Almost half of Adelaide City Watch House inmates positive for meth

The shocking rate of meth intoxication inside Adelaide’s main police lock up has been revealed. And it is mind-boggling.

Almost half of all detainees in the Adelaide City Watch House tested positive to methamphetamine last year, a staggering four-fold increase in just over a decade, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.

Numbers collected by the AIC under its long-running national Drug Use Monitoring in Australia survey found 47 per cent of prisoners taken to the Watch House tested positive to meth in 2021. As recently as 2009, that figure was only 13 per cent.

AIC principal research analyst Tom Sullivan said that since 2009 the biggest change in methamphetamine use was that crystal methamphetamine, or ice, had become the dominant method of consuming the drug, replacing powder.

Mr Sullivan said ice was a more potent way of taking the drug because it was purer and therefore stronger.

“It gives a more intense high,’’ he said. “This has the potential for more dependency, as well as physical and mental health problems.’’

Under the DUMA process, detainees are tested for drugs and also interviewed about their drug-taking habits. In 2021, 361 detainees in the Adelaide City Watch House took part in the survey.

A man sleeps at the Adelaide City Watch House.

In that year, 42 per cent of those interviewed attributed their offending to their use of methamphetamine. That was the highest proportion, ahead of alcohol on 39 per cent, heroin with 41 per cent and cannabis at 13 per cent.

Mr Sullivan also said there was evidence that ice users were taking more of the drug than ever before, which was also contributing to crime.

Another DUMA report which tracked ice use of offenders between 2013 and 2019 found demand for the drug across Australia had jumped sharply. The report found the estimated weight of methamphetamine used in Australia had increased from 8405kg in 2016 to 11, 516kg in 2019.

“Trend testing from quarter three 2013 to quarter three 2019 in Adelaide indicated that there were significant increases in the urinalysis positive rate, past-month use, availability, and rates of dependence, overdose and methamphetamine-attributed violent crime,’’ the report says.

The report found, while 38 per cent of meth users had identified as ‘recreational’ users in 2013, meaning they used five days or fewer in a month, that had fallen to 26 per cent in 2019. Meanwhile, regular users (6-20 days) had increased from 15 per cent to 31 per cent and heavy users (21 days and above) moved from 13 per cent to 19 per cent.

“Heavy users might be more likely than infrequent users to offend,’’ Mr Sullivan said.

The rising numbers of ice users being locked up is a trend that is being seen across Australia.

“Australia has experienced a major escalation in methamphetamine use over the past two decades, with the current national prevalence among the highest ever recorded,’’ according to the AIC.

In 2002, 31 per cent of detainees tested across Australia had “amphetamine-type stimulants’’ in their system. That dropped to as low as 15 per cent in 2009 before climbing to reach 57 per cent in 2020, before falling slightly to 52 per cent last year.

The survey also found that between 2002 and 2021, the number of offenders with “any drug’’ in their system, including benzodiazepines. cannabis, cocaine and opioids had only risen from 75 per cent to 77 per cent.