Meth disguised as Canadian beer kills 21-year-old in New Zealand

W5's Avery Haines investigates Canada's shocking connection to New Zealand's methamphetamine crisis.

Editor’s note: This story is a collaboration between CTV News and the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF)

On March 2, 2023, Aiden Sagala did what many people do after a long, hot day at work. He cracked open a cold one.

Little did he know, that swig of beer would kill him.

Aiden didn’t realize that the can was full of liquid methamphetamine, not beer.

His boss had gifted him cases of the beer, which he brought back home.

The 21-year-old lived with his sister Angela, and brother-in-law, Billy, in Auckland, New Zealand.

Aiden and Billy were lounging at home with a friend when they decided to have some of the tall cans labelled as “Honey Bear Beer” from Canada. Billy was excited to try Canadian beer for the first time.

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“We thought it was a new brand that’s about to start up in New Zealand and we saw the Canadian logo, the flag logo. It was like, oh cool, we thought it was from Canada, that’s pretty cool then,” Billy told W5’s Avery Haines.

After Aiden took a gulp, he asked Billy if something tasted off.

“Hey bro, does the beer taste salty?”

Billy told him that his beer tasted fine, so Aiden asked him to try his.

“I went to have a taste to see what he meant. So I only took a sip, but I spat that out real fast... it tasted like sea salt with chemicals. I told him I didn’t fully swallow.”

Aiden then went to phone his mom, and things spiraled from there.

He came out of his room minutes after and told his brother-in-law he thought he was about to die.

Billy tried to calm down a panicked Aiden but was unsuccessful.

He became increasingly agitated and physically aggressive. Billy attempted to hold him down, but Aiden kept trying to throw him off.

“He was screaming out, ‘I want my mom, I want my mom. I’m dying, I want mom. I’m dying, I want mom,’” Billy recalls.

Aiden’s mom listened helplessly as he hadn’t hung up the phone yet.

In a panic, Billy called his wife Angela, who rushed home to try to help her brother.

“He said to me, ‘Sis, I’m dying.’ And I said, ‘You are absolutely not dying, not today, not on my watch,’” Angela told W5.

Aiden’s face turned blue.

His sister called an ambulance, but it took an hour for paramedics to arrive. A doctor herself, Angela began performing CPR on her little brother in the meantime.

Aiden fell into a coma and died five days later.

The cause of death was multiple organ failure from a lethal dose of methamphetamine -- an illegal and highly addictive synthetic stimulant.

“He did die on my watch... it’s so hard to relive the fact that those were the last words that my brother had spoken… he died in my arms that day.”

That single can of “beer” that Aiden drank from would unravel a massive transnational drug smuggling ring with networks in India, the United States and Canada.

Largest meth bust in New Zealand history

Once New Zealand police began investigating Aidens’ death, their case led them to a storage unit in Auckland which they subsequently raided.

Authorities estimated to have discovered around 700 kilograms of liquid methamphetamine.

Police say Baltej Singh, the owner of a local supermarket, had imported large amounts of meth disguised as beverages into New Zealand in recent years. They included shipments of kombucha from the U.S., coconut water from India and nearly 29,000 cans of the Honey Bear beer from Toronto.

Aiden’s boss, a man named Himatjit “Jimmy” Kahlon, was captured on security camera removing cases of beer from the unit. He was accused of helping process the liquid methamphetamine into crystal meth.

Kahlon was then giving away the excess cans that actually contained beer, accidentally leaving some cans that were still full of liquid methamphetamine in the cases.

Kahlon would be charged with manslaughter in Aiden’s death.

Police also charged Singh, who’s a respected businessman in Auckland and comes from a prominent family in India, for running the import operation.

Aiden’s death sent shockwaves through New Zealand and led to what is the single biggest methamphetamine seizure in the country’s history.

Golden nugget

According to Detective Superintendent Greg Williams, head of New Zealand’s National Organized Crime Group, meth costs more in New Zealand than anywhere else in the world.

In Mexico, meth costs about $500 a kilogram. In Canada that same amount sells for $10,000, while in New Zealand one kilogram sells for almost $300,000.

“Transnational crime groups look at countries like New Zealand... and go, ‘This is the golden nugget.’ Like, ‘I’m going to make a lot more money bringing product to New Zealand,’” said Williams.

Criminals smuggle drugs into the country in various ingenious ways, like hiding the meth inside machinery, and disguising it in food products like maple syrup and beer.

While U.S. President Donald Trump has been making false claims that the volume of fentanyl coming to the U.S. from Canada is “massive,” Canada Border Services Agency officials say Canada is not a significant source of fentanyl into the U.S.

However, Canada is flooding New Zealand with meth.

From 2020 to 2024, New Zealand seized more meth from Canada than from any other country in the world -- 1,200 kilograms with an estimated street value of about $350 million.

According to an RCMP intelligence document, international gangs, including Mexican cartels, are increasingly using the Port of Vancouver as a launching point for shipments of methamphetamine bound for countries like New Zealand and Australia, where it fetches a far higher price.

In 2023, a particularly busy year, New Zealand customs agents seized over 800 kilograms of meth exported from Canada, which is more than any other country.

Again in 2024, Canada topped the list for methamphetamine seizures in New Zealand, with 174 seized shipments originating from here.

New Zealand is in the grips of a meth crisis. Wastewater testing suggests that meth consumption almost doubled from 2023 to 2024.

According to Detective Superintendent Greg Williams, his team has noticed a sizeable upward trend of meth coming from Canada in the last several years.

“Organized crime is setting itself up in places where it believes it can produce tonnage and then believes that it can ship from those countries,” said Williams. “There was just this tonnage coming our way out of Canada,” he added.

In Feb. 2025, Aiden’s boss, Kahlon, was sentenced to 21 years in prison for manslaughter and for possession of methamphetamine for supply. He is currently appealing that decision.

Police arrested Singh at Auckland’s airport where he was on his way to board a flight to Dubai that he booked that same day.

He was sentenced to 22 years for importing methamphetamine, possession of methamphetamine for supply, importing ephedrine, and possession of cocaine for supply.

Meanwhile, no one has been charged in Canada for their role in exporting the liquid methamphetamine that killed Aiden, something that his brother-in-law finds unimaginable.

“Shut them down and take them to jail. I’ll be very brutal about this,” Billy said.

“This is murder. To be honest, I see it as murder.”

This is part 1 of a 4-part series collaboration between W5 and the Investigative Journalism Foundation looking into Canada’s role as one of the largest methamphetamine exporters to New Zealand and Australia in the world. Tomorrow, part 2 takes you inside the W5/IJF investigation to track down the Canadians responsible for exporting the meth that killed Aiden Sagala.

More on this story:

• Part 2: ‘That’s just shocking’: No charges for Canadian meth exporters after 21-year-old dies in Auckland