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Drug use among police detainees, 2005

Abstract

The Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program is a crime monitoring program that focuses on illegal drug use amongst police detainees. It involves the collection of self-report and urinalysis data from people detained in police watchhouses, and the timely output of this data to police, policy-makers, criminal justice practitioners and other professionals every three months. The scale of the program enables the collection of a large quantity of information, and its strong foundation of state-based teams (some of whom have spent over seven years working on the program) and the use of urinalysis ensures the quality of the data collected. This paper summarises the annual data and provides information about drug use and its link to crime. Trend data on those testing positive across all sites indicate that use of heroin has largely remained stable while codeine has increased; MDMA has increased while methylamphetamine has remained stable, and cannabis has declined, although it still remains the most commonly used drug.

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