Substance Abuse info help

[Doogan]

In three months im required to present a 20-30min seminar on Substance Abuse in Australia for a component in my course and am trying to collect as much information on:

Policies from both for and against, Solcial values, statistics on war on drugs, how much australia spends each year, stigmas, personal reflections, government misconceptions and overall information on total failure of the war on drugs.

If anyone here can point me to the right directions, provide links, press release titles, AFP media releases, or books this would be much appreciated.

 

[yossarian_is_sane!]

www.enlighten.org.au would be a good start. They have some good links on the front page of their website.

 

[hoptis]

This thread might be a good place to start.

statistics on mdma use in Australia

Can I ask what your course is?

 

[sushii]

Originally posted by Doogan
Policies from both for and against, Solcial values, statistics on war on drugs, how much australia spends each year, stigmas, personal reflections, government misconceptions and overall information on total failure of the war on drugs.

That's an awful lot of ground to cover in half an hour! How much detail are you wanting to go into?

These websites might be useful for policies/statistics/critical analysis of drug policy:

Australian Institute of Criminology: www.aic.gov.au
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare: www.aihw.gov.au (you can find the national drug strategy household surveys here)
The ABS: www.abs.gov.au
The National Drug Strategy: http://www.nationaldrugstrategy.gov.au/

For a history of Australian drug laws, Desmond Manderson's "From Mr. Sin to Mr. Big" is an excellent read.

 

[Tronica]

Let us know what course you are doing. Sounds like you will learn a lot for this project; here are some recommended readings:

Drug Law Reform: Beyond Prohibition, by The Australia Institute
(find it in the publications section, they don't give a direct link)

Monographs from the Drug Policy Modelling Project
(this includes a paper on the current spending on illicit drugs in Australia as well as policy analysis & trends)

A must to read is: National Drug Strategy Household Survey - detailed findings
(this survey is the largest drug trends survey in Australia)

For a document you can cite in your paper on personal experiences/perspectives on drug policy in Australia, have a read of Bluelight's submission to the recent Senate inquiry.