A study of our nations wastewater has shown Tasmanians continue to reign as the nation’s biggest pot smokers, consuming vastly higher amounts of cannabis than the national average.
The studies, which are costing taxpayers $1.2 million each year, analyses more than 53 wastewater treatment plants across Australia. It’s organised and managed by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC).
Yep, there’s an official study called the National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program which analyses (almost) everything that goes down your toilet. They even managed to detect the dreaded Covid-19 earlier this year.
Don’t worry though – they can’t track your toilet flushes back to you…yet.
Samples from our combined flushes were taken in August 2019 and December 2019 for the purpose of monitoring the consumption of 13 substances:
- Methylamphetamine
- Amphetamine
- Cocaine
- 3,4-methylenedioxymethylamphetamine (MDMA)
- 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA)
- Heroin
- Cannabis
- Mephedrone
- Methylone
- Oxycodone
- Nentanyl
- Nicotine, and
- Alcohol
There’s plenty of fascinating results presented, but we’ll only be focusing on cannabis.
Here are the two graphs we’re interested in:
As you can see, the cannabis crown was still up for grabs from the August 2019 results, but come December 2019, it was sitting quite comfortably on Tasmania.
The analysis measured the estimated consumption of cannabis per mg of THC / 1000 people / day. Regional regions are coloured in grey, with the larger cities in white.
Unsurprisingly, based on the high frequency of headlines on it in the past years – regional cannabis use is far higher than in the capitals.
With the ever-increasing popularity of cannabidiol (CBD) as a medicine over THC, it’d be quite interesting to see how the wastewater compares here. As it’s currently legal to prescribe CBD but reports show less than 3% of patients are accessing it legally.
You can check our the wastewater reports for yourself here:
