Page 4928 - Week 13 - Thursday, 28 November 2019
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(1) The Member’s questions refer to recent media reports concerning the publication of Australia’s Annual Overdose Report 2019 by the Pennington Institute.
In commenting on the report’s findings, it is important to note a number of caveats on the data used. Firstly, the total number of deaths in the ACT is quite small and can create significant variances between years.
The report also highlights that while a single drug may be identified in an unintentional drug-induced death, it is rare for a death to be attributable to toxicity from a single drug, that deaths involving multiple drugs are the norm rather than the exception.
The Pennington analysis of unintentional drug-induced deaths is not an analysis of the total number of deaths each year over a 10-year period, but rather compares the total number of deaths that occurred between two 5-year periods.
The report compares the total number of deaths involving stimulant type drugs in the 5-years between 2003 and 2007 against the total number of deaths in the 5-years between 2013 and 2017. For the ACT in the period 2003-2007, there were 8 deaths involving stimulants, in the period 2013-2017 there were 25 deaths.
Nationally, stimulants as a drug group were involved in 417 unintentional drug-induced deaths in 2017. This represents a 200 per cent increase in the number of unintentional drug-induced deaths involving stimulants since 2012.
Across Australia, a 2016 summary found that 1.4 per cent of people aged 14 years or older reported using amphetamines in the previous year 1. However, despite this low proportion of use, amphetamines have grown as a substance identified as a principal drug of concern for treatment.
In 2013-2014 amphetamines was the principal drug of concern for 15 per cent of closed treatment episodes in the ACT, in 2017-2018 this figure has grown to 24 per cent of closed treatment episodes. 2
A recent NSW Ministry of Health report draws on multiple sources of data in order to support a comprehensive, balanced and up-to date understanding of the evidence around methamphetamine use and harms in NSW. This report concluded:
“Despite the continued low use of methamphetamine in the general community, there was a rapid increase from 2010 onwards in the number of people who experienced methamphetamine-related harm, with a peak in harms in 2016-17.
These harms were seen through methamphetamine-related emergency department presentations, hospital admissions and deaths. The level of methamphetamine-related harm remained high in 2017-18.
This suggests that a relatively small proportion of people in NSW with higher risk patterns of methamphetamine use have experienced rapidly increasing health and social harms from methamphetamine. 3
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