We’re spending $11 billion a year on serious drugs, besides what we spend on booze and marijuana? That’s insane

reaction had that been screened 40 years ago.

But that’s not all that’s changed and not the worst as slack-jawed Australia sags deeper into its couch, clutching a face mask in case the flu leaps through the window.

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, after testing what we flush down the toilet, this week calculated that Australians must spend more than $11 billion a year on “ice’’, cocaine, MDMA and heroin.

What!? We’re spending $11 billion a year on serious drugs, besides what we spend on booze and marijuana? That’s insane.

And it’s increasing every year. Last year’s binge was nearly $2 billion bigger than that of the year before. How can a people that panics over the coronavirus meanwhile spend billions on blasting their brains with hard drugs?

What a disconnect, but it helps to explain why this news of our record drug splurge was greeted by a neartotal “OK boomer” shrug.

Yet think of all those billions spent by Australians on drugs rather than on, say, feeding their families or building a business or educating their kids or buying books or maybe even giving to charity.

Note also that the biggest drug on our shopping list is ice, and our hospitals – now with queues of people demanding tests for a coronavirus nearly no one has – can tell you exactly what ice does.

In fact, we can see it for ourselves in a video released last year of patients going berserk in the emergency department of the Royal Melbourne Hospital, throwing chairs, attacking medics and even launching themselves head first over the counter.

God knows what these characters are doing in the streets and in their homes.

But maybe in their homes it’s different. Maybe they just sit calmly, relax and watch Married At First Sight.

When that sounds the better option, we really do have a problem, don’t we?