Victoria’s illegal drug hot spots: Dealers using Instagram to sell
Victorian drug dealers are brazenly using Instagram to ply their trade, even offering users free drop off or pick up of illicit substances. SEE THE LIST OF SUBURBS
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Instagram has become the dial-a-dealer platform of choice to procure illegal drugs with dealers using the social media site to sell their wares, turning their homes into major drug mail order operations.
News Corp Australia has obtained figures revealing our State’s suburban hot spots for drug dealers, the busts and arrests and what drugs are being sold from where.
The national snapshot shows while Melbourne CBD might be coming off COVID-19 lockdown, drug dealers have been busy with Richmond Victoria’s heroin capital while Sydney’s most exclusive postcodes are awash with cocaine along with a handful of idyllic regional NSW beachside towns.
In Brisbane’s CBD, 1756 drug dealing charges were recorded in the year to August 2020.
The latest Crime Statistics Agency data reveals the Melbourne CBD recorded 164 drug dealing and trafficking offences in the 12 months to March 2020, followed by Yarra/ Richmond with 125 and Wangaratta third with 116 recorded offences.
Melbourne’s CBD also recorded 1131 drug use and possession offences, while Greater Dandenong had 532 and Frankston 475.
Maribyrnong emerged as Victoria’s cocaine capital, recording 14 cocaine drug dealing and trafficking offences, followed closely by the Melbourne CBD and West Melbourne.
Suburbs that made up the top 10 include St Kilda (10), Craigieburn (8), Werribee (7), Cranbourne and Port Melbourne (6) and Frankston (5).
Wangaratta in rural Victoria is awash with meth dealers with 106 offences recorded by the Crime Statistics Agency to the 12 months to March this year.
It recorded almost three times more arrests than Dandenong (39) and Warrnambool with 36.
Bendigo, Sunshine, St Albans, Mildura, and Cranbourne also featured prominently.
Ecstasy dealers piled their trade along the St Kilda Rd district, followed by St Kilda itself and the CBD, while Bendigo, Warnambool and Mildura rounded out the top 10.
While An inner city suburb – home to Victoria’s most controversial injecting room – has been revealed as a hotspot for heroin dealers and users.
The revelation about Richmond as having the state’s most heroin drug dealing and trafficking offences at 80, followed by Melbourne with 38 busts, and Abbotsford with 31, comes as furious residents have complained for months about the controversial North Richmond supervised injecting room.
Last month, drug users were seen injecting in the streets at all hours and were failing to wear masks or abide by social distancing measures.
In February, nearby traders also called for the injecting room to be shut down, saying it attracted more dealers and users, making the neighbourhood a virtual no-go zone for visitors, diners and shoppers.
Surprisingly many of the busted dealers were not major crime figures or organised crime cartel linked but rather suburban opportunists using Instagram to find customers and the mail service to receive and deliver.
Dr John Coyne, former Australian Federal Police officer now head of Strategic Policing and Law Enforcement at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said 10 years ago law enforcement was worried about the dark web for the movement of drugs and weapons but most people couldn’t find it to use it.
Instead, he said social media was easy to access and very much in the mainstream, with Instagram alone having about one billion users worldwide.
Purchasers believe there’s unlikely to be consequences and the upsurge in mainstream online shopping necessitated by COVID-19 has flowed onto the criminal marketplace.
“I suspect a large amount of recreational drug use is increasingly being sourced off social media,” Dr Coyne said.
“Now all of a sudden the guy who delivers your meal can also deliver your marijuana or other drugs.
“So we’ve got this storm of change and social change where people are having and getting used to doing more from home”.
About 80 per cent of the nation’s mail comes through a gateway postal centre in Clyde in Sydney’s west with the remaining going through smaller centres in Melbourne and Perth.
At the three Australia Post centres the Australian Border Force (ABF) has had to increase staff to cope with volumes of mail and seizures.
ABF Acting NSW Regional Commander Matthew O’Connor said COVID-19 had seen a boom in detection via mail and air cargo.
“People wanting to do the wrong thing will set up phoenix companies, phony companies they will use PO boxes, they will use third party addresses, they can get things delivered to so there’s a whole range of strategies,” Cmdr O’Connor said.
From January to July 31 this year, there were 13,151 major drugs, precursors, and new psychoactive substances detected at the border, weighing an estimated 5.6 tonne; a 34.2 per cent detections increase from year-to-date 2019.
NSW Drug and Firearms Squad Commander Detective Superintendent John Watson, said technology has allowed drug suppliers to move parts of their business out of public view.
“Online drug supply is certainly not new but it poses a unique challenge to law enforcement, particularly on personal and public social media sites, but we are actively targeting these spaces,” he said.
“While there are no specific reliable statistics on how many people are purchasing drugs online, the variety of drugs available for sale indicates that there is a market of buyers.”
A Facebook company spokesperson, the company which owns Instagram, confirmed the sale of illicit and pharmaceutical drugs is against “community standards” and detection technology is in use to locate drug dealing content.
According to the spokesperson, the company has taken action on 1.4 million pieces of drug-related content in the three months between April and June, 2020.
“We do not allow the sale of illicit drugs on Instagram. It is against our policies to buy, sell or trade non-medical or pharmaceutical drugs on our platform. We have been focusing on this area for some time, and we are working hard to ensure we keep illicit drug sales off Instagram. We will continue to work with experts and invest in people and technology to keep our community safe,” the spokesperson said.
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Originally published as Victoria’s illegal drug hot spots: Dealers using Instagram to sell