The Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) is a national illicit drug monitoring system intended to identify emerging trends of local and national concern in illicit drug markets. This document reports the data from interviews with people who inject drugs regularly (PWID).
Each year we interview a sample of people who have experience with injecting drugs. To be in the survey, someone must have injected an illicit drug at least six times in the last six months. We only talk to people from urban areas, so the results do not tell us about injecting drug use in regional or rural areas of Australia. Because we conduct this survey annually, we can see what’s changed over time – the preferred drug of choice, the types of drugs being used, the patterns of drug use, and perceptions about the drug market.
It is important to note that the results from the IDRS survey are not representative of injecting drug use in the general population.
This document presents preliminary findings from the 2017 IDRS and may be subject to minor change. Final figures will appear in the 2017 national and jurisdictional reports, to be released early next year. Previous years’ data are available in reports published elsewhere and are accessible on the Drug Trends website http://www.drugtrends.org.au/
The first section provides a narrative overview of the preliminary findings. This is then followed by detailed tables.