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Research article detailing patterns of drug use in Australia

Doooofus

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Nov 2, 2003
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I'm in the middle of an assignment related to drug use for a criminology course - I'm looking to find a simple journal article demonstrating that Australian youth drug use has increased in the last decade. I've tried searching a number of databases but everything seems to be investigating a particular theory or is observing overseas samples. I'm looking for something very simple just to demonstrate that drug use amongst young Australians has increased recently.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated :)
 
You might want to try and find statistics for individual years. This paper, for example, lists stats for 1996 (see section 9.6). Then, find statistics for subsequent years and show the changes from there.
 
redefine your search key words in your library database, and ofcourse go to Journals section of website and do the serch there. AFP database/SAGE database/ProQuest
 
There's no evidence that youth drug use has increased in Australia in the last decade. Apart from Ecstasy, illicit drug use rates are down. Do a search for "Australian National Household Survey" and also "Victorian Student Drug Use" and you'll find two of the major studies tracking drug use rates in Australia.
 
How did you go with the paper?

Flexistentialist is right; apart from ecstasy, increases are hard to find in Australian data over the last 10 years. Despite what you might think if you watch commercial current affairs channels ;)
 
You will find articles by Cameron Duff saying that drug use has normalised among youth, but not increased. I agree with the above posters - the NDSHS and ASSAD surveys will be your best bet for prevalence data.
 
Hey Doooofus, I think we're doing the same course! :D

I'm finding it hard to find articles and surveys that support drug use increasing, but if you pick and choose which statistics to include I guess it's possible to come up with that argument. I've actually found a lot that says drug use is going down.

Also (if we really are doing the same course) I think the essay is more about how we use either routine activities or social control theory to explain the change rather than how much info we find to support it.
 
How about mentioning drinking and tobacco use amongst young Australians as well? Would be a good basis for comparison.
 
I'm finding it hard to find articles and surveys that support drug use increasing, but if you pick and choose which statistics to include I guess it's possible to come up with that argument.

In the last gen pop. survey of drug use, only cocaine and ecstasy saw an increase; everything else decreased. Even among sentinel groups of drug users (e.g. people who regularly use ecstasy or inject drugs) there have been declines in the past few years in the proportion reporting the use of certain drugs. No matter how you try and spin it, a decline is a decline.

What you *might* want to look at is whether there have been increases in the frequency of use or quantities of use among those who continue to use.
 
How about a survey on how accurate present surveys are?

Both from discussions with users, and our own intervention data, it's more than evident that there's an alarming rise in the numbers of people who will do anything NOT to reveal their drug use, even if that's in confidence with medical professionals. It even extends to within 'safe' environments with friends. Times have changed, and like discriminated groups of the past and present, many users now choose – or are forced to choose - to live in silence.

The alarming part of this is that if drug use is seen to be decreasing while it is actually doing the opposite, policies intended to curb or reform current laws, or better facilitate for the health of users are made on the basis of inaccurate information. I recently spoke with two young people who did a phone based survey where questions about drug use were raised. They both said they lied about their usage, fearing reprisal. How many other "never used" responses fall into this category?

To put it mildly, it's truly interesting when present policy is founded on lies produced by past policies which in turn forced users into the proverbial closet. It reminds me somewhat of the Gay and Suffragette movements, although in many ways this present discrimination of drug users has more serious and far reaching implications to any who sit or fall on this side of the fence. With ~50% of Australians having tried cannabis at one time or another, and the enormous numbers of <40 year olds who’ve tried MDMA, the overall drug using part of modern society is hardly a minority, yet the level of discrimination shown towards drug users far outweighs the battles most other minority groups of modern society have had to endure.
 
As is usually the case, you make a lot of sense. I agree with your concerns.

What we are really measuring here is 'self-reported drug use'. If things have changed culturally to inhibit self-report, then these decreases may be decreases in willingness to self-report rather than decreases in actual use.

This is a very good idea for further research. *lightbulb*!
 
P_D I have wondered about this myself. 10 years of conservative government can really inhibit how freely people will disclose certain activities.

The biggest drop in self-reported drug use is for cannabis - and given that's always been the most used illicit drug, any shift in cannabis usage can mask trends in other drugs used to some extent (when looking at overall figures anyway). It's possible that cannabis use has in fact gone down to some extent - makes me wonder if increased media attention to booze and violence (particularly in Melbourne anyway) might actually reflect more pissing on and less choofing??
 
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