Recent wastewater testing results revealing regional South Australia as the highest for methamphetamine consumption inaccurately represents the state's real problems with substance abuse, the peak body warns.
The National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program results gathered by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission were released this week and ranked regional SA first in the consumption of methamphetamine and fentanyl.
But SA Network of Drug and Alcohol Services executive director Michael White said the dataset did not offer an accurate picture of drug use in the state.
"It's a single point in time and it's a limited dataset, so it tells you how much of the bioproducts of substances that have been consumed have been excreted into the wastewater system," he said.
"It takes the raw data of the sewage and it turns it into a set of data.
"It doesn't tell you how many people are using, so you've got no idea if it's a hundred people using a small amount or 10 people using a big amount.
"So while it says there's a lot of drugs being used in rural South Australia, it's not telling you whether that's by a lot of people or by very few people."
Bigger issues overlooked, services say
The report revealed 1,300 milligrams of meth per 1,000 people per day was consumed in South Australia from April to June this year.
The results were collected from 57 wastewater sites across the country, including five in regional SA.
Mr White said the primary drugs of concern in the state were alcohol and cannabis.
"The second most used drug of concern is cannabis (behind alcohol) and this report doesn't report against cannabis because they can't work out a standardised dose for cannabis," he said.
"That always means it comes up as methamphetamine as the most used illicit substance and that's not true, not by a long shot."
Substance Misuse Limestone Coast project officer Sophie Bourchier echoed Mr White's concerns about alcohol use.
"Alcohol is overwhelmingly the substance that people most often seek help for," she said.
Ms Bourchier said she did not regard wastewater testing results as an accurate representation of what was really happening for people struggling with substance dependence.
"For me its a bit of a snapshot to see does it confirm our thinking — is alcohol using going up? Is smoking cigarettes going down?" she said.
Prevention the key, but no extra funding
Mr White said the wastewater drug monitoring reports did not result in more funding for drug and alcohol services.
"It probably results in more strong-on-crime kind of funding, because it's framed around that sort of message," he said.
"But what we know is … you can't arrest your way out of this.
"What you need is treatment to reduce the demand and early intervention and prevention to slow down the number of people taking drugs."
There was no significant mention of alcohol and other drug funding in this week's federal budget, Mr White said.
"There's no growth in funding and many of our services are actually losing funding, or the impact of inflation and CPI is meaning they've been cut," he said.
