Illicit Drug Use Is Spiking, Yet NSW Authorities Continue Deadly and Performative Approach

The National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program released its latest figures for the period December 2024 to October 2025, and in its ninth year, it found there has been a significant spike in illicit drug use in this country, in terms of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and MDMA with a record combined weight of 26.8 tonnes, which seems to suggest the war on drugs is failing big time.

The record combined weight of these four party favourites marked a 21 percent, or 4.6 tonne, increase on the year prior, which had already marked an unprecedented weight involving a 34 percent, or 5.6 tonne, spike.

The Australian Crime Intelligence Commission has been sniffing around amongst 57 percent of the nation’s sewage in order to garner these figures, and it’s too found ketamine use is on the rise.

And as New South Wales Greens MLC Cate Faehrmann pointed out in the wake of the 31 April 2026 release of the ACIC wastewater report, Australian governments are spending ever-increasing billions on domestic drug law enforcement and on the Australian Border Force and the Australian federal police border drug seizure operations, and yet there are more drugs in our sewers than ever before…

“What we’re seeing is the failure of a system that focuses almost entirely on enforcement, while ignoring the drivers of drug use – mental health, trauma, social stress, boredom, loneliness – and failing to invest properly in treatment and harm reduction,”