State flush with heroin

Sewage reveals our druggie shame

TESTING the sewage of millions of Australians has revealed Victorians are the nation’s biggest heroin users but drink less alcohol than their interstate counterparts.

An Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission report has found Victorians use 348kg of heroin a year, compared with 239kg in NSW, 75kg in Queensland and 38kg in South Australia.

It shows Victoria was the only state where drinkers consumed less than the national average of 1200 standard alcoholic drinks a day per 1000 people over the past two years.

The report also revealed sewage testing across 23 countries had identified Australians as the second highest users of the four most common illegal stimulant drugs. Only Americans consume more, speed, ecstasy and cocaine than Australia.

The ACIC report, due for release today, contains the results of secret wastewater testing at the inlets of 47 unidentified sewage treatment plants around the nation.

Urine and faeces excreted by more than 12.8 million Australians was tested to get the drug use figures in the report.

Experts consider wastewater testing to be the most accurate way of measuring illegal drug consumption.

ACIC chief executive Mike Phelan said police, health and other agencies used the wastewater testing results to shape their responses to the demand and supply side of Australia’s huge illicit drug problem.

“We estimate that two tonnes of methylamphetamine (mainly in its crystal form, known as ice) is consumed in Victoria each year, as well as 681kg of cocaine, 326kg of MDMA (ecstasy) and 348kg of heroin,” he said.

“Transnational serious and organised crime groups profit from importing, trafficking, manufacturing and selling drugs.

The report also revealed: ONE part of country Victoria had the highest ice usage in Australia, with the area recording up to 120 hits a day per 1000 people, compared with the national average of 35 hits. COUNTRY Victorians are Australia’s biggest abusers of the morphine-based painkiller oxycodone, which is known on the streets as hillbilly heroin. USE by rural Victorians of the deadly drug fentanyl – the synthetic opiate drug which is 80 times more potent than morphine – has leapt from just under 9 hits a day per 1000 people to 17 hits since December last year. AUSTRALIANS are ninth on the world league table of biggest drinkers on 15 litres of alcohol a day per 1000 people. SYDNEY and Canberra are the cocaine capitals of Australia, with the two cities snorting more than anywhere else.