Using evidence to evaluate Australian drug trafficking thresholds: Proportionate, equitable and just?

Most Australian states and territories have adopted drug trafficking thresholds which specify quantities of drugs, over which it is presumed an offender has committed an offence of ‘drug trafficking’, rather than ‘possession for personal use’. Yet, in spite of known risks from adopting such thresholds, particularly of an unjustified conviction of a user as a trafficker, the capacity to deliver proportional sanctioning (or conversely the opposite effect) has been subject to limited research to date. In this study we evaluate the capacity of trafficking thresholds crossing five drug types (heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA and cannabis) and six Australian states (NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia) to deliver proportional, fair and just sanctioning of drug offenders.

The purpose of this study was to:

• Evaluate whether the trafficable thresholds for five different drugs allow the prosecution and the judiciary to properly distinguish drug users from traffickers and to enable sanctions based on the relative seriousness of a drug trafficking offence; Compare and contrast threshold design across Australia taking into account inter-state differences in current legal thresholds and drug markets; Determine whether the problems identified with the ACT drug trafficking thresholds are common across state systems.

See AIC for further details about this project.