Of the A$1.5 billion spent annually on drug law enforcement, 70% is attributable to cannabis. –Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm, speaking in parliament in support of the passage of the Narcotic Drugs Amendment Bill 2016, on February 24, 2016.
Estimating Australia’s annual drug law enforcement expenditure is a difficult and inexact science.
Drug law enforcement may be involved with other crime fighting. For example, it’s hard to know exactly what proportion of the money spent tackling organised crime entails drug law enforcement, given that illicit drugs may be just one source of income for these groups.
Some arrests are also categorised as illicit drug offences, even when the primary focus of the police may be a different issue. For example, a person arrested for being drunk and disorderly may be found to be in possession of a small quantity of cannabis. This is still counted as an illicit drug offence even though the primary focus of police was dealing with the unruly behaviour and enhancing community safety.
Against this background, we sought to test against the evidence a statement by Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm that A$1.5 billion is spent annually on drug law enforcement in Australia and that 70% is attributable to cannabis.
Does Australia spend A$1.5b a year on drug law enforcement?
When asked for a source to support his statement, a spokesman for Senator Leyonhjelm referred The Conversation to a page on the Drug Law Reform Australia website. The webpage states:
Most of Australian drug arrests were for cannabis around 61,011, or 65% of drug arrests. Around 80% of those were for possession… The total cost of drug law enforcement is around $1.1 billion, not counting drug related crime which is unquantifiable.
There is a discrepancy between Drug Law Reform Australia’s reporting of the cost of drug law enforcement ($1.1 billion) and Senator Leyonhjelm’s estimation ($1.5 billion).
The Drug Law Reform Australia webpage, in turn, cites a report by the team at the Drug Policy Modelling Program at the University of New South Wales.
That research team estimated that in 2009-10, Australian drug law enforcement activities cost between A$1.03 billion and A$1.07 billion. That estimate included police services, judicial resources, legal expenses, corrective services, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service (now the Australian Border Force).
Taking the mid-point of this amount ($1.05 billion) and adjusting for inflation using the Reserve Bank of Australia’s inflation calculator (for the period 2010-2015) gives the approximate cost for 2015 of $1.18 billion, well short of Senator Leyonhjelm’s estimation of $1.5 billion.
So we found no evidence to support Senator Leyonhjelm’s assertion that A$1.5 billion is spent annually on drug law enforcement in Australia. That figure is not in the source he used.