National Illicit Drug Indicators Project (NIDIP)

The purpose of the National Illicit Drug Indicators Project is to improve the understanding of, and systematically track changes in, heroin and psychostimulant use and related harms using comprehensive, timely and reliable information. This project will provide a number of benefits, including enhanced dissemination of information on heroin and psychostimulant use and harms, and a greater ability of agencies and policymakers to assess the need for, and outcomes of, policy and other interventions.

NIDIP’s major aims are to: complement the IDRS (by assisting in standardising and evaluating the indicator data collected); provide accurate and timely information on trends in indicator data; and utilise multiple indicator data sources to assist in the interpretation of trends and to overcome the limitations of individual data sources.

NIDIP will provide an opportunity to report on a range of issues related to illicit drugs using detailed analyses of indicator data, particularly with the use of data from different sources. This last point is important, as there is a need for the use of data from a range of sources to overcome the limitations of any one source. The project involves identifying and collecting data from a large number of national and jurisdictional-based data collection systems.

Data indicators will be collected across five broad themes: prevalence of drug use, drug-related morbidity, treatment, and mortality and crime.

It is envisioned that information from NIDIP will be available in several ways: regular brief bulletins; journal articles; and web-based bulletins and links. This will provide an accessible and more complete picture of trends in use and harms over time.

Further detail on NIDIP is available here.