One of Canberra's leading doctors has recommended analysing the wastewater from the Senate and House of Representatives to detect parliamentary trends in drug use.
"It's possible to isolate the wastewater out of the Senate and the House of Representatives, and that would be a very interesting study," David Caldicott of the ANU school of Medicine said.
The emergency medicine consultant at North Canberra Public Hospital was reacting to a new analysis of wastewater done by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. Its researchers took samples from sewage processing sites across Australia, including one in the ACT, to detect drug use.
The results showed that people in Canberra used large amounts of cocaine and the opioid oxycodone.
Dr Caldicott wondered if the high use detected by ACIC was because of "people who call Canberra home" or those who fly in and fly out.
"What we do know from recent experience is that people who fly in and fly out for political purposes enjoy a wide variety of substances, both licit and possibly illicit," he said.
He didn't limit his thoughts to the drug habits of senators and MPs: "We know that the role of a staffer is very high pressure, very low sleep, so it's the sort of role that might need augmentation."
The biggest disparity between habits in Canberra and those in Sydney or Melbourne revealed by the ACIC research was in the use of oxycodone, which can be prescribed as a pain killer but is also used to give a high. In the US, it's known as "hillbilly heroin".
According to the ACIC national analysis, people in the ACT used about twice the amount per thousand people as those in Sydney did, and also significantly more than people in the Victorian capital.
Already, 20 people have died in the ACT from suspected opioid overdoses this year, more than double the number of deaths recorded in 2023, though which particular form of the drug was responsible is yet to be determined.
The figures from the Criminal Intelligence Commission only show how much of the drug was found in wastewater. They don't show how much of it came from prescriptions by doctors and how much came through non-medical supply.
Experts on drug use in the ACT have been trying to find out if there is some sort of dark route from legal medical supplies to the recreational drugs market in Canberra. Where large quantities of oxycodone are prescribed, there is an increased chance that it might be diverted. It's also available on the "dark net".
Apart from oxycodone, the figures also showed a big rise in consumption of cannabis and cocaine in the ACT.
"There's been a quite tangible increase in consumption of cocaine in the ACT since December 2022," ACIC's principal advisor on drugs, Shane Neilson, said.
"It comes down to availability and the relatively high standard of living in the ACT," he said. (Cocaine tends to be a drug of choice among better off rather than poorer people - and the ACT is no exception to that.)
The researchers said Canberra was not a single drugs market but several different ones. Poorer people and better-off people tend to use different drugs supplied by different criminal groups,
"It's the diversity that's the problem. It's a diversity of demand and a diversity of supply," ACIC expert Amber Migus said.
"There's clear demand for these drugs in the ACT and that presents challenges," she said.
