Cartels smuggle crystal meth across ‘drug highway of the Pacific’ as addiction spreads to Fiji villages

It is Manar Ravouvous’s job to protect his village.

As ‘head’ of his house on the outskirts of Lautoka, north of Fiji’s tourist centre Nadi, he checks in visitors and ensures his community is clean and tidy.

But lately he’s been struggling with much bigger problems.

“We found the needle just one or two metres from the village,” Mr Ravouvou told ABC.

“The drugs damage the psyche of our children… and then they have no future.”

“That is why we try (with all our might) to protect our village against drugs.”

Mr. Ravouvou is not alone.

The once peaceful, innocent villages and towns of Fiji are facing a new threat: methamphetamine.

There is talk of a national crisis as drug-related deaths, both from addiction and suspected gang activity, increase.

According to experts, children as young as 10 use methamphetamine, and methamphetamine use is common among teens and young adults.

In villages in Fiji where this kind of addiction has never happened before, they are at a loss.

“This is a very sad case for our communities,” Fiji’s Home Affairs Minister Pio Tikoduadua told ABC.

“It has a huge impact on our children, our youth. We fear for their future.”

“Because we are small, even the smallness of our (drug) problem is really big for Fiji. I don’t want it to be trivialized, we want to be honest about it.

And the problem starts 10,000 kilometers away, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

“Whatever it costs”

Fiji’s location in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, with its crystal clear waters and pristine reefs, is one of the reasons why the island is so attractive to the almost half a million Australian tourists who visit the country each year.

But today this has become its greatest weakness.

From Mexico and America, drug cartels target the remote ports of Fiji and the neighboring island nations of Samoa and Tonga to import huge quantities of methamphetamine and cocaine.

The ports, which often lack adequate border controls and basic detection technologies, are then used as transit points for smuggling drugs to the lucrative markets of Australia and New Zealand.

It’s been called the Pacific Ocean’s “drug highway.”

And now the product is inevitably trickling down to local communities in Fiji, like Mr Ravouvou’s.

Earlier this year, the problems of the Fiji Islands came into the international spotlight.

In one of the world’s largest drug raids, a staggering 5.25 tonnes of methamphetamine were found in two homes in Fiji. Both homes are just a five-minute drive from Nadi International Airport.

The market value of methamphetamine was approximately $2 billion.

The supply was so large that neighbors of one of the houses thought the drug dealers were merely transporting bricks or building materials.

Police have now charged 13 people. According to insiders involved in the case, police only discovered the meth when someone was accidentally arrested who wanted to distribute a small amount of the drug locally.

According to the ABC, prosecutors are investigating those involved’ ties to cartels around the world. The product would be transported by barge to Fiji and then smuggled into the Australian market.

For Fiji Navy Commander-in-Chief Commodore Humphrey Tawake, the attack is just a drop in the ocean given what he sees as widespread activity in Pacific waters.

“They have the capacity and the money to do it.”

He said private yachts, often owned by Australians, were used to transport the drugs, with the boats’ navigation systems disabled to avoid detection.

“It’s a challenge,” he said. “We have to monitor 1.3 million square kilometers of ocean.”

“We follow the ships, (and) their routes are well established, but they (the drug smugglers) change them. They are very clever about this, but we have to stay one step ahead of them (and) we have to think like them and have the right resources and the right information at the right time.”

“I think we can do better.”

Captain Tawake said more resources are needed on the water to seriously stop the smugglers.

“We could work much more effectively if we had this view of the sea,” he said.

“It’s one thing to have this technology, but being visible to the outside world is quite another.”

However, Fiji’s navy suffered a major setback in June when one of its two Australian-donated patrol boats, the RFNS Paumau, ran aground on its maiden voyage.

The vessel has been out of service since the incident and is still being investigated for repair, assuming it can be salvaged at all.

“Children are giving themselves injections”

In the backyards of Suva, the capital of Fiji, local police officers are increasingly confronted with what they call ‘white drugs’.

Local police took the ABC on a night ride to see for themselves what they were dealing with.

On what she calls her usual patrol route, Suva police officer Elenoa Digitaki points to an inconspicuous bus stop near Fiji’s Parliament Building.

Later, during a stroll along Suva’s waterfront, she shows users two other popular meeting spots – both outdoors and both just metres from the CBD.

“This is where they go,” she said. “We see it all the time.”

Fiji’s Deputy Chief of Police Aporosa Lutunauga says there have been major changes over the past decade.

“Before, there were only green drugs,” he said.

“That was then. Things have changed.

“Now we face the great challenge of combating this new threat that is threatening us: white drugs.

“We’re not a drug state. We’re not, let’s say, Philadelphia. We’re not Chicago. We’re not there yet. But we’ve got to have all hands on deck to fight it.”

Fiji’s Minister of Home Affairs, Pio Tikoduadua, says all of this adds up to a critical discussion that Fiji needs to have.

“The discussion is about how to stop this. How can we save our children? How can we eliminate drugs from our society?

“It gives me great hope that the community will rise up to tackle this problem and save their children.”