DRUGS IN 80% OF WA ARRESTS

FOUR out of five West Australians arrested by police test positive to
illegal drugs.

According to new findings by the Australian Institute of Criminology,
drug-free arrests are the exception with WA the State with the worst record
of cannabis use in arrested people.

The institute took voluntary urine samples of 1360 Australians at four sites
in a national three-year project and asked about drug use, mental health
history and gambling.

The findings have been welcomed by the WA Police Service, which says the
figures demonstrate the conditions police have been working under for years.

Police alcohol and drug coordinator Sen. Sgt Ed Benier said the Drug and Use
Monitoring in Australia project was the first comprehensive study of
narcotics in those arrested.

"There has always been a lot of anecdotal evidence from the police on drug
and alcohol-related problems," he said. "This shows what we have been saying
all along."

The report was delivered to the Australian National Council on Drugs in
Darwin yesterday by Institute of Criminology director Adam Graycar.

Dr Graycar said the study, based on similar research in the United States,
had a practical application for policing.

"At one site (police precinct) there was no evidence of cocaine use," he
said. "We picked up cocaine in our testing there and were able to let the
police know it might be becoming a problem."

But Dr Graycar stressed the research, due to run another year, was entirely
confidential and neither the researchers nor the police could track the
urine samples to individuals.

"There are absolutely no repercussions at all," he said.

The report highlighted interesting differences in the drug use between men
and women which Dr Graycar said were reflected in the different reasons men
and women commit crime.

WA women were more likely to use illegal drugs than men and the drugs they
used were harder. More than 80 per cent of women tested positive with 65 per
cent of those using several types of drugs.

Women tested positive to cannabis almost as often as arrested men but were
more than twice as likely to use amphetamines and opiates, such as heroin,
and three times as likely to be on benzodiazepines such as Valium or
sleeping tablets.

Only 29 per cent of men used more than one drug.

"A lot of that is to do with the fact that in many cases the lives of women
who commit crime are more complicated than those of men," Dr Graycar said.

The research also found drug use was not confined to serious crimes.

Although 84 per cent of men arrested for property crime and 75 per cent of
violent crime had taken an illicit drug, the number was also high among
seemingly less serious offences.