Tag Archive for: Drugs

‘High rollers’ A study of criminal profits along Australia’s heroin and methamphetamine supply chains

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This report helps develop an understanding of the quantum of profits being made and where in the value chain they occur. Australians spent approximately A$5.8 billion on methamphetamine and A$470 million on heroin in FY 2019.

Approximately A$1,216,806,017 was paid to international wholesalers overseas for the amphetamine and heroin that was smuggled into Australia in that year. The profit that remained in Australia’s economy was about A$5,012,150,000. Those funds are undermining Australia’s public health and distorting our economy daily, and ultimately funding drug cartels and traffickers in Southeast Asia.

One key takeaway from the figures presented in this report is that the Australian drug trade is large and growing. Despite the best efforts of law enforcement agencies, methamphetamine and heroin use has been increasing by up to 17% year on year. Falling prices in Southeast Asia are likely to keep pushing that number up, while drug prices and purity in Australia remain relatively stable.

Authors Dr John Coyne and Dr Teagan Westendorf write that, ‘While ever-larger drug busts continue to dominate the headlines, the underlying fact is that methamphetamine and heroin imports continue to rise despite authorities seizing up to 34% of imported drugs’.

As production prices for methamphetamine continue to decline along with wholesale prices, more sophisticated transnational organised crime actors are likely to begin to examine their business models in greater detail. Industrial production of methamphetamine for high-volume, low-profit regional markets like Australia has significant benefits for them.

The data suggests that the more sophisticated transnational organised crime groups will seek to expand their control of the heroin and methamphetamine value chains to include greater elements of the wholesale supply chain as well as alternative product lines, such as synthetic opioids.

The authors note that ‘in the absence of supply reduction, and even with more effective supply-chain disruption, our federal and state governments will need to invest more heavily in demand reduction and harm minimisation.’

Methamphetamine: Focusing Australia’s National Ice Strategy on the problem, not the symptoms

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In this report, law enforcement isn’t focused on arrests, prosecutions, custodial offences or seizures, as none of those will have a guaranteed impact on the problem. The focus is on means to reduce the availability of drugs, the disruption of user behaviour and the integration of education and health initiatives.

The report argues that the National Ice Strategy should consider three key points:

  1. Integration. Drug strategies have a better chance of being successful when each of its initiatives are integrated into a strategically focussed harm reduction strategy.
  2. Innovation. Education, health and enforcement stakeholder should be free from the limitations of wholly quantitative performance measures.
  3. Disruption. Initiatives to tackle the ice problem should be focussed towards the disruption of problems rather than the treatment of symptoms of the problem.

Tag Archive for: Drugs

Australia needs drug testing and opioid blockers to reduce overdose deaths

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In late 2019 I wrote an article about the growing problem of overdose deaths in Australia that has, sadly, continued to plague the country. In the most recent Penington Institute ‘overdose report’, we see that 2,070 people died from drug overdoses in 2018. That number has been growing and will continue to rise unless action is taken. And a greater proportion of overdose deaths are being caused by opioids, both prescription and non-prescription. The report shows that 1,556 of those deaths were identified as being unintentional. More recently, a report on drug trends released in April by the University of NSW’s National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre shows that the trend continued into 2019, with 1,865 overdose deaths, 61% of which were from opioids.

Australia is obviously not immune to the problems faced by other nations when it comes to addictions and drug abuse. The rampant opioid problem worldwide has been gaining ground in Australia and combined with the continuing use and abuse of other drugs like crystal methamphetamine, or ‘ice’, has gained a firm foothold. Recent reporting on Australian drug trends by the US-based Addictions Center describes a steadily increasing use of prescription opioids. Doctors currently write approximately 14 million prescriptions for opioids annually, which is of concern because 10% of those prescribed with them will become addicted. When we consider the concurrent continuing abuse of ice, the country is in crisis when it comes to managing drug addiction and the subsequent overdose problem.

The reaction, or perhaps non-reaction, to the growing drug problem should concern Australians as much as the problem itself. Foundation 61, a not-for-profit addictions facility in Geelong, states that the wait list for residential drug treatment has grown to new highs, with clients waiting 6 to 12 months on its waiting list for treatment, which now numbers 5,000 people in Victoria alone. The Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association, another treatment program option, advises that there are 2,500 people on its waitlist. Those sorts of examples are not unique to Victoria, and it’s clear that they’re not anomalies. Drug abuse has been growing across the country, perhaps even faster during the Covid-19 pandemic. But the ability to manage addictions has not grown. Fast and easy access to treatment is only possible for patients with approximately $30,000 available to pay for a private facility.

A recent report by Victorian Coroner Paresa Spanos into the tragic death of five men over a six month period, after ingesting what they believed to be ‘MDMA and/or magic mushrooms’, identified changes she believed were necessary for public safety. Her recommendations included an early warning system to flag indications of increased harm as a result of street drugs and a system in which users could have their drugs tested prior to use. The coroner observed that more must be done by those who have a duty of care, given the growing illegal drug market that includes drugs that are killing increasingly often.

As drug abuse trends continue to shift, there are serious impacts on the health and safety of those involved. Some may argue that drug abusers have made personal life decisions and that they ought to expect bad things to happen to them, but the stark reality is that after 40 years in public service, including 32 years in policing, I know that no family, community, culture, socio-economic group or individual is safe from addiction. We have a responsibility as a society to focus on doing what we can to save lives, including those of drug abusers and addicts. I argue that we have a duty of care to all of our fellow citizens, drug abusers or not. I agree with Spanos that more must be done to reduce the harm if it is within our capability to do so—and I would argue that it is.

If we want to reverse the growing trend of overdose deaths, naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of opioids, must be distributed to everyone who is interacting with those who are dying, including the police. As well, it is time that we follow Spanos’s recommendation and make pill and drug testing available. Both would be first steps towards meeting the duty of care that people working in harm prevention, including police officers, have towards society and its citizens.

Disruption of Mexican organised crime threats using police-to-police cooperation

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I’d like to thank Rolando Ochoa for his response to, and overarching support for, my recent research report on Mexican organised crime (MOC) in Australia and the ASEAN region. Before responding to Ochoa’s specific comments, though, I feel that it’s worth revisiting the drivers and aim of the research that underpinned the report.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a tsunami of published research on MOC activity in Mexico and the US. As highlighted in the report, Australian law enforcement agencies, as well as their international partners in the Asia–Pacific, have for some time been observing increased MOC involvement in regional transnational organised crime ventures. Unfortunately, there’s a dearth of research on MOC expansion in the Asia–Pacific.

To be frank, while academics and many law enforcement agencies understand the differences between MOC and the various types of street gangs and cartels, those nuances aren’t as well understood by other stakeholders in Australian and regional public policy dialogue (see here as an example).

With that in mind, I focused on the transnational and expeditionary dimensions of MOC as it relates to Australia and the Asia–Pacific. Understanding Mexican street gangs in Mexico is less important to Australian and ASEAN policymakers than exploring and unpacking the transnational expansion of MOC and dispelling the myths surrounding the transnational activities of gangs (such as MS-13) with cartels.

In the final paragraph of the recommendations chapter of my report, I argued that:

When dealing with a clearly ethnically and geographically defined criminal threat such as Mexican OC, it’s easy to provide recommendations to increase international police-to-police liaison through measures such as increased funding of offshore police officers. Such oversimplistic strategies fail to engage with the complexities of international police-to-police liaison. In the case of Mexico and the US, both are busy areas of police operations and capacity development. Increasing effective liaison efficiently is no easy task, and only a small amount of crime in those regions has a nexus with China, ASEAN or Australia. Therefore, Australia’s international law enforcement engagement strategy needs to be set with a clear view on how engagement will contribute to the Australian Government’s criminal intelligence support for decision-making, or to the National Organised Crime Response Plan.

So, rather than being ‘puzzling’, the absence of recommendations about cooperation between Australian and Mexican authorities is underpinned by a deep understanding of police-to-police cooperation. With a limited, and shrinking, international policing budget, it’s critical for policymakers to be judicious with the allocation of resources. It’s understandable that the US would invest so much treasure into cooperation with Mexican security forces: they’re neighbours, after all. But, with a limited budget, modest Australian capacity development in Mexico is unlikely to have any meaningful impact on the threat posed by MOC in the Asia–Pacific. And it would arguably come at a cost of police-to-police cooperation and capacity development closer to home. Let’s also not forget that Australia can leverage the US relationships in Mexico to share intelligence.

Contrary to Ochoa’s commentary, the report does make reference, albeit often implied, to the destabilising impacts of the war on drugs. Nevertheless, the wider war on drugs and the Mexican security crisis have had little impact on the availability of illicit drugs in the US. Arguably, the US cocaine and methylamphetamine market is saturated, with little room for further growth. In economic terms, the US illicit drug market is oversupplied, which is resulting in downward pressures on retail drug prices. I posit that MOC expansion in the Asia–Pacific region has much more to do with economic opportunity for profit growth (in high-profit, low-volume and low-profit, high-volume markets) than with the war on drugs.

Fentanyl—Australia must learn from the tragic toll in the US and Canada

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There are lessons for Australia in the soaring death toll across the United States and Canada from the potent opioid fentanyl. Over the past five years, easy availability at relatively low prices has made this synthetic drug much more accessible on the streets and it has replaced heroin for many users and addicts.

Believed to be 25 to 50 times stronger than heroin, fentanyl was designed as a prescription drug to relieve the intense pain of patients such as cancer sufferers. The fentanyl causing carnage on the streets is primarily produced in illegal laboratories and sold on street corners.

Since 2014, the US and Canada have recorded steep increases in illegal fentanyl use, resulting in accidental overdoses and deaths and triggering fear in the drug use community as well as among law enforcement and health professionals. Some jurisdictions have identified a 400% to 700% rise in opioid overdose deaths. Government, law enforcement and health officials have responded on several fronts. It’s now illegal to possess precursor chemicals (ingredients) for fentanyl in Canada, and health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US and Health Canada are providing strategic advice to state and provincial authorities on how to combat the drug’s impact.

The US Drug Enforcement Agency and Royal Canadian Mounted Police have focused considerable effort on reducing the volume of precursors being shipped from China, a key source of ingredients. At the urging of US officials, China has taken steps to stop exports, at least to the US.

Few in Australia would have registered that illicit fentanyl was such a problem until it was implicated in the accidental overdose death last year of pop star Prince.

Meeting the challenge Australia faces in combatting fentanyl won’t be easy. The Australian Border Force has warned that the drug’s potency could cause a wave of unintended overdose deaths here, on a similar scale to those in North America.

The president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, Alex Wodak, said last year that the deaths of 13 drug users in Sydney could be related to the arrival on that city’s streets of drugs boosted with fentanyl. NSW Coroner Michael Barnes issued a warning about a deadly batch of heroin that appeared to be causing overdoses. Victims were overwhelmed very quickly and were found with syringes still in their hands.

There’s much to be learned from the tragedy in the US and Canada. They were slow to take the threat seriously; local authorities raised concerns but national authorities ignored the country-wide impact fentanyl would ultimately have. Australia has one key advantage, as it has been combatting a flow of illegal methamphetamine and precursors from China for many years. With China continuing to be an exporter of fentanyl precursors into a number of countries, the head of the Australian Border Force, Roman Quaedvlieg, has warned that the ‘dark net’ is being used to provide the same access into Australia.

The fentanyl precursors typically being shipped from China are in powder form and are used by illicit Australian manufacturers to either lace the narcotics they already produce or to manufacture other opioids, sometimes using pill presses to simulate prescription drugs such as oxycodone. The manufacturing and sale of counterfeit pills is also resulting in accidental deaths since they’re being made without the pharmacological scrutiny that controls production of legitimate medication. The challenge with more commonly used illicit drugs being laced with material such as fentanyl is that the user seldom knows what they are taking, which increases the chances of accidental overdoses and death. Users who believe they are buying a genuine drug may inadvertently take too high a dose because of the inexact production methods.

Australia has a head start in dealing with this scourge, in that it can immediately urge Chinese authorities to stem the flow of precursors now being sourced by illicit manufacturers. Australia can also look to Canada and the US for strategies that have helped ease the damage there, including improving access to naloxone, which can temporarily reverse the impact of an opioid overdose, saving the victim’s life. It has been used thousands of times in the past year in Canada and is now widely available—police, paramedics, fire services, and even schools and the public commonly carry kits that contain the life-saving drug.

Educating the broader Australian public will also be crucial. Many of the victims of fentanyl overdoses are occasional drug users, not hardened addicts.

Sometimes, law enforcement and health authorities are given the opportunity to learn from other nations’ fatal mistakes. If Australia is willing to engage, learn and take this challenge on early, it will have a good chance of saving lives.

Homeland security: back on the government’s agenda?

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Image courtesy of Pixabay user TeroVesalainen.

Rumours are circulating around Canberra that as the Budget dust settles, the government will again consider the case for an Australian Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This should come as no surprise as Malcolm Turnbull told us as much in early January when he said he’d await the findings of the 2017 Independent Review of the Australian Intelligence Community before making any decisions. And let’s not forget that both the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, and the architect of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection Secretary, Mike Pezzullo, have both been championing the idea.

But at the same time, there’s no shortage of opposition to an Australian DHS. The various domestic security agency heads, at least according to what’s on the public record, remain opposed to the idea. Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has called it unnecessary. In mid-January ASPI’s Executive Director, Peter Jennings, provided a strong argument against bringing ‘together the AFP, ASIO and Australian Border Force into one agency, where they could better engage, communicate and share information to tackle terror threats’ on the basis that when it comes to counterterrorism, ‘the system isn’t broken’.

Australia’s success in disrupting terrorism plots and preventing the travel of potential foreign fighters illustrates that the policy settings for CT in Australia are working. While it’s difficult to assess from outside the intelligence community, Australia’s continued intelligence cooperation with the US stands as an indicator that ASIO’s counterespionage efforts are also in a reasonably good state. But there’s far more to domestic security than CT and counterintelligence.

Australia’s strategies and policies for dealing with transnational serious and organised crime (TSOC) and illicit drugs don’t have anywhere near the same level of coordination or success. In October 2015 Australia’s National Ice Taskforce told us as much when it said ‘despite the efforts of law enforcement agencies, the market for ice remains strong. Ice is still easy to get and its price remains stable’. In June 2016 the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) estimated that serious and organised crime cost Australia $36 billion in FY 2013–14, which hardly supports the conclusion that things are working.

While our law enforcement agencies, including the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Border Force (ABF), have achieved outstanding operational results, the fact remains that the government’s policy intent of reducing the availability of illicit drugs and impact of organised crime aren’t being achieved. And ABF, ACIC and AFP key performance measures indicate that this can be attributed to policy and strategy settings rather than operational efforts.

While CT and cybersecurity garner a great deal of whole-of-government coordination, the same cannot be said for TSOC and illicit drug policy, starting with their representation in cabinet and other relevant committees. The fact that the minister responsible for law enforcement and organised crime, the Justice Minister, is a junior member of cabinet, without membership of the National Security Committee is particularly telling.

I believe that this arrangement has second order impacts on the bureaucracy that are particularly evident in initiatives such as Australia’s Foreign Policy White Paper. The White Paper will ‘define our economic, security and foreign policy interests’. but reportedly, it has paid scant attention to the coordination of police diplomacy, including law enforcement capacity development and police-to-police cooperation. That’s despite the fact that both issues are integral to Australia’s strategies to combat TSOC. And seems to fly in the face of the National Ice Task Force recommendations which stated that ‘The Commonwealth Government should strengthen international advocacy and engagement on cooperation and information sharing between law enforcement agencies’.

We should also consider the Commonwealth’s domestic security response to intelligence sharing on organised crime. Within the ACIC there are three separate task forces for fusing and sharing intelligence on organised crime: Australian Gangs Intelligence Coordination Centre, National Criminal Intelligence Fusion Centre and National Taskforce Morpheus. Then within the Department of Immigration and Border Protection we have the Border Intelligence Fusion Centre. And finally the AFP has remodelled its intelligence function to enhance the ‘identification of convergences and vulnerabilities in criminal activity across investigations to streamline targeting of organised criminals’. While each serves a specific function, the question remains, could they be better performed by a centralised effort akin to the National Threat Assessment Centre model?

When it comes to law enforcement, taskforce arrangements are increasingly the “go to” policy response to threat related operations and intelligence collaboration challenges. The task force approach has been used around the world since the late 1990s to resolve tensions at the intersection of superimposed enforcement jurisdictions. Some academic research has revealed that the taskforce approach still doesn’t improve intelligence dissemination. My own research revealed that at the very least, ‘task forces have led to a range of instances of multiple reporting of TOC statistics’. Arguably, these ad hoc arrangements may just serve to obfuscate the need for more reform.

I believe that, in contrast with other domestic security issues, law enforcement and TSOC policy settings are in dire need of a review. While a single agency structure, such as a US-style Department of Homeland Security, might be one means of improving the situation, there are other options for Australia to consider. At the very least there’s substantial room to re-examine the assumptions that underpin Australia’s law enforcement policies and strategies. For my money, Australia’s domestic security arrangements could benefit from a centralised and focussed policy department that coordinates our national domestic security strategies.

The Beat

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Dallas Buyers Club

This week in The Beat, a national ‘ice’ task force, a visit to wildlife crime’s chamber of horrors,’ AFL and illicit drug use, and a potentially game-changing verdict for film and television piracy.

National ‘ice’ task force

The Australian Crime Commission recently revealed crystal methamphetamine—also known as ‘ice’—to be the biggest illicit drug problem they face. This week Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced a national task force to deal with this growing issue, which will look at local, state and federal government efforts to counter use of the drug and focus on how to improve health facilities, education about ice and law enforcement strategies to prevent its use.

The task force will be coordinated by retiring Victorian police commissioner Ken Lay and, importantly, report to both Justice Minister Michael Keenan and Assistant Health Minister Fiona Nash. Their first step will be to develop a national strategy and a report to take to the next Council of Australian Governments.

Wildlife crime’s ‘chamber of horrors’

The illicit wildlife trade remains a concerning aspect of transnational crime, and is often overlooked by the Australian press. This Lateline report reveals that wildlife crime can generate up to $40 billion a year. It also refers to cases where wildlife trafficking has funded terrorist organisations because of the relatively low risk—especially compared to drug or arms trafficking.

The report features a visit to the United States National Property Repository, dubbed a ‘chamber of horrors’ filled with poorly-done taxidermy, endangered and young animal specimens, and body parts of animals made into everyday items, such as wastepaper bins. A warning:some might find the images and footage in this report shocking (especially those with good taste).

AFL and drugs

Last week we discussed the increasing prevalence of organised crime in European football leagues, and it appears Australian sport isn’t immune either. Former Justice Minister Jason Clare has expressed regret over the former government’s role in the release of the Crime Commission’s 2013 Organised Crime Drugs in Sport report, while also condemning the use of illicit substances in sport.

Those claims have been supported by senior figures within the AFL, who claim that the battle against illicit drugs is not being won and that the three-strike policy on illegal drugs is not conducive to countering its use. This comes after two Collingwood players tested positively for performance-enhancing substances, with speculation that this could have come from illicit drug use.

Organised crime and you

One of the biggest misconceptions about organised crime is that it is limited to the dodgier areas of our cities. Therefore, it’s easy for us to distance ourselves from it.

However, David and Connery and I argue in the Herald Sun that the breadth and scale of serious and organised crime potentially affects each of us through our daily activities. This has been exacerbated by the growing amount of cybercrime, which increases the numbers of people affected due to our increasing dependence on cyber capabilities. If we look at organised crime through the lens of ‘non-compliance,’ it often becomes much more obvious in our day-to-day interactions.

Film piracy verdict

Speaking of ‘everyday’ organised crime,  Australians are world-class illegal downloaders; one source lists Australia being the biggest illegal downloader of HBO’s Game of Thrones with 11.6% of downloads, and the city of Melbourne as the top location for illegal downloads of the series. Even former US Ambassador Jeffery Bleich has pleaded with the Australian public to stop pirating the show. A lack of service availability and competitively-priced models has been blamed for this trend.

However, a potentially game-changing verdict was handed down this week. The Federal Court ordered internet providers such as iiNet to release the identities of over 4,700 customers whose accounts were allegedly used to download the Oscar-winning film Dallas Buyers Club illegally.

Piracy is sometimes perceived amongst the community as a victimless crime and that downloading a show illegally has no tangible negative consequences. Think again. There have been a number of documented cases where film piracy has financed terrorist activities.

The Beat

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George Brandis was the unfortunate victim of trolling this week

On The Beat this week: Europol’s latest organised crime report, cybercrime vs drug trafficking, the National Identity Security Strategy, security funding for Australian schools and the case against metadata retention.

Europol and tomorrow’s organised crime

Europol has published a report Exploring Tomorrow’s Organised Crime providing a forward-looking assessment of the key drivers that’ll impact Europe’s organised crime threat landscape, including new markets, changes to criminal structures, and new ways to launder profits.

The report predicts the decline of traditional hierarchical criminal groups and networks and the rise of a more opportunistically-connected virtual community. The breakdown of networks and tracing of individual criminal operators will be but some of the challenges to face law enforcement. Read more