| Photo: ABC News |
| An Australian police officer shows cannabis and cash seized in Perth, March 2010. |
Cannabis remains the most popular illegal drug in Australia, according to the Australian Crime Commission’s report on illicit drug use.
Two out of every three drug arrests in Australia in 2008 and 2009 were marijuana-related, but the number of people using cannabis has fallen by 50 percent over the past decade, according to the report.
Amphetamine-type stimulants were the second most popular illicit drug, according to Yahoo!7 News. Twenty percent of drug arrests were for amphetamines.
According to Home Affairs Director Brendan O’Connor, Australian police are discovering more secret “drug laboratories.”
| Photo: ABC News |
| Now, watch this hand while I steal some pot with the other hand. |
”There were 449 detections of such laboratories in this financial year… two-thirds of which, quite disturbingly, are in residential areas,” O’Connor said.
Queensland had the highest incidence of drug labs, with around one-third of the national total being found there.
The ACC released figures showing police arrested almost 84,000 Australians for illegal drugs last financial year, reports ABC News.
The Illicit Drug Data Report found that police seized more than 13 tonnes (more than 28,000 pounds) of illegal substances in 2008-2009, up from 8.5 tonnes (more than 19,000 pounds) in 2007-2008.
While there was a record number of marijuana seizures during the 12-month period, the weight seized nationally decreased by nearly 40 percent to 5,500 kilograms.