Tracking the availability of drugs in New Zealand: Implications for policy response Social Policy Journal of New Zealand • Issue 34 • Published April 2009 163 TRACKING THE AVAILABILITY OF DRUGS IN NEW ZEALAND: IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY RESPONSE Chris Wilkins, Senior Researcher 1 Paul Sweetsur, Statistician Centre for Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation (SHORE) Massey University Abstract Drug use imposes a range of health and social costs on New Zealand society. Measures of the availability of drugs are important for understanding levels of drug use and changes in drug use over time. Policy makers can directly affect levels of drug availability through a range of policy tools, including age restrictions, vendor regulation, varying levels of enforcement, and changing the legal classification of drug types. This paper presents population-level data on the current availability, and recent change in availability, of the 11 most commonly used drug types in New Zealand. Alcohol, tobacco and BZP/TFMPP party pills (i.e. the legally available drugs) were found to be by far the easiest drug types to obtain. Cannabis was the most easily available illegal drug, although it was much less available than the legal drugs. Cannabis was assessed by last-year users to be relatively more difficult to obtain in 2006 compared to 1998, 2001 and 2003. Amphetamine was also assessed to be relatively more difficult to obtain in 2006 compared to 2001. The decline in the availability of amphetamine occurred during a period after 2001 of sustained focus by drug enforcement agencies on disrupting clandestine methamphetamine manufacture and supply. A fall in the availability of nitrous oxide in 2006 followed a tightening of the rules concerning its sale by the Ministry of Health. Our findings suggest that policy makers can negatively affect the availability of a drug and, in turn, its level of use, with effective policy interventions. INTRODUCTION Drug use imposes a range of health and social costs on New Zealand, including death, illness, mental health problems, injuries from accidents, violence, property crime, family and relationship breakdown, and child neglect (Ministerial Committee on Drug Policy 2007). Much of the monitoring of drug use has traditionally involved measures of the prevalence of 1 Acknowledgements The authors gratefully acknowledge the different funding sources involved in each of the survey waves. The 1998 and 2001 National Drug Surveys were funded by contestable research grants from the Health Research Council and partially by direct funding from the Ministry of Health. The 2003 HBS-Drug Use survey was directly funded by the Ministry of Health and carried out as part of the Public Health Intelligence Health Behaviours Survey Monitor. The legal party pill survey was funded from the 2005/06 round of the National Drug Policy Discretionary Fund (NDPDF). The NDPDF is jointly managed by the Inter-Agency Committee of Drugs and the Ministerial Committee on Drug Policy. The national household comparison analysis presented in this paper was funded from the 2006/07 NDPDF. We would like to acknowledge all the researchers and interviewers who worked on the different survey waves, and all those members of the New Zealand public who participated in the surveys. Correspondence Dr Chris Wilkins, Senior Researcher, Drugs Team Leader, Centre for Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation (SHORE), Massey University, PO Box 6137, Wellesley St., Auckland, www.shore.ac.nz, Ph. 64 9 366 6136, Fax. 64 9 366 5149.