Summary - Department of Health and Ageing

Controlling drug supply from within the country
Control of supply within Australia is undertaken mainly by State and Territory police
services. The main drugs of interest are cannabis and amphetamines. Cannabis is cultivated
on a large scale Australia-wide and, while aerial surveillance has reduced the crops grown
outdoors, hydroponic cultivation flourishes.
Almost all States and Territories now have policies or legislation to reduce penalties for
cannabis use and possession, thereby also reducing backlogs in the justice system.
Measures include cautioning and diversion programs and/or changes to the legal status of
cannabis.
Cannabis law reform is grounded in a recognition that while cannabis use can be
physically and/or mentally harmful, a proportion of the harms are related to its illegal
status, which has done little to reduce use—in short, that decriminalisation is associated
with less harm than a criminal model. There is little evidence that the different legislative
models in place in Australia and overseas have any significant effect on levels of cannabis
use. This introduces the attractive possibility that reducing penalties might reduce harms
while not increasing rates of use.
The use of amphetamines continues to increase in Australia and, during 2000–2001, 201
clandestine laboratories were found, most producing methylamphetamine. One approach
is to control precursor chemicals, the starting compounds or ingredients that, when
combined with other essential chemicals, produce illicit drugs—in Australia, these are
predominantly amphetamines. All State and Territory police services have now established
chemical diversion desks to monitor suspicious purchases of precursor chemicals
(currently concentrating on pseudoephedrine-based tablets such as Sudafed) and liaise
with the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. There are no indications that these
processes have, as yet, reduced the domestic manufacture of amphetamines.
Asset confiscation
All Australian jurisdictions have legislation dealing with the confiscation of the proceeds of
crime. There is a debate as to whether this asset forfeiture should be conviction-based (i.e.
requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt of criminal activity) or non-conviction-based
(i.e. proof to the civil standard of the balance of probabilities). The Australian Law Reform
Commission has recommended non-conviction-based legislation, and this is now in place
in at least three States. It is difficult to compare conviction and non-conviction regimes to
determine their effectiveness because there are no national reporting standards.
While additional research is needed to assess the effectiveness of illicit drug law
enforcement, the difficulties of research in this area should not be underestimated. The
nature of law enforcement is such that some operations and some data have to remain
confidential. Recent years have seen a shift towards more detailed evaluation of Australian
drug law enforcement, together with new research into the illicit drug market. This should
enhance the scope and depth of the evidence base that shapes Australian illicit drug law
enforcement.