Tonga’s drug crisis: Why a tiny Pacific island is struggling with a meth epidemic

Spike in drug use has caused problems across Tongan society, with arrests doubling in two years and children severely affected

After more than four decades spent living in New Zealand, Ned Cook knew it was time to return to his home country of Tonga.

His country was in the grip of a methamphetamine epidemic that was ripping families apart and overrunning the country’s hospitals and jails. Cook, a trained drug and alcohol abuse counsellor, with a history of drug abuse himself, had been preparing for years to return to Tonga to combat it.

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