Illicit drug use in Australia is the recreational use of prohibited drugs in Australia. Illicit drugs include illegal drugs (such as cannabis, opiates, and certain types of stimulants), pharmaceutical drugs (such as pain-killers and tranquillisers) when used for non-medical purposes, and other substances used inappropriately (such as inhalants). According to government and community organisations, the use and abuse, and the illegality, of illicit drugs is a social, health and legal issue that creates an annual illegal market estimated to be worth 6.7 billion. Estimates made in 2022 place the figure at A$11.3 billion per year.
In Australia, many drugs are regulated by the federal Standard for the Uniform Scheduling of Medicines and Poisons, as well as various state and territory laws. This includes many prescription-only drugs which are considered "illicit drugs" if the holder does not have a prescription or other authority to possess them. However alcoholic beverages, tobacco and caffeine are not covered by this law.
Drug use in Australia
History Prior to Australian Federation, there was little policy response to the use of illicit substances. Opium was mostly regulated via colonial trade laws, 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 class of opium users were middle-class, middle-aged women who took the drug for menstrual pain or to alleviate the symptoms of depression. The second class of opium users included doctors, nurses and other health professionals, who used the drug as a strategy for coping with the stress of their work. The third class were Chinese immigrants, amongst whom the drug was primarily used as a recreational substance.
Many of the initial attempts to control opium were motivated by racism, with Anglo-Celtic Australians citing opium use by Chinese Australians as a danger to health and morality. 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; however, by the 1930s, Australia had the developed world's highest per capita rate of heroin consumption.
With the introduction of laws and policies which prohibited the import and use of opium, taxation income the government had previously been earning from opium imports was redundant. 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 the treaties on behalf of Australia, and from this point on, Australia's State and Territory governments have created their own laws and policies relating to illicit drug use. 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 increasingly strict drug laws (Mandelson, 1987), despite the low incidence of illicit drug use in Australia during this period. Although Australia was initially influenced by the strict illicit drug controls and penalties promoted by the League of Nations, and subsequently the United Nations; following the end of the World War 2, Australia's illicit drug policies became increasingly influenced by the United States, due to the United States' increasingly pro-active participation in United Nations policy making and large financial contribution to United Nations budgets. Hence, the strong British influence on Australia's drug policies waned, and Australia's illicit drug policies shifted from a health and social focus to an increased focus on law enforcement and criminal justice.
Illicit drug use in Australia was popularised in Australia in the 1960s. The shifting of social and cultural norms in the 1960s counterculture, which explicitly involved a sense of revolution, created a youth culture which was enthusiastic about exploring altered states of consciousness and were keen to experiment with drugs. In 1960's Sydney, the most high-profile use of illicit drugs was focused around the Kings Cross area, whose reputation as a "red light district" attracted members of various international armed forces on leave from the Indochina Wars.
American troops stationed in major Australian cities such as Sydney provided access to drugs like heroin. Heroin became immensely popular during the Vietnam War-era, and was smuggled into the country from South East Asia through crime syndicates in collaboration with members of the Nugan Hand Bank and the C.I.A. Subsequently, drug use increased in the 1960s and 1970s, as did laws prohibiting illicit drug use and police powers. Since this period, Kings Cross has retained its reputation for vice and has remained a popular destination for tourists. Drug literature, later defined as a part of the grunge lit canon, shone a light on drug taking in Australian's urban areas: Monkey Grip (1977) by Helen Garner charts the fraught relationship between a single-mother in her thirties, and a twenty-something heroin addict living in Fitzroy in Melbourne, while Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction (1998) Luke Davies details a young couple addicted to heroin in 1980s Sydney.
Prior to this time, drugs had been synonymous with Kings Cross and the neighboring suburb of Darlinghurst. In the 1920s and 1930s, local Razor Gangs achieved such a level of notoriety through their violent attempts to control the local cocaine trade, that Darlinghurst became colloquially known as "Razorhurst". In 1932, Phil Jeffs established one of the area's most notorious nightclubs, the Fifty-Fifty club, in which gambling, sex work, "sly-grog" (illicit alcohol) and cocaine were freely available. Jeffs avoided police attention by bribing high-profile police officers to refrain from raiding the club.
Drug use increased exponentially by the mid-1980s. With the emergence of HIV/AIDS, transmission of the virus was identified as a serious public health risk for injecting drug users and media attention focusing on illicit drug use increased dramatically. A series of public health campaigns, known as the "Grim Reaper campaign" were televised in 1987, designed to increase awareness of the risk of transmission of virus; however, due to the "shock tactics" used in the advertisements, the campaign was criticised as further marginalizing groups at high risk of HIV/AIDS. In 1985, Australia's Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, revealed in a nationally televised interview that his daughter, Rosslyn, was a heroin user. Following Hawke's admission, a new drug initiative, the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NCADA), was launched. Roundtable discussions instigated by the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse produced a National Drug Strategy that has continued to provide a foundation for Australia's illicit drug policy approach.
Australia's first National Drug Strategy (1985), focused on demand reduction, supply reduction and harm reduction.Australian Government. (2003). In evaluations of the National Drug Strategic Framework 1998-99 – 2003-04, However, studies have identified that this policy, which continues today, has failed as government funds are primarily focused on law enforcement, rather than prevention and treatment.Moore, T. J. (2005). Drug Policy Modelling Project – Monograph 01: What is Australia's "Drug Budget"? The Policy Mix of Illicit Drug-Related Government Spending In Australia (p. i). Victoria, Australia: Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre Inc
The death of Sydney teenager Anna Wood from ecstasy in 1995 prompted strong media coverage and moral outrage over concerns relating to teenage drug use in Australia and attacks on rave dance parties, where Wood consumed the drug and later became ill. Wood's parents later vehemently campaigned the "Just Say No" policy across the country to prevent the tragedy from re-occurring. However, despite state and federal governments investing millions of dollars in anti-drug campaigns, ecstasy use has increased amongst Australians, including young people.
Drug use by the age group 15 years to 20 years old has been classified as an issue that requires intervention. Medical and public health professionals have attempted to deal with the issue with the same approach that was made through trying to decrease drunk driving rates. The approach places more emphasis on the fact that someone has lower self-esteem and struggles socially and how that affects their decision-making within the prevalence of substance use. David Moore proposed that drug use within group settings offers many benefits and that drug use is shared amongst various human societies. Psychologists have become more open to the notion of "social context" when using their models on substance abuse. Moore considers social context to be based on the circumstance of use and how the cultural beliefs and social aspect illuminates and brings meaning to the circumstance of use. Because drug use is social, adequate methodologies for defining the social features of usage are crucial. A significant flaw in studies on the use of drugs among youth is the failure to interpret the social context in which drug use happens adequately. The blurring of lines between problematic use and any use of drugs due to the reliance on amount/prevalence measures, the equating of all illicit drug use with abuse, and, perhaps, ignorance of the social aspect of use, which provides alternative criteria for the definitions of problematic use as well as a means of trying to understand the symbolic aspects of use.
21st century
During the 1990s, Australia experienced a heroin "epidemic", in which high quality, low priced heroin, imported from South East Asia, was readily available in many metropolitan, suburban and rural areas. However, since 2001, Australia has been experiencing what is being referred to as a "heroin drought", with high grade heroin being much more difficult to access.
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. Although anecdotal evidence from illicit drug users reject the claim, some researchers assert that the potency of heroin has since been on the rise, and is nearly comparable to the purity of heroin prior to 2000.