A perspective on Illicit drug use for Pacific people living in New Zealand
Main Article Content
Abstract
Historically, alcohol and tobacco use has been the main substance use for Pacific people in New Zealand (NZ).1,2,3 However, more recently, illicit drug use is a new emerging concerning trend amongst Pacific people in New Zealand. Illicit drugs refer to highly addictive and illegal substances such as cannabis, synthetic cannabinoids, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine. Importantly, Pacific youth have been identified as having higher prevalence rates than other age groups in the Pacific population in New Zealand. 4 Although, Pacific people have higher rates of substance abuse, they tend to have lower rates of accessing health service access compared with the New Zealand general population.5 Very little research has examined illicit drug use for Pacific people. With the emergence of rising illicit drug use, there is an urgent needed to identify why illicit drugs will become an issue for Pacific people in the future.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Articles on this website and article downloads are provided free of charge by Open Access under a Creative Commons with the author retaining all copyright to the material. eg © Alec Ekeroma 2021. Except as provided by the NZ Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the Pacific Health Dialog. Manuscripts can be used for private study but must not be used for commercial purposes.
