Party drugs Gold Coast: detective reveals ‘filthy’ conditions of illegal drugs labs

A Gold Coast detective has revealed the shocking truth about the filthy conditions police encounter when they discover illegal drug labs.

AS police continue to battle drug dealers peddling their illegal substances, a Gold Coast detective has opened up about filthy labs cooking pills, where they’re coming from and the mental price users pay for taking drugs.

The frequency, the ease and the amount of MDMA people are taking is among the top concerns of police on the frontline.

Detective acting Inspector Chris Tritton says the high levels of calls police receive to people with a form of drug psychosis is alarming.

The Coast has a vibrant party scene.

“Probably our second-highest calls for service are mental health-related jobs, so many of them are drug-induced psychosis,” Insp Tritton said.

“We are dealing with people who are having all sorts of hallucinations and things.

“It’s a chemical messing with your brain to have that euphoric feeling, but you can’t say what it’s going to do with the balance of your brain and the messages that are sent later on.

“That’s really the thing that’s not considered by people who are taking them, these lifelong effects, and people I speak to that I’ve arrested or dealt with, they’ve been dealing with these demons for decades.”

Detective acting Inspector Chris Tritton. Picture: Nigel Hallett.

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He said the drug labs police discover are “filthy”.

“There must be a perception out there that there are safe ones and that it’s a matter of finding the good ones, but from my experience, the labs are filthy.

“The term lab is probably a bad one. It’s certainly not. (The drugs) are made in filth, by people who are under pressure to cook. It’s not a career path. They’re being forced to cook, through their own debts or needs.

“If you have a person saying ‘by this date, you’ll have a certain amount of product’ and you haven’t reached that product and your life is at risk, you’re going to fill it with something else.

Gold Coasters have been warned about the conditions drugs are made in.

“That’s where you get these other powdered substances going into them to make up the quantity that is needed, that’s the risk.”

A 2019 Global Drug Survey, which polled more than 123,000 drug users in 35 countries, found Australian users admitted taking MDMA almost once a month – the highest globally along with four other countries Portugal, Argentina, Turkey and Romania.

Australians pay $198.97 per gram for MDMA powder, the second-highest street price in the world after New Zealand at $305.48 per gram.

A clandestine laboratory discovered by police in rural NSW. Picture: Supplied.

For Gold Coast detectives, it is about targeting the mid-level drug peddlers, while building intelligence to bring down the big players who import and run the syndicates.

“There is still definitely domestic manufacturing happening in all states, but there’s a lot more (drugs) being imported into the country as well.

“We are really targeting the disruption of the trade, working with other partners, like Australian Post to pick up the mail, and we’re getting quite a lot of hits there.

“It’s about detecting, disrupting and identifying the real pushers. The people on the street who consume it will still get caught in the net and get arrested in our operations, but at the same point, our priority is the big pushers, which requires extensive resources.

“Us at a district, we’re at the medium level, we’re dealing with the people that are on the receiving end of the imports. Then we work with State Crime Command and the AFP, who are really working on the big imports.

“We will continue to run drug-related operations. We keep mixing it up, you’ll never know where we are coming from. Is it in the mail, at an event, on the street?”