- Stolen prescription drugs including Valium and Ritalin
are increasingly being used to supplement illicit drugs, a national survey
released today has found.
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- Conducted by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre,
the survey of almost 1000 injecting drug users found that while supplies
of drugs such as heroin and speed had remained steady throughout the past
year, an increasing number of pharmaceuticals were being used in their
place.
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- Less than one in three survey participants said they
sourced pharmaceuticals legally.
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- Paul Dillon, from the National Drug and Alcohol Research
Centre, said: "We are presently seeing the use of pharmaceuticals
as the big new trend and what this is telling us is that yes, we've got
a reduced supply of heroin, but what these users are doing is just using
other things.
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- "The reality is that drug users like using drugs
and if they haven't got the one that they want then they will look for
something else."
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- However, this may not all be bad news, said Don Weatherburn,
the director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
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- "What we need to know is whether the shift to other
drugs has been smaller or larger than the recent drop in heroin use,"
he said. "We also need to consider whether the harms associated with
this shift to other drugs has been enough to offset the significant gains
associated with the drop in heroin."
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- Dr Weatherburn said fatal heroin overdoses in NSW were
running at a quarter of what they were in January 2000 when the heroin
drought started, while crime rates had also fallen.
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- The study's chief investigator, Louisa Degenhardt, said
morphine and benzodiazepines such as Valium had become increasingly popular,
as had pharmaceutical stimulants such as Ritalin and dexamphetamine.
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- While most of these drugs came as tablets, she said the
drug users surveyed were grinding the tablets up, dissolving them and injecting
them.
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- "There are obvious health risks associated with
this as tablets are not designed to go in your veins," she said. "But
their popularity comes from knowing exactly what you are getting."
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- The report, titled the Illicit Drug Reporting System,
found pharmaceutical use most prevalent in areas where heroin supply was
lowest, with 80 per cent of Northern Territory injecting drug users reporting
having recently injected pharmaceuticals, and 69 per cent in Tasmania.
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- But pharmaceutical use was also high this year in areas
where heroin was not in short supply. Half of those surveyed in the ACT
said they were injecting pharmaceuticals, as did 40 per cent in Queensland,
Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria. The NSW rate was 20 per
cent.
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- Alex Wodak, the director of St Vincent's Alcohol and
Drug Service, said: "What we're seeing here is not new, either nationally
or internationally. It's merely a trait which had just gone to sleep for
a while and has been rekindled."
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- Dr Wodak said the most likely sources of the drugs were
pharmacy or warehouse break-ins, people getting prescriptions from multiple
doctors, or users buying prescription drugs from cancer patients.
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- Copyright © 2003 The Sydney Morning Herald.
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- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/25/1069522604502.html
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