NT Drug Trends 2009 : Findings from the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS)
Northern Territory drug trends; PublicationNT; E-Journals
2010
Made available via the Publications (Legal Deposit) Act 2004 (NT).; This publication contains may contain links to external sites. These external sites may no longer be active.
C. Moon
English
Drug abuse -- Northern Territory -- Statistics -- Periodicals; Drug abuse -- Northern Territory -- Periodicals; Drug abuse surveys -- Northern Territory -- Periodicals
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre; University of New South Wales
Sydney (N.S.W.)
Australian Drug Trends Series No. 44
Check within Publication or with content Publisher.
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/261141
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/488949
16 1 INTRODUCTION This report presents the results of the 2009 Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) for the Northern Territory (NT). The IDRS is coordinated by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) which is part of the University of New South Wales. It is jointly funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing (AGDH&A) and by the National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund (NDLERF). As a jointly funded project, the IDRS demonstrates the shared recognition by AGDA&A and NDLERF of the value of collaborative work between the sectors of health and law enforcement to identify and address issues relating to supply, demand, and use of illicit drugs. The purpose of the IDRS is to provide a standardised, comparable approach to the monitoring of data relating to the use of opiates, cocaine, methamphetamine and cannabis. It is intended to act as a strategic early warning system identifying emerging drug problems of national and jurisdictional concern. In the NT, a partial IDRS, not including the participants survey, was conducted by the then Territory Health Services (now NT Department of Health and Community Services (DHCS)) in 1999. In 2000 and 2001, the full methodology was conducted through the then Northern Territory University (now Charles Darwin University). Since 2002, the full IDRS has been conducted by the NT DHCS. Reports of these studies are available to download from the NDARC website. Reports of the IDRS findings for individual states and territories are published by NDARC, and each year NDARC produces and publishes a national report presenting an overall picture and comparing jurisdictions. 1.1 Study aims The specific aims of the NT component of the IDRS are: to monitor the price, purity and availability of a range of illicit drug classes in the NT; and to identify emerging trends in illicit drug use and the illicit drug market in the NT.