FDS Insight Magazine Jun - Sep 2023

22 The former Coalition government introduced a discretionary infringement notice for low-level drug offenders off the back of the ice inquiry, but stopped short of the recommendation from commissioner Dan Howard, SC, to decriminalise drugs in NSW. In 2019, then-Labor leader Jodi McKay backed pill testing at music festivals after the coronial report into music festival deaths also recommended its introduction. A government spokesperson did not specify what issues would be on the agenda at the summit, but said it would bring together health and medical experts, police, advocates and families ‘to build consensus on the way NSW deals with drug use and misuse’. Australia ranks third for opioid deaths: National drug crisis revealed Elena Couper, new.com.au (14/6/23) he extent of Australia’s drug crisis has been revealed, with the country following the United States and Canada to rank third for the highest number of opioid overdose deaths. New data from Medical Aid revealed opioid-related deaths have increased by 14 per cent since the turn of the century, and in 2019 were up to 5.38 deaths in every 100,000 Aussies. For the same year this compares to 16.61 and 7.10 deaths per 100,000 people in the US and Canada respectively. Across the globe there has been a 43 per cent increase in drug overdose deaths since 2000, up from 89,718 to 128,083 in 2019. The number of deaths caused by opioid overdoses specifically has risen by nearly 50 per cent over the same time frame, with the number of people struggling with opioid addiction expanding from 14.13m to 21.39m. Additional research conducted by the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) found half of Australia’s opioid-related deaths in 2020 involved heroin, followed by natural and semisynthetic opioids such as codeine or morphine at 32 per cent. A medically supervised injecting room in Richmond, Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire/L. Enrique Ascui Data collected by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre found drug-induced deaths had increased on average by 3.5 per cent each year over the past two decades. T