Summary - Department of Health and Ageing

Drugs, both licit and illicit, cause an immense amount of illness, disruption and distress to
people of all ages and all walks of life. They are a cause of considerable and growing
concern across Australian society.
Recent years have seen huge leaps in knowledge about how best to address this problem
and prevent much drug-related harm. Research has provided a good understanding of who
is most at risk, at both individual and population level, and the social and developmental
factors that place people and communities at risk. We also know much about what
protects people from drug-related harm.
It has become clear that drugs are but one of a number of social and health problems that
can share common determinants, and that these problems tend to cluster in vulnerable
individuals and population groups. Equally, it is clear that wide-ranging and broad-based
interventions are needed to address these problems in an integrated way across the whole
community. This is especially true for problems with legal drugs which are distributed
widely across different economic and social groups in Australia.
This document, and the Monograph that it summarises, bring together this knowledge as a
basis for coordinated and effective action to prevent substance use, risk and harm in
Australia. This Summary provides a ready reference for anyone planning, carrying out, or
interested in preventive action, and retains the same chapter structure as the Monograph so
that readers can move easily from one volume to the other, to seek more detailed
information on areas of interest.
The Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing commissioned the Monograph, The
Prevention of Substance Use, Risk and Harm in Australia: A Review of the Evidence, to provide the evidence
base to underpin and inform a comprehensive prevention agenda in Australia, as part of
Australia’s National Drug Strategy (NDS).
It is important that a prevention agenda be guided by a shared understanding of the nature
of the harms to be prevented and, correspondingly, of the underlying patterns of risky
drug use. The first part of the Monograph, therefore, overviews current information about
the nature and prevalence of the most serious harms associated with different patterns of
use of different substances.
The Monograph then reviews the full spectrum of prevention measures. It covers evaluated
Australian and relevant international approaches to the prevention of drug supply, use and
harm, and approaches to prevent or delay the uptake of licit and illicit drugs by children
and young people. It looks at the current application of prevention policy and strategy in
Australia, and identifies gaps in prevention knowledge and effort.