The Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) aims to provide a national coordinated approach to monitoring data on the use of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and cannabis. It is intended to act as a strategic early warning system that identifies emerging drug problems of state and national concern. Rather than describe such phenomena in detail, the IDRS is designed to be timely and sensitive to emerging drug trends, thereby providing direction for more detailed data collection.
The IDRS is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health (AGDH) under the Substance Misuse Prevention and Service Improvement Grants Fund. The project is coordinated at the national level by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at the University of New South Wales, thereby ensuring that comparable data is collected in every jurisdiction in Australia.