Territory Stories

NT drug trends 2005 : findings from the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS)

Details:

Title

NT drug trends 2005 : findings from the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS)

Collection

Northern Territory drug trends; E-Journals; PublicationNT; NDARC technical report ; no. 243

Date

2006

Description

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.

Notes

Date:2006

Language

English

Subject

Drug abuse -- Northern Territory -- Statistics -- Periodicals; Drug abuse -- Northern Territory -- Periodicals; Drug abuse surveys -- Northern Territory -- Periodicals

Publisher name

National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales

Place of publication

Sydney

Series

NDARC technical report ; no. 243

ISBN

0733423469

Copyright owner

Check within Publication or with content Publisher.

Parent handle

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/226817

Citation address

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/678172

Page content

81 12.0 IMPLICATIONS The findings of the 2005 NT IDRS imply that: The use of diverted pharmaceuticals and related harms should be monitored with particular attention paid to the impact of changes in S8 prescribing practices on the illicit drug market. Research should be conducted to better understand the relation between prescribing practices, pharmaceutical diversion and the supply of pharmaceuticals to the illicit market. Given warnings from key experts, it may be appropriate to further monitor patterns and prevalence of benzodiazepine use, along with consideration for the clinical need for their prescription by medical practitioners and other health professionals. With the continuing increases in borrowing and lending used needles, and also the key expert reports of re-using needles, there needs to be an increased focus on the development and distribution of educational material regarding the dangers of sharing injecting equipment. Research should be conducted to better understand the determinants or predictors of unsafe injecting. Given the concerns raised by key experts around cannabis use and related mental health issues, reasons for the decline in treatment episodes where cannabis is the principal drug of concern should be investigated and treatment agencies should be encouraged to give more attention to the potential to reduce the harms associated with cannabis use. The illicit drug market in the NT should continue to be monitored for changes in price, purity and availability trends, and evidence of increasing harms.