SA has the highest average consumption of methamphetamine, but in some regions fentanyl is used even more
Though meth remains the biggest crisis for drug authorities, a deadly and addictive opioid is getting used even more in regional areas.
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South Australia has retained its unwanted crown as the methamphetamine capital of the country, but rural drug users have shunned the deadly substance for an opioid that’s up to 100 times stronger than morphine.
Fentanyl, prescribed to cancer patients and traumatic injury survivors, is the drug of choice in some regional areas, the latest national wastewater drug monitoring program has revealed.
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission report shows SA has the highest average regional consumption of fentanyl in the nation.
Shane Neilson, head of the high risk and emerging drugs determination at the ACIC, said the synthetic opioid was a deadly and addictive substance.
“We certainly are concerned about fentanyl,” he said. “Our issue with fentanyl is we do not want a situation like what has occurred in North America where it’s being described as an opioid crisis.”
Fentanyl can produce an intense short-term high, but quickly lead to nausea, fainting, seizures and even death.
Australia’s Alcohol and Drug Foundation said the drug was about “80 to 100 times stronger than morphine”. Despite SA’s fentanyl jump, consumption numbers for the opioid dipped Australia-wide in December.
“What’s happened is the Therapeutic Goods Administration has clamped down on legitimate prescription of fentanyl,” Mr Neilson said.
The wastewater testing of fentanyl takes illegal and legitimate consumption into consideration. Eight sites were monitored across SA in December with the results compared to drug findings from August 2019.
The average methamphetamine consumption dropped in regional areas in December.
Mr Neilson said the meth crisis was still the “number one priority”.
In the same month testing took place, three men were jailed for running the biggest methamphetamine lab in the state’s history.
The Croydon lab housed enough chemicals to make 127kg of pure methamphetamine worth $20 million.
Troy Alviti, 47, Mark Middleton, 58, and Nicholas Wardle, 39, were arrested over the discovery.
Alviti and Middleton were both jailed for more than a decade, while Wardle was sentenced to over seven years.
“Ice is just a wicked drug and any level of consumption of it is harmful to the community and to the people who consume it,” Mr Neilson said.
“The thing with SA is there’s domestic manufacture of meth and there’s been some quite large seizures of clandestine laboratories.