Drug use monitoring in Australia: Drug use among police detainees, 2019
Oct 8, 2020
Last week the Australian Institute of Criminology’s Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) released their report for 2019. The DUMA research collects criminal justice and drug use information via urinalysis from police detainees in watch houses across Australia on a given weekend. For the year of 2019, data was collected from five sites including Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, and Bankstown and Surrey Hills in Sydney.
Of those who provided urine samples, the following was found:
- 78% of detainees tested positive to at least one type of drug;
- 44% tested positive to more than one drug type;
- Female detainees were more likely than male detainees to test positive to any drug type;
- Detainees aged 26 to 30 years were most likely to test positive to any drug (86%, n=128) and multiple drug types;
- Methamphetamine was the most commonly detected drug, with 51% of detainees testing positive to methamphetamine.
To read the full report head to “Drug use monitoring in Australia: Drug use among police detainees, 2019”