Web. Get it here. 2023. Foreword | Legal threshold quantities for drug trafficking, over which possession of an illicit drug is deemed trafficking as opposed to personal use are used in most Australian states and territories. Addressing the issue of drug trafficking in Australia will also help to meet the economic interests of the wider Australian society, which contributes to another important category of stakeholders that is committed to fight this issue. Model Criminal Code Officers Committee (MCCOC) 1998b. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 27(1), 1-20.. Dr Caitlin Hughes, Nicholas Cowdery AM, QC and Professor Alison Ritter, Copyright 2023 UNSW MEDICINE - National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, Authorised by National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre - The Advertiser writes that "Booker served as a police officer for four years before leaving the job in 2018", but later in the same article states "He was fired from the . What Does Drug Trafficking Mean In NSW and what is the penalty for drug trafficking in Australia? The exchange of operational data on serious transnational illegal structures between national customs offices and information on most immeasurable methods in border management can improve coordination at the federal and worldwide levels. This problem requires the effective operation of border authorities, and the globalization of drug importation sets new goals for them. During the 20th century, many of these groups established themselves as the key suppliers of marijuana and heroin. It is undeniable that those stocks threaten public health, changing the state economy and eventually supporting drug companies and dealers in Southeast Asia. Drug trafficking is the largest revenue generator globally among the variety of transnational criminal markets. NDARC is supported by funding from the Australian Government. for only $13.00 $11.05/page. The organization deals with matters that threaten Australias national security. In one case, the AFP is hunting a drug kingpin who is living in luxury after fleeing Perth for Colombia, leaving behind a string of still-operating businesses here. It is an offence in the ACT to traffic in a controlled drug. "This has contributed to rising addiction amongst locals and the emergence of a local drug network.". They were arrested by the police from Brisbane on the charge of trafficking drugs hidden in a tube of hair dye on February 22. In one operation, the AFP and their Colombian counterparts focused on a cartel moving large quantities of cocaine (up to 500 kilograms) to Europe or Africa (as intermediate countries) where it is broken up into small quantities and forwarded to other countries including Australia. In emerging countries, it is easy to cross certain parts of the frontiers unnoticed with illegal substances. Singapore on Thursday executed two men for drug trafficking, ignoring pleas for mercy from human rights campaigners who fear "a new wave" of hangings in the Asian city state notorious . Thus, preventive measures will make it possible for drug traffickers to understand that the Australian frontier is under close protection (Malins, 2019). Nevertheless, most median and mean quantities that Australian drug users reported consuming or purchasing were lower than the trafficable thresholds. Can the dogs of Chernobyl teach us new tricks when it comes to our own survival? This paper was written and submitted to our database by a student to assist your with your own studies. Deemed supply in Australian drug trafficking laws: A justifiable legal provision? The report also found thatcross-border efforts to police drug trafficking hadbeenundermined bya disconnectbetween regional and national law enforcement, anddisparity in capacity across agencies,which haderoded trust and intelligence-sharing between them. "Transnational drug crime is a protracted problem, but not one that is of the Pacific's own making rather the region is a casualty of the criminal greed of organised crime and the drug appetite ofAustralia and New Zealand.". Sindicich N & Burns L 2012. Consequently, collectively with border guards, the Australian Federal Police is involved in the struggle against drug trafficking. "Many times, these deportees have spent most of their lives outside of their countries of origin and have grown up in Australia, New Zealand or the US," Mr Sousa-Santos said. Credit: Transnational serious organised crime groups are importing illicit drugs into Australia on an industrial scale, the AFP spokesperson said. Legal thresholds are significant yet controversial tools in the sentencing of drug offenders (Hughes 2010a, 2003). For example, in a heavy session of use, 4.2 percent, 4.6 percent and 11.3 percent of regular heroin users in Western Australian, New South Wales and Victoria respectively consumed equal to or more than the current thresholds (the frequency of heavy sessions is unknown). They are ambivalent to the misery caused by their product, its impact on our health systems, or if innocent people are killed in the crossfire of their turf wars.. Man jailed for role in 300kg cocaine import to Victoria. In Australia drug problems are dealt with in three main ways: Therefore, another critical strategy at the international level is to maintain and develop a collective policy to prevent drug trafficking. The table above drug categories in Australia outlines the maximum Australian drug penalties and drug trafficking in Australia penalties according to the drug quantity and type. The syndicate also has the ability to impregnate cocaine into items like plastic tables and mobile phones. First, the deeming provision that reverses the onus of proof onto alleged drug offenders found in possession of the threshold quantity or greater is highly exceptional, compared with other countries drug trafficking thresholds and the standard Australian law and criminal justice responses to serious crimes. The companies associated with the syndicate have had investments in gyms, a mechanical workshop, a halal meat product company, a used car dealership, commercial premises, residential real estate, businesses related to luxury cars, boats and heavy machinery, hairdressing, beauty treatments, massage businesses and a nightclub. How common is illicit drug use? The U.S. and Australian police jointly handled the case, uncovered an international drug trafficking syndicate, and intercepted 2.4 metric tons of cocaine on a ship bound for Australia off the coast of South America, with a market value of up to 1 billion Australian dollars (approximately NT$20.6 billion). Drug trafficking and production is on the rise in the Pacific Islands and Australia's addiction to methamphetamine and cocaine is driving the problem, a Lowy Institute report finds. Dark web drug trafficking has been an increasingly prominent issue since the inception of the illicit drugs website, Silk Road. It uses a complex structure of interconnected companies to assist in the placement, distribution and integration of the proceeds of crime with company directors who are direct family members including his brother with an interest in 14 companies, the ACIC said. More generally, the findings suggest that instances of users exceeding the threshold quantity identified would be much less problematic if the threshold quantity were not also linked to the deemed supply laws. Data were derived from three different national surveystwo of regular drug users (the Illicit Drug Reporting System: IDRS and the Ecstasy and related Drug Reporting System: EDRS) and one from the general population (the National Drug Strategy Household Survey: NDSHS). The article states that the successful opening of the drug business system is a continuation of the victorious action against drug trafficking and its importation into Australia. "They require facilitators in the Pacific to assist in their operations and in moving the drugs through the region, and the way that this is done is by having these criminal syndicates be supported by a local drug market. Reasons for such differences remain unknown. Australian police have described the action as one of the biggest blows to organized crime by seizing about 1.5 tonnes of drugs, including more than . Equally importantly, while the results support the findings from the Australian Capital Territory of thresholds posing clear risks to users, they also show how risks can be mitigated with better designnamely with thresholds that better reflect using patterns in the particular state of concern and how the wholesale adoption of the Model Criminal Code quantities across Australia would serve to increase the likelihood of a drug user being unjustly charged and/or sanctioned for trafficking (MCCOC 1998b). Walsh C 2008. This is particularly true in this case as, across all states, it is users of MDMA who are most at risk of unjustified sanctiona drug that when compared across both licit and illicit drugs has been shown to be least likely to cause crime or health and societal harm (Nutt, King & Phillips 2010). The report's author, Jose Sousa-Santos,saidthe street value formethamphetamine and cocaine in Australia and New Zealand was among the highestin the world. Drug trafficking is one of the most crucial and dangerous parts of the illicit market. The AFP collaborates with various national and international law enforcement partners to develop and implement strategies to dismantle syndicates involved in the trafficking of illicit drugs and drug . . The harm caused by illicit narcotics abuse impacts every level of society, from the person to the nation and eventually a global community. Other transactions linked to the group have funnelled millions of dollars overseas via a web of shell companies, from the sale of luxury cars, transfers from a commercial law firm and migration agent, money transfers via the Commonwealth Bank, ANZ and US banks including Wells Fargo, and cash deposits under $10,000 via ATMs. The IDRS and EDRS are national monitoring systems that survey regular (at least monthly) drug users on an annual basis. Dealing and trafficking in illegal drugs (like heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis) are serious criminal offences. Of relevance here, users of cocaine are underrepresented in the sample (Degenhardt & Dietze 2005). UK nationals charged with trafficking drugs into Australia. Hughes, C. E., Chalmers, J., & Bright, D. A. In 2011, a total of 868 users participated in IDRS (Stafford & Burns 2012) and 693 in the EDRS (Sindicich & Burns 2012). The kingpin received $100 million in tracked international transfers in the first four months of 2019 alone. A 2018 Australian Federal Police (AFP) document reviewed by Reuters outlining the top . Sevigny EL & Caulkins JP 2006. https://studycorgi.com/high-level-drug-trafficking-in-australia/. Chill Now? The cases of several Australians potentially facing the death penalty in China for drug trafficking are centred around the southern province of Guangdong, a notorious hub for methamphetamine . March 03, 2023 - 3:04PM. "High-Level Drug Trafficking in Australia." A recent drug arrest in Australia has links to South Africa. The broader project examined this issue in two different wayswhether the thresholds are designed to filter traffickers from users and whether they enable appropriate sanctioning of traffickers of different controlled drugs. Findings from the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS). "Stopping crime at the source is a key strategy for the AFP and partnerships with Pacific policing organisations are resulting in a more-hostile environment for criminal activity,"an AFP spokesperson said. Add languages. More than five terabytes of data, including more than five million emails and tens of thousands of documents, were hacked and held in a password-protected database in August. A., Hughes, C. E., Bright, D. A., & Ritter, A. street value of $225 million, has been seized before getting to Australia. The logistical elasticity of criminal gangs prevents national authorities from responding quickly to problems and eliminating them. That said, legal thresholds are used primarily to facilitate responses to high-level offenders; that is, drug traffickers. The fact that this is how police and prosecutors operate in Queensland, France and most other criminal justice systems (Hughes 2010a) shows this is not only possible but a more common practice. To assist in this endeavour, all Australian states and territories have adopted legal thresholds that specify quantities of drugs over which offenders are either presumed to have possessed the drugs for the purposes of supply and liable to sanction as drug traffickers (up to 15 years imprisonment in most states), or in the case of Queensland, liable to sanctions equivalent to drug traffickers (up to 25 years imprisonment). Australia is strongly committed to countering people smuggling and human trafficking. Secret agents targeting drug cartels in Australia exposed in data hack. Nevertheless, in all Australian states and territories, possession of the base-level threshold quantities triggers elevated maximum penalty ranges. This approach also provides Australian border guards to obtain predictive data about the possible crossing of the border with drugs. The specific threshold quantities employed vary by drug type, by jurisdiction and whether they are measured in terms of the pure chemical compound of a drug (pure grams) or, more commonly, in terms of pure chemical and any inert substances and fillers that are added before sale on the street (mixed grams or admixtures). Combatting these transnational crimes requires close cooperation bilaterally, regionally and multilaterally. A number of laws are employed for sanctioning alleged drug traffickers in Australia, but most jurisdictions also have laws to sanction solely on the weight of the drug found. The Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory were excluded from this analysis for two reasonsthe prior analysis of the Australian Capital Territory (Hughes & Ritter in press) and lack of adequate data on illicit drug use and purchasing for the Northern Territory. In Papua New Guinea, there are no laws that prohibit the production, sale or use of methamphetamines, making it a key location to transit drugs to Australia. Such laws mean that possession of the trafficable threshold amount will constitute a presumption of trafficking placing the onus on the alleged offender to prove that the possessed amount was not for the purposes of trafficking (deemed supply). To reduce the risk that reporting could compromise current investigations or endanger lives, the Herald delayed publication until Friday. Concern is that without legal thresholds, there would be more opportunity for prosecutorial and sentencing abuse, leading to more adverse sentencing outcomes (such as sanctioning traffickers for simple possession or Mr Bigs with overly lenient terms). The dark web drug market has also been . 5:07:38 pm, Wednesday 01 March 2023, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health, National Centre for Clinical Research on Emerging Drugs (NCCRED), DPMP policy briefing - 2015 - Hughes Cowdery Ritter - Australian deemed supply laws.doc.pdf, Conjoint Appointments and Visiting Fellows. Drug trafficking is a global illicit trade involving the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. Crackdown operations. Australian police have busted a drug trafficking network, mostly cocaine, worth more than $ 1 billion, run by a group of Albanians. The detainee was interrogated, and his phone was examined to find his accomplices. In another AFP operation, their strategy is to disrupt the onshore syndicate of Colombian-born student visa holders, connected through common education agents and agencies, importing cocaine into South East Queensland via the air cargo stream, an emailed AFP report said. According to GFI's report, the global market in cocaine is valued at between $94 billion and $143 billion, an increase from an estimated $88 billion in 2008. He said this was becauseAustralia and New Zealand were small,geographically isolated markets, which pushed up the price. A massive leak of classified documents from the Colombian government has exposed the identities and methods of secret agents working to stop international drug cartels from operating in Australia. 25 years' imprisonment for trafficking marketable quantity of controlled drugs (s.302.3 Criminal Code) 10 years' imprisonment for trafficking controlled drugs (s.302.4 Criminal Code). It shows that in all jurisdictions, the quantities for cannabis are larger than for any other drug. Lee, 65, is a former prison mate of Tse's suspected of being involved in drug trafficking for four decades. One of the largest drug crackdowns involving Australian police. The group is allegedly linked to a Queensland accounting firm that caters to Spanish speakers, and an Australian man with links to the Bandidos, Mongols and Lone Wolf Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. This is a joint media release between the Australian Federal Police and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. This is exemplified by considering patterns of consumption and purchasing from two of the five drugs examinedheroin and MDMA. Australia; Europe; Latin America; Middle East; Colombia's most wanted drug lord Otoniel captured. "The response by Pacific states and traditional partners must be rapid, proactiveand adaptive," the reportnoted. In another operation, the AFP identified 55 people as potentially involved in an Australian cartel run out of Perth. Nicholas Cowdery is from the Faculty of Law, The University of New South Wales. Australia News. What is also problematic is to grab an entire syndicate of smugglers, not just one member (OReilly et al., 2020). Drug trafficking in Australia is deemed a very serious offence, one for which legislators and courts have ruled general deterrence is paramount and 'little mercy' should be shown (Clune [1989] VR 567, O'Bryan and Marks JJ, 576). The kingpin and an accomplice are subject to Interpol blue notices. In 2011, Hughes and Ritter (in press) were commissioned by the Australian Capital Territory (Justice and Community Safety Directorate) to evaluate the current and proposed Model Criminal Code quantities. To do this, they demand a clear knowledge of the states carrier policy that includes aquatic ports, platforms, ways, railway routes, and terminals. This study was conducted at the Drug Policy Modelling Program (DPMP), which is located at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), the University of New South Wales. Australia is an effective participant in international drug trafficking organizations. A Gold Coast man charged with trafficking several drugs - including cocaine and MDMA - as part of an organised crime network has fronted court for the first time. March 19, 2012 -- The international swimsuit model accused of being the mastermind of a worldwide drug ring run out of a Hollywood apartment has been arrested in Australia after skipping out on . With this knowledge, I have experimented and identified spatial data patterns of vessel behaviors and recognized and implemented innovative models to identify Illegal Unregulated Unreported fishing activities (IUU), Maritime crime activities such as smuggling, drug trafficking, human trafficking (especially Australia), and rescue distress . Nutt DJ, King LA & Phillips LD 2010. This process was repeated for Metric 2 using data from the IDRS and EDRS only (data on purchasing was unavailable from the NDSHS). In 2017, the authority seized 3.3 tonnes of cocaine, 2.1 tonnes of crystal meth and undocumented amount of Heroin. For each survey, data on quantity consumed in a typical and heavy session was extracted by state, then dosage conversions applied (to convert all dosage units into grams) and the mean, median and range calculated by state and by drug type. Accordingly, training enables the frontier guards to prepare for complex operations. Several difficulties confront border agencies face while dealing with and enhancing the ways to solve this issue. Moreover, there is wide variation across states. At the same time, there is an opportunity to take part in a common operational struggle against narcotics trafficking. The article states that the successful opening of the drug business system is a continuation of the victorious action against drug trafficking and its importation into Australia. Web. Attorney-Generals Department (AGD) 2011. These companies seem to have been created for the purpose of investing money that has entered Colombia through international transactions from Australia, a police report said. Fiji has also seen drug-related policing cases increase substantially, from 148 in 2008 to 1,400 in 2018, the report noted. Yet, in spite of known risks from adopting such thresholds, most notably of unjustified conviction of users as traffickers, the capacity of Australian legal thresholds to deliver proportional sanctioning has been subject to limited research. Australian frontier authorities and customs patrol borders, airports, and ports on a regular. (2021). If you are the original creator of this paper and no longer wish to have it published on StudyCorgi, request the removal. Drug harms in the UK: A multicriteria decision analysis. Australia is a current member of the CND (until 2013) and is an observer of the CCPCJ (however, Australia works closely with current members through the Western . This ability to react quickly to changing conditions results in the practical elusiveness of bootlegging gangs. Table 1 outlines the trafficable threshold quantities for heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA and cannabis. Recently, the efforts of border defenders are not sufficient to guard, so new technologies perform a valuable role (Malins, 2019). In this study, the authors use data on patterns of drug user consumption and purchasing to evaluate Australian legal threshold quantities to see whether Australian drug users are at risk of exceeding the thresholds for personal use alone. Threshold quantities for Queensland were converted into mixed grams (admixtures) based on the 201011 retail purity (ACC 2012) as listed in Table 1. Guacamaya invites the peoples of Abya Yala (an Indigenous name for Central and South America) to hack and filter these systems of repression, domination and enslavement that dominate us, and that it be the peoples who decide to find a way to free us from state terrorism, their statement said. The cartel uses people on student visas, who receive the air cargo consignments from FedEx Colombia and then send money to Colombia. Further data on the frequency of high consumption and high purchasing behaviours is also needed. Many overseas police agencies are also affected. Meanwhile, "narco-corruption" in the Pacific "compromised institutions and individuals across key agencies, such as customs, policeand immigration,and undermined the rule of law". Two additional solutions are suggested. In August 2018, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) published a report that detailed some of the groups money laundering and drug trafficking activities. It is important to note that UNODC is not only a development agency although many of its programs provide development-related benefits.