Head of the National Organised Crime Group, Greg Williams explains how the Mr Asia drug ring paved the way for NZ's methamphetamine problem. Video/Marty Melville - Edit/Ella Wilks
The six-part podcast series Mr Asia: A Forgotten History tells the inside story of New Zealand’s most infamous drug syndicate. In this bonus video episode, hosts John Daniell and Noelle McCarthy talk to Detective Superintendent Greg Williams, head of the National Organised Crime Group, about how the 1970s drug ring compares to today’s massive methamphetamine problem.
Organised crime groups have “enslaved” whole communities across New Zealand in their bid to make huge profits from methamphetamine, says the head of the police’s National Organised Crime Group.
Detective Superintendent Greg Williams told John Daniell and Noelle McCarthy, hosts of Mr Asia: A Forgotten History, that over the last decade transnational crime groups and local gangs had deliberately spread meth addiction far wider than the leaders of the infamous 1970s heroin syndicate could have imagined.
“They were handing it out free to people, and you saw that rapid addiction, right across communities... to the extent now that it’s everywhere.
The Mr Asia gang started these tactics on a much smaller scale in the 1970s, said Williams.
They created a market for heroin as addicts introduced each other to the drug.
When police busted the gang, local criminals turned to homebake heroin made from codeine-based tablets, which dominated the drug market in the 1990s.
“The labs were incredibly dangerous. I remember one guy, a particularly well-known, notorious robber in town.
“We saved his life twice. We did the warrants, went in, he was overdosing on heroin. That was the nature of the people we were dealing with.”
Methamphetamine had arrived by the end of the decade but its use and social impact remained relatively stable until several factors changed from about 2014, said Williams.
China expanded manufacturing to other Asian countries, so the wholesale price tumbled from about US$80,000 a kilo to US$1000. When Mexican cartels got involved, it dropped as low as US$500.
“And then, of course, the people that came around 2014 to 2016 brought transnational crime links with them.”
Greg Williams, head of the National Organized Crime Group at NZ Police during an interview at Police HQ in Wellington.Photo / Marty Melville
In 2022 meth production swung away from Asia, as the Mexican-based Sinaloa cartel realised it could make fentanyl for the US market with chemicals sourced from China.
From there it was a short step to ordering legal chemicals to produce methamphetamine in bulk and suddenly most of New Zealand’s meth was coming in from America.
“And what it means is the whole concept of legislation (against) scheduled chemicals used as precursors is virtually a waste of time now because they’re using legal chemicals.
“They’ve got trained chemists, making up new substances, and there’s just this endless supply of chemicals going into the gangs.
“And now you’re seeing this incredible ramping up in the mass manufactured synthetics coming our way.”
In July last year, police and Customs officers were stunned to see meth use double from 16kg to 35kg a week, along with cocaine. It stayed like that in August and even peaked at 39kg in October.
“So, you know, we are on a knife edge. And this is all coming off that global mass production - they are just creating tonnage of cocaine, tonnage of meth.”
Research showed people involved with meth committed far more crimes across the spectrum than those who didn’t, said Williams.
A police-commissioned study compared 28,000 people with at least one meth conviction with the same number of people who had no meth convictions.
“The difference was unbelievable. So the meth cohort committed 1.4 million offenses and incidents... the other 207,000.
“The offending rates were across everything from murder, homicide, sexual offences, violence (to) the volume crimes.”
That included the road toll, which started rising again in 2014 after falling steadily for years, and drug dealing, which was 22% higher.
Williams said numbers like that put the exploits of Marty Johnstone and Terry Clark, the 1970s DIY drug lords featured in the podcast, into a grim perspective.
“How many Mr Asias do we see (today)?” he asked rhetorically.
“We probably deal with one about every three months... at that level.”
Mr Asia - A Forgotten History is a six-episode true crime series. Follow the series on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are released on Wednesdays.
The series is hosted and produced by John Daniell and Noelle McCarthy of Bird of Paradise Productions in co-production with the New Zealand Herald.
