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National project on drink spiking : investigating the nature and extent of drink spiking in Australia

Natalie Taylor, Jeremy Prichard and Kate Charlton
November 2004
ISBN: 0 642 21124 8
© Commonwealth of Australia 2004

A report commissioned by the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy.

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Executive summary

Overview

In July 2003 the AIC was commissioned by the Australian Government Attorney-General's Department, on behalf of the Intergovernmental Committee on Drugs, to conduct Stage One of a national project on drink spiking. Drink spiking was identified as an emerging issue for examination under the alcohol priority area identified by the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy and has received considerable media attention in the last couple of years. Drink spiking is where drugs and/or alcohol are added to a drink without the consent of the person consuming it. The potential consequences of drink spiking can be severe, both physically and emotionally, depending on the type of additive used and the motivation of the perpetrator. Knowledge about drink spiking in Australia is currently very limited but suggestions that incidents of drink spiking have been increasing in recent times has resulted in a need to greatly improve the knowledge base on drink spiking.

The national drink spiking project is a major project being conducted in two stages - the first stage focuses on identifying the nature and extent of drink spiking in Australia and identifying communication and educational initiatives to prevent and respond to drink spiking. The second stage of the project will focus on improving awareness and practices of key organisations in the community that come into contact with those at risk of drink spiking. The AIC was commissioned to undertake Stage One of this project.

Aims of the project

The aims of the project were to:

  • estimate the extent of drink spiking and associated criminal victimisation;
  • document current legislative and procedural arrangements that relate to drink spiking and associated criminal victimisation; and
  • identify effective communication and educational initiatives to prevent and respond to drink spiking.

The key tasks for Stage One involved:

  • reviewing the international and Australian literature on drink spiking;
  • consulting with key stakeholders;
  • conducting a review of relevant data collections; and
  • compiling a report outlining findings and including recommendations for future directions.

In acknowledgement of the fact that there is very little data on drink spiking to date and no published research with drink spiking victims, one key task proposed for this report was to conduct a national telephone hotline with drink spiking victims. It was proposed that the hotline would provide a valuable empirical data source on the circumstances in which incidents of drink spiking occur and the variety of situations in which they occur. The telephone hotline with drink spiking victims was therefore a key outcome of this report.

This report brings together information about drink spiking from a variety of sources across Australia and internationally. The report summarises the literature and research to date on drink spiking, analyses data from a range of sources (including police data and AIC Hotline data) to build an empirical evidence base on drink spiking, highlights what needs to be done to improve evidence collection and rates of prosecution, summarises key themes which emerged from discussions with stakeholders and identifies potential educational initiatives to prevent and respond to drink spiking.

Background

What is drink spiking?

The term 'drink spiking' refers to drugs or alcohol being added to a drink (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) without the consent of the person consuming it. For an incident to be defined as drink spiking in this report, it need not involve further criminal victimisation, even though such offences can occur after an incident of drink spiking.

How does someone know if their drink has been spiked?

Unless someone has actually seen someone else put a substance into their drink, or had blood and urine tests which returned a positive result, it is very difficult to know for certain whether a drink has been spiked. In the majority of cases where a victim suspects that his/her drink has been spiked the suspicion stems from the effects which occur after drinks have been consumed. Such effects include memory loss, nausea, vomiting, unconsciousness and dizziness. Due to the fact that these effects can also occur after voluntary consumption of alcohol and drugs some people have argued that victims may misattribute these effects and therefore mistakenly believe that their drink had been spiked when in fact they had consumed more alcohol or drugs than they thought they had.

While this cannot be ruled out as a possible explanation for some reported incidents it would be dangerous to assume that this explanation applied to all or most incidents of drink spiking. Many victims who called in to the hotline stated explicitly that the effects which they had experienced were very different from the effects of voluntary alcohol consumption. In particular victims were at pains to point out that they knew the difference between the effects which they had experienced after the suspected drink spiking incident and the effects they had previously experienced as a result of voluntary excessive alcohol consumption. Given the inherent obstacles associated with verifying reported incidents of drink spiking highlighted in this report a cautious approach is recommended. In particular it is suggested that all reported incidents of drink spiking should be taken seriously in the first instance and investigated where possible rather than dismissing instances on the basis of a judgement that a person's own consumption of alcohol or drugs was responsible for the effects.

Main findings

What is the extent of drink spiking in Australia?

There is currently no way to determine the exact number of drink spiking incidents which occur within the community. This is due to (a) high levels of under-reporting, (b) fluctuations in reporting due to awareness campaigns, (c) jurisdictional differences in data recording and extraction procedures and (d) difficulty in verifying whether a reported incident actually occurred. In the absence of exact numbers, rough estimates of drink spiking prevalence are calculated in this report based on a procedure which inflates the number of incidents which are reported to police by the level of under-reporting in self-report victim surveys. It is important to remember that this procedure is based on certain assumptions and the resulting estimates should be taken as a rough guide only to the number of incidents which may have been suspected by people to have occurred to them in 2002-03.

In this report it is roughly estimated that between 1 July 2002 and 30 June 2003 (i.e. over a twelve month period):

  • between 3000 and 4000 suspected incidents of drink spiking occurred in Australia;
  • approximately one third of these incidents involved sexual assault;
  • between 60 and 70 per cent of these incidents involved no additional victimisation;
  • between 15 and 19 suspected drink spiking incidents occurred per 100,000 persons in Australia during 2002/03.

It is important to bear in mind that the number of suspected drink spiking sexual assaults estimated to have occurred during 2002-03 is very very small compared with the much larger numbers of sexual assaults in general which were reported to police during that year.

What is the nature of drink spiking?

There is no single 'typical' incident of drink spiking. Rather, drink spiking appears to be a complicated phenomenon which can occur in a variety of locations, against a variety of victims, with a variety of different spiking additives, for a number of different reasons resulting in disparate effects and consequences. Based on analyses of police data, sexual assault data and AIC hotline data it was found that:

  • 4 out of 5 victims are female;
  • about half of drink spiking victims are aged under 24, while about one third are aged between 25 and 34;
  • the majority of reported drink spiking incidents have no associated criminal victimisation, indicating that 'prank spiking' may be a common motivation for drink spiking;
  • between 20 and 30 per cent of incidents reported to police involve sexual assault, while it is estimated that about one third of all drink spiking incidents are associated with sexual assault;
  • about five per cent of incidents involve robbery;
  • two thirds of suspected drink spiking incidents occur in licensed premises (although for sexual assault victims the location is equally likely to be at the victim or offender's home or another location);
  • many victims do not know who the offender was;
  • where offenders can be identified, drink spiking can be perpetrated by strangers or known acquaintances, while incidents involving sexual assault are more likely to occur with a known offender;
  • many victims experience memory loss after drink spiking;
  • apprehension of offenders is very uncommon;
  • forensic testing of blood and urine samples is relatively rare and does not conclusively prove that drink spiking has occurred; and
  • the vast majority of incidents of drink spiking are not reported to police.

Reporting to police

It is estimated that less than 15 per cent of suspected drink spiking sexual assaults are reported to police, and between 20 and 25 per cent of suspected drink spiking non-sexual assault cases are reported to police. This means that the vast majority of suspected drink spiking incidents are not reported to police. If we are to gain a better understanding of how often drink spiking occurs and if police are to be able to identify patterns of drink spiking and develop targeted policing strategies there is clearly a need to improve the rates of reporting to police. This message could be articulated in awareness and education campaigns. Reporting rates could also be improved through a public perception that all incidents of drink spiking will be treated seriously by police regardless of knowledge of offender, memory loss and associated victimisation.

What evidence is there that drugs are used in drink spiking?

Despite considerable media and public perceptions concerning the prevalence of drugs such as flunitrazepam, GHB and Ketamine being used in drink spiking, the forensic evidence to date does not support these claims. Alcohol has tended to dominate results and it is not clear whether this is because (a) alcohol is commonly used to spike drinks, (b) other drugs have left the body by the time of testing and so only alcohol is left to detect, or (c) people are unaware how much alcohol they are actually drinking. The only way to test for the presence of drugs is to conduct scientific analyses. However scientific analyses can only confirm whether or not drugs or alcohol are in the body at the time of testing and cannot confirm that a positive result means that a drink was spiked.

Is drink spiking illegal in Australia?

There is currently no separate offence category in any Australian jurisdiction for the act of spiking someone's drink per se. Rather, the use of criminal laws to prosecute drink spiking depends on:

  • the state/territory in which the incident occurred;
  • the motivation of the person spiking the drink;
  • the type of substance used to spike the drink; and
  • the effects of the spiking.

This means that there is some degree of flexibility in how an incident of drink spiking is recorded by police within each jurisdiction and how courts may interpret the law in relation to such incidents. It is recommended that each jurisdiction review its criminal law provisions in terms of their applicability to different forms of drink spiking and appropriate maximum penalties. Consideration of these issues could also be given by the Model Criminal Code Officers Committee (Parliament of Australia 1998).

Prosecuting offenders

Successful prosecution of drink spiking should be an important objective in any attempts to prevent drink spiking. Not only does it have deterrent value for both actual offenders and potential offenders, but it sends a very clear message that drink spiking is a crime and that governments are serious about stopping it. No data are currently available on the number or nature of prosecutions of drink spiking in Australia. However based on the findings in this report that drink spiking is heavily under-reported to police, that many victims cannot identify the offender and that evidence of drink spiking is difficult to obtain, it is likely that very few drink spiking offenders are successfully prosecuted. A 'chain of evidence'is very important for a successful prosecution.

Targeting prevention strategies

This report has identified that drink spiking is a complicated phenomenon which can occur in a variety of locations, against a variety of victims, with a variety of different spiking additives, for a number of different reasons. This means that prevention strategies which target only one type of audience (e.g. young women or young people at licensed premises) will be limited in effectiveness because the message may not reach or may be inappropriate for other types of audience. For example, this report found that males can also be victims of drink spiking but there are currently no awareness campaigns which are targeted toward preventing males from being victims. Similarly 'prank spiking' has been identified in this report as being a possible motivation for many incidents yet awareness campaigns to date tend to focus on sexually motivated drink spiking. Strategies to tackle and prevent drink spiking must take into account the fact that victims and situations differ widely. Prevention strategies therefore must:

  • identify the range of audiences which need to be targeted;
  • identify what the specific characteristics and needs of those audiences might be;
  • develop appropriately targeted intervention and education initiatives which are directly relevant to those specific audiences;
  • pilot these intervention and education initiatives to ensure that they are reaching the target audience and communicating the intended message; and
  • build in a clear evaluation strategy prior to commencement of the intervention so that it can be determined whether the goals of the intervention were successful.

Recommendations for improving data collection

The only way to obtain a good understanding of the prevalence and nature of drink spiking so that prevention strategies can be appropriately targeted is to have a solid and reliable empirical data base on reported drink spiking incidents. This involves data collected by police, hospitals, forensic laboratories and sexual assault agencies. Currently there is no systematic and reliable data available within any of these agencies which can identify problem locations, offenders or trends. It is recommended that:

  • police recording procedures be improved and standardized and that all incidents which are reported to police be systematically recorded to ensure easier and more reliable data extraction;
  • hospitals and emergency departments record all cases of suspected drink spiking which present to them, details of treatment provided to victims and outcomes of tests conducted;
  • forensic and therapeutic laboratories keep records of all samples provided to them by police, hospitals and sexual assault agencies, and details of circumstances and outcomes for each sample (including those not analysed);
  • sexual assault agencies maintain a deidentified database of all suspected drink spiking sexual assault victims who present to them, with details of circumstances surrounding incidents;
  • a centralised database be set up which maintains the above drink spiking data for the health sector in a format which is regularly updated and where data can be easily extracted for purposes of furthering knowledge about drink spiking and monitoring trends; and
  • the liquor industry encourage licensed premises to keep a record of all drink spiking incidents which are either seen or suspected by staff, or reported to staff.

Options for trialling educational initiatives with stakeholders

One of the key outcomes for this project was to identify potential options for information kits for stakeholders that could be trialled in Stage 2 of the National Project on Drink Spiking. The options identified in this report are for police, sexual assault counsellors, hospital emergency staff, liquor industry staff, potential victims, secondary and tertiary students, and organisations interested in better understanding and responding to drink spiking. For each of these stakeholders, the options outline:

  • the problems to be addressed;
  • the goals to be achieved;
  • possible strategies for each information kit; and
  • the content which could be included in each kit.

The proposed options for police, sexual assault counsellors, hospital emergency staff and liquor industry staff are based primarily on the themes and issues which emerged from the discussions with these stakeholders. The proposed options for potential victims and organisations are based on the findings from the AIC drink spiking hotline and localised campaigns currently being conducted. All of the options presented are centred on particular problems identified. These options are outlined in Section 6 of the report.

Conclusions

Suspected incidents of drink spiking appear to happen frequently enough to merit concern. About one third of all suspected drink spiking incidents are estimated to involve sexual assault, based on estimates of under-reporting to police. About five per cent of reported incidents involve robbery, indicating that sexual assault is the primary criminal victimisation associated with drink spiking. However many incidents are also reported where no associated victimisation is experienced. Many of these may be due to 'prank spikings' where the intention is to see what happens or to have a joke; others may occur for more sinister reasons but are for some reason thwarted before the intention can be carried out. Yet again it is possible that some people may be unaware of how much alcohol they have consumed and mistakenly attribute the effects to drink spiking.

The difficulties associated with verifying the incident mean that in most cases suspected drink spiking cases will remain just that - suspected. This however is not a reason to dismiss these cases. Rather it is a reason to pursue better recording and data extraction practices, and better coordination between police, hospitals, forensic laboratories, sexual assault agencies and licensed venues. The stories told by victims ringing in to the hotline, although not verifiable, indicated that drink spiking does occur in the community and that the effects can be devastating and long-lasting. It would therefore be both dangerous and a huge disservice to victims to assume that lack of evidence means that an incident did not occur. In the absence of evidence it should be assumed that incidents do occur while we move to build a comprehensive database and improve the coordination between relevant agencies relating to forensic procedures.