This article draws on interviews with the French national police, the gendarmerie, France’s anti-drugs office (OFAST), customs, the French navy and local civil society organizations, including the Fédération Citoyenne Polynésienne de Lutte contre les Drogues et la Toxicomanie, during a research trip to French Polynesia. For more on the harms of drug consumption in French Polynesia, watch The Index Podcast.  

Known for its strategic position in the Pacific, French Polynesia is playing a growing role in international drug trafficking. The collection of 118 islands spans an area comparable in size to Europe, creating formidable law enforcement challenges and opportunities for criminal networks as routes through the region diversify. 

Owing to its constitutional status, responsibility for French Polynesia’s policing and border security rests with the French state. That task is becoming more complex, as higher volumes of cocaine and methamphetamine from the Americas transit French Polynesia en route to Australia and New Zealand, where drug prices are among the highest in the world.  

This reflects a much broader transformation of the global drug trade. According to the 2025 Global Organized Crime Index, synthetic drugs and cocaine have expanded rapidly worldwide in recent years, and Oceania has become a transit region for both commodities.  

At the same time, French Polynesia is contending with a growing, locally embedded methamphetamine market, with consumption now significantly higher in French overseas territories than in metropolitan France. 

An international transit point

Over the past five years, drug trafficking through French Polynesia has become more sophisticated. Although sailing vessels continue to be used, Mexican criminal groups such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel are increasingly relying on merchant shipping to move larger consignments.  

Several developments have contributed to this trend, including growing demand in Australia and New Zealand, pressure on Caribbean trafficking routes, and the ongoing overproduction of cocaine in South America.  

Cocaine typically moves from Colombia and Ecuador through French Polynesian waters towards Australia and New Zealand. Meanwhile, methamphetamine originates in Mexico and the US, particularly California, before passing through Hawaii and French Polynesia and continuing to Australia and New Zealand.  

Unlike other Pacific Island jurisdictions, French Polynesia is not believed to function as a drug storage or redistribution hub. The territory’s value to traffickers lies largely in its vast and difficult-to-monitor maritime space. The profits generated by the shipments do not enter the local economy and there is little evidence that Latin American criminal groups maintain a permanent presence.   

There are, however, early indications that this pattern may be beginning to change. Since late 2025, and particularly in 2026, French authorities have intercepted several European and US nationals linked to methamphetamine shipments destined for French Polynesia. Although these incidents do not yet indicate the presence of permanent foreign criminal structures, they suggest growing interest from international trafficking networks in entering the French Polynesian market directly. If this trend continues, it could challenge the long-standing dominance of tightly knit Polynesian family networks over the domestic methamphetamine trade. 

A distinct domestic market

The international trafficking routes that pass through French Polynesia are largely separate from the territory’s domestic drug economy, which revolves almost exclusively around methamphetamine. Crystal methamphetamine, known locally as ‘ice’, has become the dominant illicit drug and is the principal driver of drug-related crime and other social harms.  

French Customs estimates that approximately 95% of the methamphetamine entering French Polynesia originates in the US, either produced there or manufactured in Mexico before entering US distribution networks. Smaller quantities arrive from metropolitan France and, to a lesser extent, Belgium and the Netherlands.  

Unlike the trans-Pacific trafficking routes, however, the domestic market is not controlled by Mexican cartels. According to regional authorities, the supply chain is deeply rooted in family and diaspora networks. Methamphetamine sourced from Mexican producers is typically channelled through Polynesian communities in southern California before being transported to Tahiti by French Polynesian couriers.  

Investigators estimate that only three or four major organizations dominate the local trade, with outsiders rarely able to break into these networks. Authorities also point to a smaller New Zealand-based trafficking pathway involving the Polynesian diaspora. The recent cases implicating European and US nationals nevertheless suggest that foreign actors may be testing opportunities to penetrate the market. 

This trafficking route is highly profitable, despite the relatively small quantities transported. Methamphetamine purchased for around US$20 per gram in California can retail for US$500–US$700 per gram in French Polynesia. Commercial air travel is the principal importation route, but investigators have also identified trafficking through postal services, cargo shipments, commercial vessels and the use of darknet marketplaces. Authorities further suspect that drugs are sometimes concealed on aircraft before being retrieved by complicit airport workers, while maritime methods have adopted offshore drop-offs recovered by local boats.  

These techniques exploit vulnerabilities in French Polynesia’s border controls, including the absence of body scanners and limited X-ray capacity for the approximately 40 000 shipping containers that arrive each year.  

Unlike the proceeds generated by trans-Pacific shipments, profits from the domestic methamphetamine trade largely remain within the local economy. Illicit proceeds are reinvested in hotels, vehicle rental companies, food trucks, car washes and other cash-intensive businesses, and the continued centrality of cash transactions facilitates money laundering.  

Rising methamphetamine use has been associated with higher levels of burglary, interpersonal violence and survival sex work. Law enforcement authorities and civil society representatives are particularly concerned about the growing involvement of children and adolescents, both as users and dealers.  

Methamphetamine use affects all sections of society, while treatment capacity is severely constrained, with no dedicated rehabilitation facilities and only one specialist psychiatrist. Although estimates of prevalence vary, few dispute that methamphetamine is now French Polynesia’s most pressing illicit drug challenge. 

Emerging trends

French Polynesia’s drug markets continue to change in response to law enforcement efforts. Following a series of successful interceptions of airline passengers from California, traffickers appear to be making use of cruise ship passengers as couriers, as evidenced by major seizures in January and March 2026. Both cases involved couriers boarding in California and disembarking in French Polynesia. 

A second development is the emergence of a more integrated market across France’s Pacific territories. Individuals with family connections spanning French Polynesia and New Caledonia have begun transporting methamphetamine on commercial flights, creating a new trafficking corridor that could easily expand, given the close social, economic, and administrative ties within the French Pacific. 

Authorities have also identified a potentially significant financial indicator: the recent increase in CFP franc notes at exchange bureaux in metropolitan France. Given the currency’s limited circulation outside the Pacific, investigators suspect that some of these transactions may be associated with drug trafficking or money laundering.  

Perhaps most concerning are reports of dealers providing methamphetamine to children and adolescents free of charge, before demanding repayment once dependency develops. Although the prevalence of this practice is difficult to assess, it points to the domestic market becoming more exploitative and more damaging.  

A complex regional role

The distinction between French Polynesia’s two drug economies is striking. International trafficking exploits the islands’ geography but largely bypasses the local population and economy. The domestic methamphetamine market, by contrast, relies on diaspora connections and local distribution networks. The emerging involvement of European and US nationals, additional diaspora ties and changing financial flows suggest, however, that the line between these two markets may be starting to blur. Whether international actors can establish a lasting foothold in this economy remains to be seen. 

Multi-tonne seizures at sea may attract international headlines, but for French Polynesia, the smaller quantities of methamphetamine destined for local consumption are a far greater threat. Not only do they directly undermine public health and safety, but the illicit profits also sustain a domestic criminal economy whose effects are felt more acutely. 

This analysis is part of the GI-TOC’s series of articles delving into the results of the Global Organized Crime Index. The series explores the Index’s findings and their effects on policymaking, anti-organized crime measures and analyses from a thematic or regional perspective.