NDARC Monograph No. 41 (1999)
In 1998, the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre was commissioned by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care to conduct a national trial of the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS), following a successful pilot study of the methods in Sydney in 1996 (Hando et al., 1997) and a multi-state trial of the IDRS in 1997.
The national trial of the IDRS was implemented in three states: NSW, SA and VIC. The following three methods, which were intended to complement and supplement each other, were used to collect data in each state: (1) key informant interviews with professionals working in the drug field; (2) a survey of IDUs; and (3) an examination of existing indicator data. The feasibility of conducting core IDRS, which consisted of key informant interviews and collection of other indicator data, was established in the remaining states and territories.
This report presents the findings of the IDRS in NSW, SA and VIC over the two years (1997-1998) that the multi-state IDRS has been conducted. The report presents a summary of major drug trends from each state, compares state findings, and follows drug trends from 1997 to 1998. Further detail can be found in Appendix 1, which contains statistics for each jurisdiction by year, and in the separate state IDRS reports (Hayes et al., 1999; Rumbold and Fry, 1999; McKetin et al., 1999).