Drug Policy Modelling Program

The DPMP website is designed for both policy makers and researchers. It serves to provide information on illicit drug policies and tools for policy makers but also on the current and completed work of the DPMP research team. The DPMP website contains comprehensive information about illicit drug policies including:

• An overview of DPMP and information about us
• Links to national and state policy documents
• Statistical data on rates of drug use
• Analysis of policy options under the section what works
• Tools and methods for both researchers and policy makers

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What's New?

Book Launch

Book launches for David McDonald, Gabriele Bammer and Peter Dean's recently published book, 'Research Integration Using Dialogue Methods' will be held in Bern, Switzerland on Friday, 20th November and at The ANU in Canberra on Thursday, 26th November at 5:30pm in The Co-Op Bookshop. The official invite to the Canberra launch can be found here.

A copy of the book can be found online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/dialogue_methods_citation.html

New Bulletin

The Drug Policy Modelling Program in collaboration with the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research has today released the report: 'How do methamphetamine users respond to changes in methamphetamine price?'

Report overview:
The aim of the study was to estimate how methamphetamine users would respond to changes in the prices of methamphetamine and heroin, using hypothetical drug purchasing scenarios. Participants were given a hypothetical fixed drug budget, presented with a range of drug ‘pricelists’ and asked how many units of each drug on the pricelist they would buy with their drug budget. Results revealed that methamphetamine purchases decreased significantly as the price of methamphetamine increased (a 10% price increase led to an 18%-19% fall), as did heroin purchases in response to heroin price increases (a 10% price increase led to a 16%-27% fall). There was evidence of substitution into other drugs; for example from methamphetamine to heroin and vice versa; and from both methamphetamine and heroin into pharmaceutical opioids (oxycodone and morphine).

A copy of the report can be downloaded here. To read more about the project click here.

Symposium Presentations

The first annual DPMP Symposium was held Tuesday, October 13th in Sydney. A copy of the full program can be found here. Copies of most presentations from the day can be found below: