Australia flush with drugs

SEWAGE testing has revealed Australians illegally use more than 15 tonnes of ice, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin a year.

An Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission report released today will reveal the street value of illegal drugs taken by Australians in year to last August topped $9.3 billion.

It also shows Melburnians use more heroin than addicts in any other capital city.

Drug users in rural Victoria are the second-highest consumers of heroin and the morphine-based painkiller oxycodone — known on the streets as “hillbilly heroin” — in regional Australia.

The sewage testing revealed Australians now snort, smoke, swallow and inject more than 9.8 tonnes of methylamphetamine a year, as well as 4.1 tonnes of cocaine, 1.1 tonnes of ecstasy and more than 700kg of heroin.

ACIC chief executive Mike Phelan said yesterday the report confirmed the black economy relating to illegal drugs was disturbingly high.

“It is astounding that Australians waste over $9.3 billion a year on drugs,” Mr Phelan said.

The ACIC report contains the results of secret wastewater testing at the inlets of 58 sewage treatment plants around the nation. Urine and faeces excreted by 13 million Australians was examined.

The report also revealed: USAGE of cocaine, ice and other forms of methylamphetamine increased from 2016 to ’18, while annual consumption of ecstasy and heroin fell; ONE site in regional Victoria had the highest usage of ice in Australia at up to 96 hits a day per 1000 people, compared with the national average of 37; USE of fentanyl rose in Melbourne between April and August 2018, but decreased in regional Victoria; AVERAGE ecstasy use increased in Melbourne and rural Victoria in the four months to August 2018; and, TASMANIA had the highest use of cannabis in Australia.