Legal thresholds for serious drug offences: Expert advice to the ACT on the amounts for trafficable, commercial and large commercial drug offences

One of the key measures for determining the seriousness of drug trafficking offences (ie. for distinguishing between low and high level trafficking) is the quantity of drug involved. But, to date, there has been surprisingly little use of research to inform decisions on how threshold quantities should be set or what threshold quantities should be used for different offences and different drug types. This project aimed to determine whether existing ACT legal thresholds for drug offences made sense in terms of the commercial realities of the drug market and, if not, to propose alternate threshold quantities for the five main illicit drug types: heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis.

In April 2014 the ACT Government enacted new legal thresholds for serious drug offences. To read about the changes, see the ACT legislation website. Public release of DPMP Monograph 22 was delayed until after enactment of the new laws. See Monograph No. 22 for the full report.