The Great Australian Ice Flood (Part One)
Dr John Jiggens
Every year more people are arrested for drugs; every year more drugs are seized; and every year there are more drugs on the street.
On 29 November 2014, the Australian Federal Police announced an illicit drug seizure of 1.9 tonnes of MDMA and 849 kilos of methamphetamine. The police declared it to be the second largest illicit drug seizure ever in Australia and estimated the street value of this monster seizure at an extraordinary $1,500 million.
In a joint statement, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Immigration and Border Protection Minister Scott Morrison and Justice Minister Michael Keenan praised law enforcement agencies and hailed a ‘landmark day’ in the fight against drugs and organised crime
NSW Police Commissioner Scipione declared that the NSW Police Force and their partner agencies has taken billions of dollars-worth of illicit drugs off the streets. The Commissioner added that the effects of this great seizure would be seen far and wide across the Australian community.
Not for the first time, Commissioner Scipione was wrong. Extraordinarily, the Australian illicit drug market was so massive it could shrug off a seizure of this size. The monster of November 2014 had little effect on the great Australian methamphetamine flood.
The origins of the Ice Flood
The monster methamphetamine seizure of November 2014 was an Australian record. Indeed it was the fourth Australian record inside three years. Since May 2011 the Australian record for methamphetamine seizure has increased fourfold going from a then record seizure of 240 kilos that month, to a new record of 306 kilos in July 2012, to a newer record of 585 kilos in November 2012, to this current record ice seizure of 849 kilos in November 2014. All of these were hailed by our leaders and journalists as proof of how well the war on ice was going.
When the AFP conducted the first of these enormous seizure on 4 May 2011, Matt Doran, reporting for TEN news, exhausted his superlatives describing how this massive bust had delivered ‘a monster blow to those who organise the traffic in deadly and illegal drugs’. It was, Doran continued, ‘an extraordinary 240 kilograms of ice with a street value in excess of S50M, the biggest bust in Australian history’. He declared it had ‘dealt a major, major blow to organised crime in Australia’.
However, this major, major blow had no effect other than to mark the beginning of the ice flood. This massive seizure was the first of many. Two-hundred kilo seizures are far more frequent now, but at the time such a seizure was regarded as extraordinary. But the record hauls kept coming because the flood of ice kept growing. Over the last several years, we have lived through the great Australian methamphetamine flood.
The flood of 2012-2016
The best idea of the size of Australia’s illicit drug market can be gained from the many reports of drug seizures that so regularly feature in our news that people read, then pass by without processing. For the sake of analysis, I categorise the biggest seizures as monster (value greater than $250 million street value); massive (seizures in the $50 million to $250 million street value range); enormous ($10million to $50 million); and big ($1 million to $10 million).
In the season of the monster, in the last six months of 2014, massive amphetamine seizures occurred all over Australia. In early August 2014, Victorian police found 135 kilos of methamphetamine in a Melbourne apartment. It was the start of an astonishing week of large ice seizures, leading Richard Grant of the Australian Crime Commission to claim, ‘In the past week, Australian law enforcement in Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland have seized approximately 220 kilos of this drug.’ Only a few years before, this would have been an extraordinary week. But the flood rolled on: 90 kilos were seized in Perth, 28 kilos in the ACT; another 50 kilos in Melbourne. And then in mid-November, came the Sydney monster!
Counting the ‘monster’ and the ‘massive’ seizures alone, and ignoring the ‘enormous’ and the ‘big’, over 1.2 tonnes of methamphetamine were seized in five months between July and November 2014! This gives some idea of the size of the market. When the bible of Australian drug law enforcement, the Illicit Drug Data Report (IDDR) for 2014/15 is published, the amphetamine seizures are expected to fall in the 2-3 tonne range.
The 2013/14 Illicit Drug Data Report recorded that 1.8 tonnes of amphetamines were seized at the border that financial year, and that five large detections had a combined weight of 530.9 kilograms and accounted for 29.3 per cent of the total weight; the largest, 203 kilos, was sea cargo from China to Brisbane; two more were sea-cargo China to Sydney; another sea-cargo USA to Melbourne; the smallest (49 kilos) in air cargo from Mexico to Sydney. The flood of ice flowed in from all over the world, driven by the high price of ice in Australia.
However, despite seizing almost two tonnes of amphetamines at the border, 2013/14 was only the second biggest year for such seizures. The year with the record for the most ice seized at the border, with 2.14 tonne of amphetamines seized, was the previous year 2012/13, which included the two previous Australian record seizures of 306 kilos and 585 kilos. Before these two years, the largest annual totals seized at the border were in the 200 kilos-300 kilos range, which is why the 240 kilo seizure in May 2011 was regarded as extraordinary.
The large seizures over the past two year may be because more methamphetamine is being seized at the border because more is being imported. Previously, amphetamine-type stimulants were largely manufactured in Australia. In their 2012 annual report, the International Narcotics Control Board suggested that the recent crackdown on precursor chemicals in Australia caused the price of amphetamine-type stimulants to rise, which has in turn attracted the attention of foreign traffickers, seeking to take advantage of the potential for profits.
By increasing price, the police crackdown on home-bake and precursors shifted the balance of the methamphetamine market toward importation, and this seems to be the reason for the recent record seizures. Since the Australian price for methamphetamine remains high by world standards, any shortage caused by local law enforcement only drives prices higher.
The police arrested their way out of one problem to encounter a more difficult problem: the global amphetamine industry, the Mexican cartels, the Southeast Asian triads, and the outlaw motor cycle gangs of Canada and the US, who found the Australian ice market very attractive. The flood gates were opened. Big seizures of ice are common now. You read about them every week: the current week (June 2016) had 140 kilos of ice seized in Perth on 3 June, and 117 charges and 13 arrested in Charleville (deep in the Outback) on 5 June, and a bust of 448 kilos of ice in New Zealand, some of which would be heading over to our side of ‘the ditch’. The Australian methamphetamine market has been outsourced and globalised.
