The Pacific island nation best known as a holiday destination is grappling with a growing drug problem

In the early hours of a Saturday morning in the city of Nadi, on the west coast of Fiji’s main island, Isaiah* is sitting in a Burger King drinking Fanta through a straw and explaining how he became a drug dealer.

He started five years ago, aged 13, selling cigarettes and marijuana. Now he sells cocaine and methamphetamines.

“My family were selling drugs in Suva,” he says. “They said there would be a time when me and my cousins would take over. We start training, training, training.”

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Isaiah inhabits Fiji’s underbelly, far removed from the tourist trail of white sand beaches dotted with coconut palms. Here, away from the five-star resorts and snorkelling safaris, police are reckoning with an explosion in the domestic use of what they call “white drugs” – cocaine and methamphetamines – which until a few years ago were almost unheard of in the country.

Law enforcement says increased domestic drug use in Fiji, as well as in other Pacific nations such as Tonga and Samoa, has been fuelled by a combination of factors: growing economies, booming tourist industries and the fact these countries lie on a transnational drug shipping route.

This route is used by traffickers who use yachts to bring cocaine and methamphetamines from the US and Latin America to Australia, where drug users pay the highest price a gram (about A$300 or £180) and have one of the highest rates of per capita cocaine use in the world.

For Isaiah, drugs have become a way of life. After his family broke down when he was 10 he spent six years sleeping rough on the streets of the capital, Suva, where he fell in with a gang. Now he is the one doing the training, teaching boys as young as 11 how to deal drugs.

“I’m the youngest of the dealers in Fiji, the youngest and the strongest,” he boasts. “I’m not worried about going to jail, I’m not scared of anyone. If you want to threaten me I’ll fuck you up,” he says, in a sort of general threat to the world.

When I have the dope, I can get anything I want Isaiah

He tells the Guardian that he can now make between FJD$5,000 (£1,800) and $10,000 (£3,500) in a day, in a country where the minimum wage is $2.86. Fiji’s national drug advisory council says meth, which is more widespread in the country than cocaine, costs between FJD$700 and $1,000 (£255-£365) a gram.

“It’s good money, I’m getting high, having fun,” he says. “When I have the dope, I can get anything I want.”

Across the table, Lisa*, 26, whom Isaiah describes as his surrogate stepmother, says that for her drugs are not about enjoyment, but survival. She explains she takes meth and cocaine to help with health issues, including back pain and panic attacks.

Lisa has two children, the youngest of whom is two. She is also a sex worker, an occupation that is illegal in Fiji.

“Ice helps me so I don’t have sickness; I had panics and back pain,” she says. “Some people say, ‘Why are you using this?’ I’m using this for my safety and my life; I’m looking after my kids.”

‘I have nearly been killed’

Sitiveni Qiliho, Fiji’s police commissioner, is in charge of tackling the nation’s growing drug problem, which he says has shifted in recent years. Years ago drug use was confined to well-off parts of the community, he says, but not any more.

“Fiji’s known as a transit point for moving drugs to Australia and New Zealand … but we also have local users now,” Qiliho says.

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Arrests for drug-related crimes in Fiji increased from 685 in 2017 to 1,061 in 2018. There is no data in the country about rates of addiction, but St Giles psychiatric hospital in Suva reported that nearly 20% of its patients in the year from May 2017 to April 2018 were admitted for substance abuse issues, mostly for addiction to methamphetamines.

Ian Collingwood [see footnote] knows all about the country’s drug problem. The 49-year-old, who moved to Fiji when he was four, has been using drugs since he was a teenager. He says his own transition from being a recreational user to what he calls a “narcotics coper” mirrors Fiji’s own relationship with drugs.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Self-professed drug addict Ian Collingwood walks down the Martintar strip in Nadi. Photograph: Rob Rickman/The Guardian

“In the time I’ve spent in Fiji I’ve watched this happen,” he tells the Guardian from the verandah of a popular cafe in Nadi.

“In the 1980s and 90s, I knew people who smoked a fair bit of pot but it … was uncommon and frowned upon. From 2005 onwards there was more and more methamphetamines and ice coming into the country.”

‘No support’

The impacts of the burgeoning drug scene are visible on the streets of the country’s cities, Collingwood says.

“I’ve seen terrible, terrible violence. I’ve seen a guy’s jaw come through his face, holes burnt in someone’s feet with a welding torch, I myself have nearly been killed with hammers and kerosene.”

As he talks, a silver car drives by twice, honking its horn. The driver says a drug enforcer who believes Collingwood owes him money is on his way. Collingwood asks to move inside the cafe, out of sight of the street.

There’s no consideration that drug addiction is a mental health issue Ian Collingwood

Asked where drug addicts can go if they want to get clean, Collingwood shrugs. There is no rehab centre in Fiji, no methadone clinic, no addiction health specialists, not even a Narcotics Anonymous meeting.

“I went to Australia and I went to rehab in Byron [Bay], which was great, until I came back here,” he says. “Without any support whatsoever, you just fall over.

“The mindset is still very much that it’s criminal, it’s dealt with criminally, there’s no consideration that it’s a mental health issue yet.”

Lisa agrees, saying Fiji is not a good place to be a user. “There’s plenty of judgment,” she says.

There are no charities offering rehab in Fiji. The Salvation Army, which until December had a small addiction service, had to close it down when two staff members took jobs in New Zealand.

The charity is hoping to open again later in the year and, in the meantime, a Salvation Army youth worker, Amani Waqetia, operates as a one-man drug program.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amani Waqetia from the Salvation Army, at his home in Nakasi where he shelters street children. Photograph: Rob Rickman/The Guardian

At any time, Waqetia and his wife house up to 15 boys, aged eight to 19, in their small three-bedroom house in Nakasi, a suburb in the north-east of Suva. The boys, most of whom come from troubled homes or who are estranged from their families, are mostly sniffing glue, smoking pot or drinking.

Waqetia is under no illusions about what he is able to achieve alone and believes Fiji’s drug problem requires a coordinated, nationwide response. His aim is to keep the children in school and reconnect them with their families so they don’t end up gravitating toward the sorts of gangs that Isaiah joined.

“These are all the outward signs: theft, drugs and all this. Instead of reacting to these problems, we are trying to respond to the need – that is care, love – these are things they are missing from their own homes,” he says.

Back in Nadi as the night wears on, Isaiah is itching to get to work.

Walking out of Burger King he says he is off to “find people who owe me money and get them to pay me”. When he discovers there is a city-wide blackout and all the street lights are out, he is delighted and runs off into the dark night with a grin.

* Names have been changed to protect identities

• Guardian Australia points out that the Ian Collingwood interviewed in this article is not the man also named Ian Collingwood who for many years has worked as an education consultant in East Asia and the Pacific region, including periods living in Fiji and Vanuatu.