Australian Drug Trends 2023:

Key findings from the National Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) Interviews

Published on the 09 October 2023 by Rachel Sutherland, Julia Uporova, Cate King, Udesha Chandrasena, Antonia Karlsson, Fiona Jones, Daisy Gibbs, Olivia Price, Paul Dietze, Simon Lenton, Caroline Salom, Raimondo Bruno, Joanna Wilson, Seraina Agramunt, Catherine Daly, Natalie Thomas, Sophie Radke, Lauren Stafford, Louisa Degenhardt, Michael Farrell, Amy Peacock

The Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) is a national illicit drug monitoring system that has been conducted annually since 2000, and is part of Drug Trends. The IDRS interviews people who inject drugs (PWID) from every capital city of Australia and provides an analysis and examination of indicator data sources related to illicit drugs. It is designed to be sensitive to trends, providing data in a timely manner, rather than describing issues in detail.

The 2023 IDRS report provides the most up-to-date findings of the IDRS interviews from 2000 to 2023 with people who regularly inject illicit drugs.

This includes:

A report overviewing the key findings in 2023;
An infographic summarising key findings in 2023;
A background and methods document highlighting approaches to collating and presenting estimates; and
The executive summary, summarising key findings in 2023.

Results are not representative of all consumers or drug use in the general population and should be interpreted alongside findings from other data sources for a more complete profile of emerging trends in illicit drug use in Australia.

Latest release date

27 October 2023

Use of the data

Please note that any presentation of these data should include an acknowledgement of Drug Trends at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales.

Citation: Sutherland R, Uporova J, King C, Chandrasena U, Karlsson A, Jones F, Gibbs D, Price O, Dietze P, Lenton S, Salom C, Bruno R, Wilson J, Agramunt S, Daly C, Thomas N, Radke S, Stafford L, Degenhardt L, Farrell M, Peacock A. Australian Drug Trends 2023: Key Findings from the National Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) Interviews. Sydney: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney.

Funding

Drug Trends is supported by funding from the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care under the Drug and Alcohol Program.

Queries

Please contact the research team at drugtrends@unsw.edu.au with any queries; to request additional analyses using these data; or to discuss the possibility of including items in future IDRS interviews.

Resources

Date published

27 October 2023

Resource type

Drug Trends National Reports

Author(s)

Sutherland R, Uporova J, King C, Chandrasena U, Karlsson A, Jones F, Gibbs D, Price O, Dietze P, Lenton S, Salom C, Bruno R, Wilson J, Agramunt S, Daly C, Thomas N, Radke S, Stafford L, Degenhardt L, Farrell M, Peacock A.