Illicit drugs are ruining Australian lives, devastating families and damaging communities. Regrettably, Australians are consuming more than 15 tonnes of illicit drugs each year worth more than $9.3 billion in street prices.
Transnational, serious and organised crime groups drive Australia’s illicit drug market; targeting our communities to make massive profits without any concern for the harm they cause.
To help repel the scourge of illicit drugs in Australia and impede the transnational crime groups who supply drugs to our communities, the Minister for Home Affairs has launched the
Home Affairs Illicit Drugs Action Plan.
“The
Home Affairs Illicit Drugs Action Plan is the first of its kind. It coordinates our Portfolio’s efforts to drive a stake through the heart of organised crime by targeting the supply of illicit drugs – a key source of these groups’ funding,” Mr Dutton said.
“Through this Plan, the Home Affairs Portfolio will work with state counterparts at all levels, our international partners, the private sector and the community to thwart a common, abhorrent enemy who unashamedly profits from the misery of others.”
Spearheaded by the Commonwealth Transnational, Serious and Organised Crime Coordinator (TSOC), the Plan will tackle illicit drugs, with a focus on the trade of methylamphetamine and its crystalline form ‘ice’.
“TSOC costs the Australian economy more than $47 billion each year. In layman’s terms that’s about $1,900 for every person in Australia, each year,” Mr Dutton said.
“Of those people detained by police and having tested positive for using methylamphetamine, 65 per cent were arrested for a property offence and 30 per cent for a violent crime”
The new Plan will help marshal intelligence efforts, law enforcement activities and awareness, education and treatment initiatives to tackle the full-spectrum of the illicit drug life-cycle: demand, manufacture, importation, domestic trafficking, criminal profit and public consumption.
The Plan interlinks with three crucial Government strategies: Home Affairs’
National Strategy to Fight Transnational, Serious and Organised Crime and the Department of Health’s
National Drug Strategy and
National Ice Action Strategy.
The
Home Affairs Illicit Drugs Action Plan can be accessed via the Commonwealth Illicit Drugs Joint Agency Taskforce website:
https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/cidjatf
