Whether we like it or not, many people in our community are touched by substance abuse. One of the major obstacles in tackling these issues is the fact that trends and patterns in drug use are constantly changing.
Drugs such as crystal meth and ecstasy are allegedly becoming harder to procure. A recent spate of police raids on meth labs in and around the Perth metro area is said to be partly responsible.
‘There’s been a concerted effort by law enforcement to actually close down clandestine labs and they’ve been having a lot of success in that,’ said Mark Lowery, an executive officer at Western Australian Substance Users’ Association (WASUA).
This means that at street level the availability of drugs has dramatically decreased.
‘It used to be that I’d know several people that I could call,’ reported one regular drug user, ‘but now it doesn’t seem to be as easy to find people and whether that’s just because I don’t know the right people or because it’s a general trend that’s happened where people are finding it less appealing to get into that kind of thing, I don’t know.’
While prices of methamphetamine have gone up the quality has dramatically decreased.
‘The quality is shit,’ the regular drug user continued.
‘I think it’s probably a thing where people that are trying to make the money have probably got less available to them and are having to make that go further and again, if you haven’t got a good supply chain then they’re still going to sell it but they’re just going to cut it or find something else to sell in its place which isn’t as good.
‘So the less choice there is, the more crap there is that’s out there I guess, because the demand for buying it is still there, so they’ve got to sell something.’
It’s a trend that is potentially seeing people move away from using methamphetamine, a notion supported by the National Drug Research Institute (NDRI).
Each year NDRI recruits 100 intravenous drug users and regular ecstasy users to map trends within this population.
While this sample size is hardly representative of the general population, there is evidence to suggest that there is a steady decline in methamphetamine usage.
‘We’re looking at trends among this kind of sample group of people over time and what we’ve seen in those samples, in WA and elsewhere, is that methamphetamine use has declined over recent years,’ explained Professor Simon Lenton from NDRI.
‘All forms of methamphetamine – methamphetamine powder, crystal methamphetamine and the sort of waxy, oily base methamphetamine – have all kind of dropped off over the last four years, amongst that group.’
Professor Lenton pointed out that such diminished usage was in part due to the success of police strategies, particularly those targeting labs and the sale and availability of precursor chemicals containing pseudoephedrine.
But Professor Lenton also suggested that the decline in meth use may be because of an overall shifting fashion in drug use.
‘We tend to go through waves of stimulant use of 7 to 10 years, followed by a period of using depressants for a similar length of time and one of the theories about that stuff is that a cohort of people get into using a drug of some sort, like amphetamines, for example, and they might start using that drug to manage other drugs that they’ve been taking.
‘People get into it, focus on the positives of it and then over time people start to become increasingly aware of the downsides of using a particular drug.
‘Some people stop using it, some people go into drug treatment, some people experience increasing problems, some people start using downers to manage problems with uppers and sleeplessness and that kind of stuff and then you get this kind of wave of depressant use following a wave of stimulant usage.’
Professor Lenton noted that it was difficult to tease out the precise cause and effect in terms of changing patterns of drug use.
‘However,’ he added, ‘we have seen these patterns of shifting stimulant and depressant use over decades in Australia and elsewhere.’
In recent months there has been a spate of overdoses and deaths from heroin.
WASUA’s Mark Lowery pointed out these overdoses may result from varying pockets of purity within Western Australia.
‘We have localised pockets of high purity heroin and I suppose we have the whole gamut of heroin, so we have high quality down to low quality and I suppose that’s always problematic in that those who may be scoring the lesser quality heroin, when they do come across high purity they’re still maintaining the same sort of dose and that’s when we have the overdose troubles.’
One drug that has increased in usage is ecstasy.
‘We found increasing reports of people having used ecstasy for more than 48 hours continuously without sleep; it increased from 22% of our sample in 2008 up to 40% in 2009,’ reported Professor Lenton.
The increase may, in part, be to do with a decrease in the price of ecstasy.
‘It only dropped, on average, from $40 a pill down to $35 a pill, which isn’t huge, but it’s the first drop we’ve seen like that since we’ve been doing data connections back in 2003 when we began,’ said Prof Lenton.
Only time will tell if there will be a significant shift in drug trends in the coming months.
SERVICES
Western Australian Substance Users’ Association
Needle Exchange, Drug Treatment & Referral Service, Health Clinic
519 Murray Street, Perth
www.wasua.com.au
P (08) 9321 2877
P (08) 9791 6699 (South West Bunbury)
Cyrenian House
Drug Treatment & Rehabilitation Centre
Cnr Vincent & Fitzgerald Streets. North Perth
www.cyrenianhouse.com
P (08) 9328 9200
Metro Community Drug Service
Drug Treatment
East Perth (08) 9219 1919
Warwick (08) 9246 6767
Midland (08) 9274 7055
Fremantle (08) 9430 5966
Mandurah (08) 9581 4010
Rockingham (08) 9529 2500
National Drugs Campaign
Information Service
www.drugs.health.gov.au
FAST FACTS
• If you have over 100g of cannabis or 10 cannabis plants, it’s considered a trafficable quantity, as are 2g or more of heroin, cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine and MDMA (i.e. you’ll get busted as a dealer).
• In the NDRI survey, methamphetamine usage among those surveyed had dropped from 92% in 2005 to 44% in 2009.
• The Perth Gay Men Community Survey indicates that since 2000 the use of Viagra, GHB and steroids has increased, though these continue to be at fairly low numbers compared to other more commonly used drugs such as marijuana (33.3%), ecstasy (30.0%), amyl/poppers (29.5%) and speed (20.3%) – which usage of has remained fairly constant.
• According to the same survey, the use of cannabis has decreased since 2000.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
