Media release

From: Australian Science Media Centre

The latest data from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at UNSW paints a mixed picture of drug use in the country.

One in five young Australians who regularly use psychostimulant drugs report consuming a drug of unknown contents, almost half report mental health problems and a quarter have experienced an adverse event related to their drug use, according to the Ecstasy and Related Drugs Reporting System (EDRS) report. In more positive news, use of ice (crystal methamphetamine) has continued to decline in this group - just 13 per cent reported ice use in the previous six months, down from 52 per cent when the reports began in 2003.

However, people who inject drugs regularly - surveyed separately as part of the Illicit Drugs Reporting System (IDRS) - still report a high rate of ice use; two thirds had used the drug in the past six months. But the proportion of survey respondents who reporting recent ice use fell by 5 per cent from a peak of 73 per cent in 2016 to 68 per cent in 2017.

The reports were produced as part of NDARC’s National Drug Trends monitoring program, and will be released on Wednesday at NDARC’s Annual Symposium at UNSW Sydney.

Also being presented at the symposium is a study which found that adolescent teenagers who drank to cope with anxiety or depression were two times more likely to progress to high-risk drinking over the transition to adulthood. An NDARC team has developed an online intervention for at risk teenagers which will be trialled in Australia later this year.

And another study to be reported shows that, while more young Aussies are abstaining from drinking alcohol altogether, one in five continues to drink at risky levels. The research looked at the context of that risky drinking, including what was consumed, and what the consequences were for young Australians.

Join us for this online briefing when experts will discuss the findings.

Speakers:

• Professor Alison Ritter is Director of the Drug Policy Modelling Program (DPMP) at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at UNSW
• Amanda Roxburgh is a Senior Research Officer with the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at UNSW
• Dr Lexine Stapinski is a Senior Research Fellow and Clinical Psychologist at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at UNSW
• Dr Tina Lam is a Research Fellow at the National Drug Research Institute (NDRI) at Curtin University

Date: Fri 29 Sep 2017
Start Time: 10:30am AEST
Duration: Approx 45 min
Venue: Online