Heroin numbers on the rise in Sydney
Heroin is making a deadly resurgence on the streets of Sydney, with new figures showing the rate of use and possession has steadily climbed over the past four years.
NSW
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HEROIN is back on Sydney streets in huge numbers — with new figures showing the number of people caught with the narcotic has risen 50 per cent in the past five years.
Drug hotlines have also reported a massive influx of people seeking help because of the drug. Experts are warning addiction to prescription opioids is fuelling the rise of the drug which ravaged the city in the 1990s.
The Daily Telegraph also understands the rise in the street price of methamphetamine, or ice, has also seen users experiment with older drugs.
“People become dependent on pharmaceutical opioids, then (authorities) crack down on what they can use. Where do they go for more treatment? … the illicit market,” Harm Reduction Australia president Gino Vumbaca said.
Ice has dominated the hardcore drug market in recent years but Mr Vumbaca said “if you’ve got a dependence on prescription opioids, you don’t want ice”.
The southwest Sydney suburb of Cabramatta was the scene of a mass heroin seizure last month.
Forty-five-year-old Van Cao Tran was arrested for allegedly importing 16kg of the drug inside a load of children’s clothing from Thailand.
A search of Tran’s Cabramatta West home revealed the drugs.
He faces up to life in prison if convicted on the charge of commercial importation.
Twenty years ago Cabramatta bore the brunt of the country’s heroin epidemic.
The local drug trade was dominated by the notorious 5T street gang — almost all of whom are now dead or in jail — who used standover tactics to control local businesses and ensure that they did not tip off the police to their heroin dealing.
In one year there were almost 3000 heroin “possession and use” incidents recorded by police before the numbers were brought down to about 1000 in 2001.
By 2013 there were only 718 caught with the drug.
But The Daily Telegraph can reveal the figures are back up — with 1097 people caught last year.
Family Drug Support Australia chief executive Tony Trimingham said heroin-related calls to his service were rising.
“Heroin has doubled, from about 4 per cent of calls up to 9 or 10 per cent,” he said.
Drug and Firearms Squad commander Peter McErlain said opioids were “highly addictive” and police were “targeting the trafficking and supply of heroin, and the diversion of other opioids, such as fentanyl and oxycodone”.