Australian Drug Trends 2007: Findings from the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) Australian Drug Trend Series No. 1

摘要: The Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) is an ongoing illicit drug system funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing (AGDHA). The IDRS has been conducted in all states and territories of Australia since 2000. The purpose of the IDRS is to provide a coordinated approach to monitoring the use of illicit drugs–in particular, heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and cannabis. It is intended to serve as a strategic early warning system, identifying emerging trends of local and national concern in illicit drug markets. The IDRS is designed to be sensitive to trends, providing data in a timely manner, rather than to describe issues in detail. Therefore the IDRS can provide direction for more detailed data collection on specific issues.The IDRS is based on the work of Grant Wardlaw (Wardlaw, 2008). The complete methodology consists of three components: interviews with people who regularly inject drugs (PWID) 2; interviews with key experts (KE), people who, through the nature of their work, have regular contact with illicit drug users or knowledge of drug trends; and an examination of existing indicator data sources related to illicit drug use, such as opioid overdose data, treatment data, and purity of seizures of illicit drugs made by law enforcement agencies. These three data sources are compared against each other in order to minimise the biases and weaknesses inherent in each one, and to ensure valid emerging trends are documented.