Illicit drug use in Australia
Encyclopedia
Illicit drug use is a social issue in Australia
that creates a 6.7 billion Australian Dollars per year illegal market.
was mostly unregulated, with most government interventions taking the form of warning labels, designed to prevent death through overdose. According to the Victorian
Premier's Drug Advisory Council in 1899, there were three main classes of opium users. The first was middle class, middle aged women who took the drug for menstrual pain
or depression. The second was doctors, nurses and other health professionals, who used the drug as a relief from the stress of their work. The third was Chinese immigrants, amongst whom the drug was a recreational substance.
Many of the initial attempts to control opium were initial motivated by racism
, with anglo-celtic Australians citing opium use by Chinese Australians as a danger to health and morals. As Australia approached Federation, an increasing number of bills were passed in state parliaments to restrict the use of opium. By 1905, there were many laws in place which prohibited the import and use of smoking grade opium.
This removed the taxation income the government had previously been earning from opium imports. A customs report in 1908 noted that "it is very doubtful if such a prohibition has lessened to any great extent the amount bought into Australia."
Desmond Manderson, an expert on the history of Australian drug policy, has asserted that from this time forward, Australia's drug policies have been more dictated by international relations and a political need for moral panic
than any concern for health and welfare (Manderson, 1993).
Following World War I
, the Hague Conference
and The Treaty of Versailles began to set international agreements on drug laws (Berridge, 1999). Britain
signed on behalf of Australia, and from this point on, the state governments have each had their own set of drug laws. In the 1920s and 1930s there was an increasingly internationalist approach to drug policy, overseen by the League of Nations
, with Australia enacting a series of stricter and stricter drug laws (Mandelson, 1987).
During this period, illicit drug use in Australia was low. The shifting of cultural mores in the 1960s, and presence of US troops on leave from the Vietnam War
changed this. The social revolution created a youth willing to experiment, and the troops stationed in major cities such as Sydney
provided access to drugs like heroin.
Illicit drug use in Australia
began in earnest in Australia in the sixties. In Sydney
it was focused around the Kings Cross
area, which was a hot spot for tourists and members of various international armed forces on leave. Heroin became immensely popular at this time, and it was smuggled into the country from South East Asia. Prior to this time, drugs had been a part of the history of Kings Cross, as in the twenties, various gangs known as the Razor Gangs
fought to control the profits from the distribution of cocaine
.
Drug use increased in the 1960s and 1970s, as did prohibition laws and police powers. It reached a flashpoint in the mid 1980s as illicit drug use was given increasing attention in the media. In 1985, a teary Prime Minister
Bob Hawke
revealed his daughter's heroin use. Soon after, a new drug initiative was launched, the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NCADA). This document was the first implementation of the current policy approach.
As a result of this, many other illicit drugs have risen and fallen in popularity to fill this void, with prescription temazepam
, morphine
, oxycodone
, methamphetamine
and cocaine all being used as a substitute. 2008 has seen a reversal of this trend, with the arrival of Afghan
heroin being seen in Sydney for the first time ever. Today the potency of heroin is been on the rise, and is nearly comparable to the purity of heroin prior to 2000.
In 2001, the Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre opened in Kings Cross
. It was opened on the recommendation of the Wood Royal Commission. Prior to this, several venues such as strip clubs or brothels in Kings Cross rented out rooms to injecting drug users so that they could have a private and safe place to inject. This practice went on with unofficial approval by the police, as it kept injecting drug use off the streets and in the one area. This further allowed criminal activity to profit off illicit drug use, as many venue owners would sell rooms and drugs. The Wood Royal Commission identified that while there were benefits to these illegal shooting galleries, allowing police to cooperate with illegal activities could encourage corruption, it suggested an independent medical facility to continue providing safety for the users, and safety for the public by lessening the impact of drug use on the streets, such as discarded needles or drug related deaths.
Marijuana is the most widely used illegal drug in Australia with 33% of people age 14 or older reporting having tried the drug, and around 8% using it in the last year. See Cannabis in Australia
. Most Cannabis in Australia is grown locally. Locally produced methamphetamine is also popular - often this is called "gas" or "speed" at street level. Even though "speed" generally refers to amphetamine in other countries, methamphetamine is much more common in Australia regardless of street name. Drugs such as Ecstasy (MDMA), LSD, cocaine and heroin tend to be imported, although Ecstasy is sometimes made locally from imported ingredients. Quality and purity of Ecstasy pills is often highly suspect, with MDMA not always being the chemical contained in the pills.
, supply reduction and harm reduction
. This policy is still in effect today, and is outlined in the The National Drug Strategy: Australia’s integrated framework as the following:
headed a federal parliamentary committee reported that the Government's harm reduction policy is not effective enough. It recommended re-evaluating harm reduction and a zero-tolerance approach for drug education in schools. The committee also wanted the law changed so children can be put into mandatory care if parents were found to be using drugs. It suggested "establish[ing] adoption as the ‘default’ care option for children aged 0–5 years where the child protection notification involved illicit drug use by the parent/s". The report says federal, state and territory governments should only fund treatment services that are trying to make people permanently drug-free and priority should go to those that are more successful.
The report was widely criticised by a range of organisations such as Family Drug Support, The Australian Democrats
and The Australian Drug Foundation
for lacking evidence, being ideologically driven and having the potential to do massive harm to Australia. The Labor Party authors also released a dissenting report. The report and its recommendations have been shelved since the election of the Rudd Government
.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
that creates a 6.7 billion Australian Dollars per year illegal market.
History
Prior to Australian Federation, there was little policy response to the use to illicit substances. OpiumOpium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
was mostly unregulated, with most government interventions taking the form of warning labels, designed to prevent death through overdose. According to the Victorian
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
Premier's Drug Advisory Council in 1899, there were three main classes of opium users. The first was middle class, middle aged women who took the drug for menstrual pain
Menstruation
Menstruation is the shedding of the uterine lining . It occurs on a regular basis in sexually reproductive-age females of certain mammal species. This article focuses on human menstruation.-Overview:...
or depression. The second was doctors, nurses and other health professionals, who used the drug as a relief from the stress of their work. The third was Chinese immigrants, amongst whom the drug was a recreational substance.
Many of the initial attempts to control opium were initial motivated by racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, with anglo-celtic Australians citing opium use by Chinese Australians as a danger to health and morals. As Australia approached Federation, an increasing number of bills were passed in state parliaments to restrict the use of opium. By 1905, there were many laws in place which prohibited the import and use of smoking grade opium.
This removed the taxation income the government had previously been earning from opium imports. A customs report in 1908 noted that "it is very doubtful if such a prohibition has lessened to any great extent the amount bought into Australia."
Desmond Manderson, an expert on the history of Australian drug policy, has asserted that from this time forward, Australia's drug policies have been more dictated by international relations and a political need for moral panic
Moral panic
A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...
than any concern for health and welfare (Manderson, 1993).
Following World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, the Hague Conference
Hague Conference on Private International Law
The Hague Conference on Private International Law is the preeminent organisation in the area of private international law....
and The Treaty of Versailles began to set international agreements on drug laws (Berridge, 1999). Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
signed on behalf of Australia, and from this point on, the state governments have each had their own set of drug laws. In the 1920s and 1930s there was an increasingly internationalist approach to drug policy, overseen by the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
, with Australia enacting a series of stricter and stricter drug laws (Mandelson, 1987).
During this period, illicit drug use in Australia was low. The shifting of cultural mores in the 1960s, and presence of US troops on leave from the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
changed this. The social revolution created a youth willing to experiment, and the troops stationed in major cities such as Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
provided access to drugs like heroin.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
began in earnest in Australia in the sixties. In Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
it was focused around the Kings Cross
Kings Cross, New South Wales
Kings Cross is an inner-city locality of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately 2 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Sydney...
area, which was a hot spot for tourists and members of various international armed forces on leave. Heroin became immensely popular at this time, and it was smuggled into the country from South East Asia. Prior to this time, drugs had been a part of the history of Kings Cross, as in the twenties, various gangs known as the Razor Gangs
Razor gang
Razor gangs were criminal gangs that dominated the Sydney crime scene in the 1920s. With the passage of the Pistol Licensing Act 1927, the New South Wales State Parliament imposed severe penalties for carrying concealed firearms and handguns...
fought to control the profits from the distribution of cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
.
Drug use increased in the 1960s and 1970s, as did prohibition laws and police powers. It reached a flashpoint in the mid 1980s as illicit drug use was given increasing attention in the media. In 1985, a teary Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
Bob Hawke
Bob Hawke
Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke AC GCL was the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia from March 1983 to December 1991 and therefore longest serving Australian Labor Party Prime Minister....
revealed his daughter's heroin use. Soon after, a new drug initiative was launched, the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NCADA). This document was the first implementation of the current policy approach.
Current situation
Since 2000, Australia has been experiencing what is being referred to as the heroin drought, with high grade heroin being rare on the streetsAs a result of this, many other illicit drugs have risen and fallen in popularity to fill this void, with prescription temazepam
Temazepam
Temazepam is an intermediate-acting 3-hydroxy benzodiazepine. It is mostly prescribed for the short-term treatment of sleeplessness in patients who have difficulty maintaining sleep...
, morphine
Morphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
, oxycodone
Oxycodone
Oxycodone is an opioid analgesic medication synthesized from opium-derived thebaine. It was developed in 1916 in Germany, as one of several new semi-synthetic opioids in an attempt to improve on the existing opioids: morphine, diacetylmorphine , and codeine.Oxycodone oral medications are generally...
, methamphetamine
Methamphetamine
Methamphetamine is a psychostimulant of the phenethylamine and amphetamine class of psychoactive drugs...
and cocaine all being used as a substitute. 2008 has seen a reversal of this trend, with the arrival of Afghan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
heroin being seen in Sydney for the first time ever. Today the potency of heroin is been on the rise, and is nearly comparable to the purity of heroin prior to 2000.
In 2001, the Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre opened in Kings Cross
Kings Cross, New South Wales
Kings Cross is an inner-city locality of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately 2 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Sydney...
. It was opened on the recommendation of the Wood Royal Commission. Prior to this, several venues such as strip clubs or brothels in Kings Cross rented out rooms to injecting drug users so that they could have a private and safe place to inject. This practice went on with unofficial approval by the police, as it kept injecting drug use off the streets and in the one area. This further allowed criminal activity to profit off illicit drug use, as many venue owners would sell rooms and drugs. The Wood Royal Commission identified that while there were benefits to these illegal shooting galleries, allowing police to cooperate with illegal activities could encourage corruption, it suggested an independent medical facility to continue providing safety for the users, and safety for the public by lessening the impact of drug use on the streets, such as discarded needles or drug related deaths.
Marijuana is the most widely used illegal drug in Australia with 33% of people age 14 or older reporting having tried the drug, and around 8% using it in the last year. See Cannabis in Australia
Cannabis in Australia
Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in Australia, with a reported one-third of all Australians aged 14 or older having tried cannabis and 1.6 million using it in the past year...
. Most Cannabis in Australia is grown locally. Locally produced methamphetamine is also popular - often this is called "gas" or "speed" at street level. Even though "speed" generally refers to amphetamine in other countries, methamphetamine is much more common in Australia regardless of street name. Drugs such as Ecstasy (MDMA), LSD, cocaine and heroin tend to be imported, although Ecstasy is sometimes made locally from imported ingredients. Quality and purity of Ecstasy pills is often highly suspect, with MDMA not always being the chemical contained in the pills.
Policy Response
Australia has been at the forefront of drug policy around the world. In the eighties, it was one of the first countries to enact harm minimisation, which entailed the threefold policies of demand reductionDemand reduction
Demand reduction refers to efforts aimed at reducing public desire for illegal and illicit drugs. This drug policy is in contrast to the reduction of drug supply, but the two policies are often implemented together...
, supply reduction and harm reduction
Harm reduction
Harm reduction refers to a range of public health policies designed to reduce the harmful consequences associated with recreational drug use and other high risk activities...
. This policy is still in effect today, and is outlined in the The National Drug Strategy: Australia’s integrated framework as the following:
- Supply reduction strategies to disrupt the production and supply of illicit drugs, and the control and regulation of licit substances. It involves border security, CustomsAustralian Customs ServiceThe Australian Customs and Border Protection Service is the Australian Federal Government agency responsible for managing the security and integrity of the Australian border, facilitating the movement of legitimate international travellers and goods, and collecting border-related duties and...
and prosecuting people involved in the trafficking of illicit substances.
- Demand reductionDemand reductionDemand reduction refers to efforts aimed at reducing public desire for illegal and illicit drugs. This drug policy is in contrast to the reduction of drug supply, but the two policies are often implemented together...
strategies to prevent the uptake of harmful drug use, including abstinence orientated strategies and treatment to reduce drug use; This involves programs promoting abstinence or treating existing users.
- Harm reductionHarm reductionHarm reduction refers to a range of public health policies designed to reduce the harmful consequences associated with recreational drug use and other high risk activities...
strategies to reduce drug-related harm to individuals and communities. It is a policy that is a safety net to the preceding two policies. The threefold model accepts that harm prevention and supply prevention will never be completely effective, and if people are involved in risky activities, the damage they cause to themselves and society at large should be minimised. It involves programs like needle & syringe programsNeedle-exchange programmeA Needle & syringe programme or syringe-exchange programme is a social policy based on the philosophy of harm reduction where injecting drug users can obtain hypodermic needles and associated injection equipment at little or no cost. Many programmes are called "exchanges" because some require...
and safe injecting sitesSafe injection siteSupervised injection sites are legally sanctioned and medically supervised facilities designed to reduce nuisance from public drug use and provide a hygienic and stress-free...
, which aim to prevent the spread of disease or deaths from overdoses, while providing users with support to reduce or stop using drugs.
Bishop's Report
In 2007 Bronwyn BishopBronwyn Bishop
Bronwyn Kathleen Bishop , an Australian politician, is a Member of the Australian House of Representatives for the Liberal Party representing the Division of Mackellar, New South Wales since 1994...
headed a federal parliamentary committee reported that the Government's harm reduction policy is not effective enough. It recommended re-evaluating harm reduction and a zero-tolerance approach for drug education in schools. The committee also wanted the law changed so children can be put into mandatory care if parents were found to be using drugs. It suggested "establish[ing] adoption as the ‘default’ care option for children aged 0–5 years where the child protection notification involved illicit drug use by the parent/s". The report says federal, state and territory governments should only fund treatment services that are trying to make people permanently drug-free and priority should go to those that are more successful.
The report was widely criticised by a range of organisations such as Family Drug Support, The Australian Democrats
Australian Democrats
The Australian Democrats is an Australian political party espousing a socially liberal ideology. It was formed in 1977, by a merger of the Australia Party and the New LM, after principals of those minor parties secured the commitment of former Liberal minister Don Chipp, as a high profile leader...
and The Australian Drug Foundation
Australian Drug Foundation
The Australian Drug Foundation is a non-government, not-for-profit organisation based in Melbourne, Australia. The ADF's work is inclusive of both legal and illegal drugs on a national level and focuses on primary and secondary prevention...
for lacking evidence, being ideologically driven and having the potential to do massive harm to Australia. The Labor Party authors also released a dissenting report. The report and its recommendations have been shelved since the election of the Rudd Government
Rudd Government
The Rudd Government refers to the federal Executive Government of Australia of the Australian Labor Party from 2007 to 2010, led by Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister. The Rudd Government commenced on 3 December 2007, when Rudd was sworn in along with his ministry...
.