple that of Europe (1.1 per cent), according to the data published on Thursday.

However, wastewater analysis cited in the report showed that consumption is “clearly lower” than other parts of the world, suggesting most users in the two countries use the drug occasionally, rather than regularly.

“Past-year use of ‘ecstasy’ in the subregion … remains by far the highest worldwide; this is consistent with 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) levels found in wastewater analysis,” it said.

In addition, it said cannabis use in the two countries was “still significantly higher than the global average”, and prevalence among school students aged 15 and 16 was also relatively high in Oceania, at 13 per cent, compared with the global average of 4.4 per cent

The report highlights that global cocaine production reached 3700 tons of pure cocaine in 2023, a 34 per cent increase on the previous year, and that drug-trafficking routes have increasingly diversified to Africa, Asia and Australia, and are no longer limited to its main markets, Europe and North America.

“The Pacific islands are increasingly targeted as transit points for cocaine and methamphetamine primarily destined for Australia and New Zealand,” the report notes.

Seizures of cocaine also reached “record levels” in the two countries, where drug-trafficking groups are attracted by the greater purchasing power of citizens and the high price of the drug.

Furthermore, drug-traffickers take advantage of the thousands of kilometres of coastline of these two large island nations due to the difficulty of policing such a vast area.

In December 2024, Australian police seized 2.34 tonnes of cocaine (with a blackmarket value of nearly $760 million) in one of the country’s largest anti-drug operations.