How many pills would Australia consume in a weekend?

Do you think we could work it out. How many pills do we consume in a week or a month and eventually a year?

-- average number of pills dropped,

--numbers of clubs in different states.

-- number of raves and numbers on the weekend.

-- house parties and miscellaneous

--bush doofs (never been but i assume theres a couple around)

im actually thinking about the financial aspect of it, but as per guidelines no discussion on price should be neccessary.

i think this is more suited for Aus DD, im moving it there

Just ask everyone on the census form what their average pill consumption each weekend is... add up all the answers!

BigTrancer

well i will be consuming 2 pills in 3 hours.

theirs one done. just a few thosand to go :D

I found myself wondering the exact same thing one day while I was driving into the city for a night out...

When you think about it, it's gotta be tens, if not hundreds of thousands...

But, I wouldn't want to even hazard a guess because there's just no way you'll ever know

I'd say it's probably in the vicinity of just a few more than the amount of people that die from taking it... 8)

^^^ yeah, just one or two

(though what i meant to say was "drugs are bad they give you teh dead!")

im going to estimate the number for sydney.

can someone do the estimate for perth, melb, qld and nt. actually...nt???

After you've calculated this...I'm curious to find out the relative number of brain cells lost nationally.

As it's impossible to accurately calculate this figure, won't someone just pick a number for arguments sake? We are only speculating, but just what are your thoughts?


NOTE this is not based upon any figures, I gave up trying to add all the night clubs up with a capacity of >500. And just how does one estimate the number of weddings, anniversaries doofs and house parties in a given weekend, not to mention those going to movies, shoppers, beach goers, etc, of amongst whom I'm sure we'd find a fairly consistant average of pill poppers?

OK, ready for flames and disagreement.

In a broad sense of reckoning, considering an individual average is probably greater than 1 pill (consumed amount over 1-2 nights), then at least
1 million would likely go nationally on a big weekend such as Mardi Gras or NYE, with most probably being gobbled on the main night.

So, is that very far out from your *estimation*?

LiquidMethod

i reckon anywhere between 10,000 to 50,000 pills per weekend nationally.

its big business!

I have a friend who is with the qld police, and he reckons 30 to 40 000 would be eaten every weekend here in brisbane alone. He based this on the amount of pills they confiscate every year, and the assumption that they get about 3% of the total amount circulating. Far from scientific, but i think as accurate as any guess.

3%: Is that all?

Interesting figures bobrick. I'm surprised to hear a figure of 3% as the estimation of seized pills. I always thought claim was to around 10%. I wonder if this is a revised figure indicating police are unable to keep up with importation or whether 10% was an across the board figure (nationally).

The 30-40K sounds reasonable. What would other states' figures be in relation to their seizure figures? If Brisbane is average [?] then nationally this is ~200K per week normally. I guess that makes my estimation of NYE seem feasible given that there's easily 5 times as many revellers out for the night on such occasions

i think PD is a lot closer to the figure than banga, although i'd tend to be a bit more conservative.

for a nation of 20 million people, i'd say if on any given weeked, 250 000 people dropping pills (approx 1.25% of the population of a weekend) would be a fair estimate. keep in mind that a while the figure of pillers vs drinkers in the nightclub scene is big and getting bigger the LARGEST proportion of the population doesn't even go out. Then you have all the 50+ population, where the consumption would be negligible, and the U18 consumption, which would make up maybe 25-50 thousand of the 250 000 at the absolute max.
Then there is the fact that people that take pills won't take them every weekend, so if on average people drop pills once every 3 weeks, then there are 750 000 people taking pills in total, which equates to 3.75% of the population. can someone check the last National Drug report thing, to find out the actual percentage of ecstacy users amongst the population?

anyway back to the total pills. lets say on average that 2-3 pills are consumed each by pillers each weekend. that would mean that there are about 500 000 to 750 000 ecstacy tablets consumed nationally each weekend. this equates to about 2-3 million every month, or 24-36 million each year (excluding the big holidays like new years etc).
thats a helluva lot of money and drugs exchanging hands...

keep in mind that this is a massive guesstimate based on my impressions of drug use amongst the wider community, and i've tried to be as realistic but conservative as possible. if someone could find out the latest figures of drug usage in australia then i'm sure we could come up with a more accurate figure...

I'm not sure of the exact number, but I reckon that DJ Bold would have at least a half of them on a good weekend

The figure of 10% is a mythical figure that drug law enforcement agencies have used sinced the late sixties, the truth of the matter is that the seized drug is a much better indicator of law enforcement activity rather than the true amount of drugs out there or even an indicator of demand which would fluctuate from drug to drug and state to state. In reality the figure of 10% is prolly giving the supply reduction efforts of police and customs too much credit- around 5% is prolly closer to mark

It's ALL guess work. The number is sure to be a large number, but in comparison to the number of people going out every weekend, and the number getting drunk, it's a small number.

BigTrancer

i think the number would be alot higher than anyone is guessing.

sydneys numbers would be off the hook, be in the hundreds of 1000's if i was to place a wager.

its not uncommon for people to have 10 and do that multiple times a week.

ya gotta remember that for some people its not a lifestyle.... it is their life
and unfortunatly i know some fools that could own penthouses if they didn't eat all their work.

i think it's hard to put an estimate on a number as there are so many new people coming into the scene every week.

But my guess would be around 150,000 - 350,000 depending on the weekend.

When you think about it thats alot of fucken pills :D

ok, i'm gonna take a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess) at this taking a very liberal approach:

population of ~20,000,000
say half of it is the right drug taking age = ~10,000,000,
say only half of those eligible do "drugs" = ~5,000,000,
of those, say half eat pills = ~2,500,000,
and if an average consumer doses every 4 weeks, = ~625,000,
and say each chows 2 per sess, =~1,250,000....

this is likely toward the maximum, the guesses were very much that but even playing around w/this is fun ;-)