Why is finding drugs easier than finding support?

Yesterday we spoke about the strong links between alcohol use and drug use, but today we are looking at the large gap between finding drugs and finding help. Let's start with some definitions. What are party drugs? Health Direct defines party drugs as a drug that you are given at a social event with the “promise of a better time”. 

Common party drugs include cocaine, MDMA and cannabis. These drugs for the most part are unregulated as they are illicit. Cannabis is a different case however, as the ACT has decriminalised the possession of up to 50 grams of dried cannabis and 150 grams of wet cannabis. This change in law has been in effect for over a year now and has had positive effects on the Canberra community, as it has lessened the stigma around cannabis use and life long charges are not pressed against those caught in possession of these amounts of cannabis. With the ACT further decriminalising certain illicit drugs from 2023, we can hope that the negative stigma surrounding these drugs is also lessened as people in the community are more willing to speak out and have helpful conversations about drug use. With this increase in discussion, we can then imagine that information about drug use and services can only get better. 

70.8% of our respondents agreed that “party drugs” are readily available but only 55% of respondents could name a service where you could get information on drug use. This demonstrates the normalisation of buying drugs, but almost the opposite when it comes to finding information or support for their use. The most common answer given by respondents in our survey for where they could find information on drugs was Lifeline, which isn't even really tailored specifically to drug use. CAHMA was the only other service that was named. From this, we can see that Canberra’s support services are severely underrepresented. In Canberra, we are lucky enough to house Australia’s first and only fixed pill testing site - CanTEST, which we mentioned in one of our earlier posts. At CanTEST, drugs can be tested every Thursday from 10am-1pm and every Friday from 6pm-9pm. The site is found in the ground floor of the City Community Health Centre (1 Moore street, Canberra City). 

A majority of the samples taken at the site have found the expected drug that they were searching for, but only 3 of 5 cocaine samples found cocaine within them. This shows the importance of these testing sites so that we can move forward into a safer environment for our community. With this, and as the ACT Government continues their work on decriminalising these drugs, the negative stigmas surrounding drug use will decrease and conversations about help will be easier to find. 

With conversations being easier, the hope is that people will be able to speak freely about support services and it will become just as normalised as drug use is and is further becoming. We hope that these blog posts over the past few days have shown you the importance of public and private conversations about drug use and how these vital conversations can aid drug safety through normalising communal experiences that are already happening today.