“So, over the past 15 years, Australia has tripled its drug law enforcement budget. Back in 2009-10, it was around $1.2 billion. And in 2020-21 it rose to $3.5 billion,” he says.
“But what we’ve seen is, yes, record numbers of arrests and record
numbers of drug seizures and volumes of drug seizures. Despite that, we
have seen no demonstrable impact on the ground in terms of drug
availability.” – Dr James Martin, a Deakin University criminology course director and illicit drug market researcher, tells The Saturday Paper.
