Australia’s amphetamine use has reached epidemic proportions, but there are solutions, says Drug Free Australia’s Executive Officer, Jo Baxter.

According to an Australian Institute of Health report, over 100,000 young people have taken amphetamines in the last week and more than 500,000 in the last year.

‘Today Drug Free Australia is presenting 10 evidence-based solutions to  researchers from NDRI and the Australian Institute of Criminology.  Many of the solutions are strategies being used successfully in the United States and the UK. It’s not ‘rocket science’ and if the researchers are serious about developing an effective national strategy for Australia, they will  take the ideas on board’, says Ms Baxter.

First and foremost, we believe that ‘prevention strategies’ must be incorporated. These include:

• Actively discouraging the use of drug education materials which promote the public acceptance (or normalisation) of illicit drug use, particularly amphetamine type stimulants. These are currently in use in many Australian schools and in Police youth clubs.
• Expanding the development of resources to support parents and carers in the education of their children about harmful drugs such as amphetamine type stimulants.
• Considering the option of school drug testing programs for secondary schools as a preventative measure, to deter students who are at the acknowledged ‘risk taking’ stage of their lives from experimenting with drugs.
• Developing and promote graphic community awareness campaigns via the media such as those used successfully in Oregon (USA) and by the UK Police.
• Removing the terms ‘recreational drugs’ and ‘party’ drugs in all government or government funded print-based and electronic publications, resources or literature. This should be done retrospectively, thus expanding on the recent decision of the MCDS.
• Linking with international agreements that track the movement of precursor drugs, such as those established by the United States with other nations, including China and Indonesia
• Rejecting proposals to establish drug testing units at RAVE parties (or similar) to test the purity or ‘safety’ of various illicit drugs.
• Supporting the fact that policing for illicit drugs at RAVE parties needs to be better resourced, advertised and implemented.
• Establishing mandatory drug rehabilitation for problem drug users of amphetamines, particularly ‘ice’, as an alternative to jail sentences.
• Rejecting all proposals for Medically Supervised Injecting Centres, based on the low outcomes at high cost of the Kings Cross centre. This Centre also presents an acceptance of illicit drug use and its probable expansion of the local drug trade.