Fact file: The rise of ice and the changing face of Australian drug use
Crystal methamphetamine, known more commonly as ice, has emerged as a growing problem in the community.
Most recently the Prime Minister has announced a taskforce to combat ice, and there have been revelations the drug could be responsible for the suicide deaths of sailors in Western Australia.
But where does ice fit with Australian drug habits?
The United Nations estimates that around 243 million people around the world use illicit drugs each year, or 5.2 per cent of people aged between 15 and 64.
About 42 per cent of Australians say they have used illicit drugs at some time in their life, and almost 15 per cent said they had used illicit drugs in the past year.
But in terms of lives lost, legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol also present major problems to society.
ABC Fact Check takes a look at Australian drug use.
1.
There is growing concern about the use of the drug known as ice or crystalline methamphetamine. ABC Fact Check found some of the numbers being used to estimate the size of the problem were a bit rubbery.
According to a survey by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, around 2.1 per cent of Australians say they used methamphetamine or amphetamine drugs including ice, speed, base and prescription amphetamines in the past year.
Overall use of methamphetamines has actually fallen from a peak of 3.7 per cent of the population in 1998.
But the proportion of users taking the more potent ice has increased dramatically in recent years.
In 2013, 50.4 per cent of users said the main form of the drug they used was ice, up from 22 per cent in 2010.
Meanwhile the proportion using “speed” had fallen from around 51 per cent to 29 per cent.
2.
By far, the most commonly-used illicit drug in Australia is cannabis, with 10.2 per cent of Australians reporting using it in the past year.
35 per cent of Australians say they have used it at some time in their life. But the number of people who report recent cannabis use has fallen from a high of 17.9 per cent in 1998.
The next most popular illicit drug in Australia is ecstasy, well behind cannabis with 2.5 per cent of Australians saying they have used it in the past year.
A further 2.1 per cent of Australians say they have used cocaine in the past year, and the same number have used methamphetamines.
3.
Despite increasingly restrictive anti-smoking laws, and aggressive public health measures such as plain packaging, nicotine remains one of the most commonly used drugs in Australia.
16.1 per cent of Australians over the age of 18 smoke tobacco daily.
But the rate is declining. In 2001, 22.4 per cent of Australians over 16 smoked and in 2007-08 that number was down to 18.9 per cent.
Even though the number of Australians smoking is dropping, 15,000 Australians still die each year as a result of tobacco-related illness.
31 per cent of Australians say they used to smoke, but managed to quit, 51.1 per cent say they never smoked and 1.8 per cent smoke less than daily.
4.
Australians like a drink. Around one in three of us will have had an alcoholic beverage on a given day.
13 per cent have had wine, 11 per cent have had beer, and 2.1 per cent have had spirits.
Australians drink an average of the equivalent of 9.9 litres of pure alcohol each year, which sounds like a lot but that is less than the 13.1 litres consumed in the mid 1970s.
And while we are drinking less, our tastes have also changed. In the 1960s beer was the drink of choice, with 75 per cent of our alcohol consumption coming from beer.
That’s dropped to 41 per cent. Maybe because we’re drinking more wine.
While wine was only responsible for 12 per cent of our alcohol consumption in the 1960s, it now makes up 37 per cent.
5.
The average age of our first drink is around 15 and a half. And while 72.3 per cent of 12-17 year olds haven’t had a drink in the past year, 17 per cent of teens aged 15-18 say they had sex when drunk and later regretted it.
Friends or acquaintances supply the alcohol for 45.4 percent of the 12-17 year olds who are drinking, while 29.3 per cent get it from their parents.
6.
We hear a lot about the problem of young drinkers, but in fact the largest number of drinkers in any age group is men aged 51-70, 45.4 per cent of whom had a drink on a given day.
31.5 per cent of women of the same age had a drink.
Men aged 55-64 are the most likely to have more than the recommended limit of two drinks a day.
As for men in other age groups, 6.5 per cent of 14-19 year olds, 29.1 per cent of 19-30 year olds, 39.6 per cent of 31-50 year olds and 43.5 per cent of those over 70 say they had a drink in the past day.
7.
Drinking is more dangerous than driving. More than 5,500 Australians are killed by alcohol each year – twice as many as die as a result of road accidents.
An astonishing 157,132 Australians are hospitalized each year as a result of alcohol consumption.
But we are trying to drink less. 49 per cent of drinkers said they had cut down, mostly for health reasons.
Around 18 per cent of Australians exceed their “lifetime risk” of no more than two drinks a day – that gives them a greater than 1 per cent chance of dying from alcohol-related causes.
8.
Caffeine is the drug of choice for many Australians. 46 per cent of us drink coffee, compared with 38 per cent who drink tea.
It’s estimated that around two thirds of our 16.3 million daily cups of coffee are made from instant coffee powder, the other third from ground coffee beans.
According to one estimate, Australians over the age of 14 spend on average $8.60 a week or $447 per year on coffee bought away from home.
Coffee drinkers have an average of 330 mls of coffee per day, while tea drinkers have 400 mls of tea.
The biggest coffee drinkers are aged 31-50, while the biggest tea drinkers are 51 and over.
9.
Misuse of prescription drugs is a big problem. Around 4.7 per cent of the population misuse pharmaceutical drugs, most of those – around 3.3 per cent – misuse pain killers.