This month marks 10 years since the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission was formed to unite state, federal and international partnerships. The focus was and remains organised crime.
Amongst key initiatives that have evolved over the decade are the National Criminal Intelligence System and the Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program. The NCIC permitted law enforcement around the nation to share and use information, especially critical in interstate organised crime. The most recent national wastewater drug report, for April, indicates New South Wales is outpacing the rest of Australia in methylamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA, and heroin. The drug market has expanded over the past 10 years, becoming even more pervasive, despite enhanced intelligence.
Wastewater analysis by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) indicates that NSW is outpacing the rest of the nation when it comes to use of methamphetamines, cocaine, opioids, and MDMA. Cocaine consumption alone has experienced sharp spikes. At the same time, border seizures have increased. On 26 June, the Australian Border Force took advantage of the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking to highlight the detection of 14 tonnes of illicit drugs, including cocaine and ketamine (an annual rise in seizures of over 255 per cent).
Criminal lawyer, Rhian Bartley, from Bartley Legal, says drug and alcohol-related crime in NSW is significant, as a policing and legal issue.
“It is a constant of criminal practice in NSW. Spend a morning in almost any Local Court and it is hard to miss,” she says. “Drugs and alcohol are frequently present in assaults, driving matters, domestic violence and property offences, even where the charge itself is not a drug charge.”
The numbers support that impression. BOCSAR’s recent research on the Early Drug Diversion Initiative found police proceeded against more than 11,700 people for using or possessing prohibited drugs other than cannabis in the 13 months to March 2025. That figure captures only use and possession matters, but it shows how much enforcement effort is still absorbed at the user end of the market.
“… we are still running what is often a health problem through a criminal system at enormous cost …”
Bartley says, “For lawyers, it runs the full breadth of the system. One week it is a young client picked up with drugs at a festival, facing consequences that may outlast the offence by years. The next it is a large commercial supply brief where the maximum penalty may be life imprisonment. In between sits all the machinery built to bridge health and justice, including the Drug Court, MERIT and diversion programs.”
She reflects that the significance is not just the volume.
“It is that we are still running what is often a health problem through a criminal system at enormous cost, while the serious end of the market continues to grow.”
In March, NSW Health issued a public health warning regarding a spate of opioid overdoses presenting to Sydney and Western NSW in which people had assumed they were using cocaine. NSW has earned the dubious title of Cocaine Capital of Australia (Sydney Morning Herald). The theory is that the high concentration of disposable income in Sydney correlates with the market for cocaine.
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NSW wastewater findings indicate major expansion of illicit drugs market
