Drug Use and Drug Control Policy: Evaluating the Impact of Precursor Regulation on Drug User Behaviour

Abstract

Controlling the availability of illicit drugs and their use is an exemplar of a wicked problem. Reducing the scale of the illicit drugs market through suppressing supply has proven extremely difficult. A recent systematic review of studies by Cunningham and colleagues who have produced a series of research papers examining the impact of precursor regulations on various methamphetamine outcomes in North America, argue this research represents the most compelling evidence to date that ‘precursor regulations, or indeed any supply control strategy, can have significant impacts on the retail market for illicit drugs’. The review of this work concludes that the question for future research is ‘not so much whether precursor regulations work, but which regulations work best and in what context’; this is the starting point for my research. The market for methamphetamine is entrenched, broad and dynamic and represents an important criminological and public health problem in Australia. Within Australia the production of methamphetamine has been concentrated in Queensland and that state government has responded by developing a coercive regulatory framework which co-opts pharmacies into a partnership with drug law enforcement that is aimed at preventing the diversion of licit precursor chemicals to the illicit market for manufacture into methamphetamine. In 2005, the Queensland Pharmacy Guild in partnership with the Queensland Police Service developed an electronic medication recording system Project STOP, - which is a real-time web based database used by police to track and apprehend ‘pseudo runners’ - to facilitate adherence to the compulsory requirements of recording and reporting sales of pseudoephedrine placed upon them by both health regulations and the criminal law. In my thesis, I refer to the family of innovations (legislative, policy and technological interventions) underpinning the police–pharmacy partnership as Third Party Policing (TPP).