BAD AND GOOD NEWS FROM THE BATTLE FRONT

While Nguyen Tuong Van's arrest was seen as a victory in the fight
against heroin trafficking, other dangerous drugs seem to be slipping
through, writes Philip Cornford.

EVIDENCE suggests the jury is out on claims by police and politicians
that the war on narcotics and the criminals who trade in them is being won.

Drug seizures in Australia are at their lowest levels in a decade.
The short-lived "drought" in narcotics is over, with users across
Australia reporting no problems buying heroin, cocaine and
amphetamines. It is "easy" to "very easy", they tell researchers.

Even so, heroin users might be living longer - or at least fewer of
them are dying. Accidentally administered "hot shots" and overdoses
are the main killers, but they, too, are less common because the
purity of heroin has diminished as dealers increase additives to
boost the number of "deals" they can produce from raw, imported
heroin, most of it top No.4 grade from Burma, a white powder easily
dissolved for injecting. When heroin was more plentiful, purity was
70 per cent, but since then it has dropped to 30 per cent.

What is real is that heroin users are paying more for an inferior
product and some have switched to cocaine and amphetamines to get
their rush. But prices for cocaine and amphetamines are rising, too.
Amphetamines, especially ecstasy, are the most widely used drugs in
Australia and most of them are produced locally. Cocaine use is also
increasing.

Drug use in Australia hit record levels in 1998-99, when an estimated
300,000 users spent more than $10 billion consuming 10 tonnes of
heroin. The social costs were enormous: $22 billion for health, law
enforcement, justice and crime, with criminologists claiming heroin
was responsible for 80 per cent of all crime in Australia, costing $13 billion.

In 1999, heroin was cheap at $20 a hit. Addicts as young as 14 were
arrested and the mean age for first-time users was 17.5. But between
2000 and 2001, police and customs made big seizures, reducing
availability. The result in NSW was a 75 per cent price rise for
users, up from $218 a gram to $381. Today, 12-year-olds are using
heroin. In Sydney, the price of a gram of heroin fluctuates between
$200 and $500. The highest price is up to $650 a gram in Western Australia.

While no hard statistics are produced, the Australian Crime
Commission says there are fewer users than in 1999. Among those
detained in 2003, 23 per cent of females and 14 per cent of males
tested positive to heroin. But that rose the next year when police
urine-tested detainees at seven stations across Australia. The
Australian Institute of Criminology reported a quarter of all males
arrested for crimes such as burglary and involving house break-ins
had heroin in their system, while 36 per cent had used amphetamines
and two-thirds had used cannabis.

But there has been a big drop in heroin-related crimes. The NSW
Bureau of Crime Statistics reports that between January 2001 and
September 2004, property crimes, including robbery, fell by 46 per
cent to below those reported in the mid-1990s. Car thefts also fell.

"The fact that property crime in Australia fell after the onset of
the heroin shortage raises the suspicion that the two processes are
causally related," the bureau reported. But it said other possible
important factors included the increased number of heroin users
seeking methadone treatment, higher weekly wages, a fall in long-term
unemployment and higher rates of imprisonment for burglars.

The Crime Commission reported that heroin seizures in 2003-04 were
the "lowest recorded" for a decade. Seizures were less than 100
kilograms, compared with more than 450 kilograms in both 1999 and
2001. The number of seizures increased slightly but was about
one-tenth of the number of seizures in 1999. Heroin arrests
nationally were down 3.5 per cent to 3824. In NSW and Sydney, gateway
for most of the smuggled heroin, arrests were down by 22 per cent to
1007 in 2003-04.

Perhaps the only good news was the lower death toll. The biggest drop
came in 2002, when 364 Australians died from opiate overdoses, down
by 69 per cent compared with 1999. In NSW in 2002, the heroin toll
was 158, down from 177 the previous year.

The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre in Sydney estimates
that three tonnes of cocaine a year is consumed in Sydney and
Melbourne. The biggest number of users is in Sydney, where it costs
$250 a gram. The centre reported that users said their average
consumption was six grams a month, with tradesmen as likely to be
users as commercial high-flyers.