Drug harm reduction
David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (09:47): Last week we saw the release of two reports to relating to drug consumption in Australia: the Coroners Court’s Victorian Overdose Deaths, 2015–2024, and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s latest report on the national wastewater drug monitoring program. The coroner’s report reveals a depressingly familiar and persistent statistic. Deaths from overdoses continued to rise, from 547 in 2023 to 584 in 2024 – the highest death rate in a decade and more than double the road toll. Illicit drugs, notably heroin, methamphetamine, MDMA, cocaine and GHB, contributed to over 65 per cent of those overdose deaths. Significantly, cannabis does not feature in that list, and that is because no-one died from cannabis overdoses, and no-one ever has. Yet we know from the wastewater drug monitoring that cannabis continues to be the most consumed illicit drug. There is a correlation between these two datasets.
The profits from the sale of illicit cannabis are used by serious organised crime groups to fund the distribution, manufacture and importation of those very drugs that contribute to our unacceptably high overdose rate. Cannabis is, as a New South Wales police superintendent recently noted, the jet fuel of organised crime. We could deprive criminals of easy money, free up police to combat serious organised crime and redirect money to support our alcohol and other drug services by regulating cannabis. Victoria’s forthcoming AOD plan must include the regulation of cannabis if we are serious about reducing our overdose deaths.