Police and sniffer dogs were a strong presence during the 2016 Harbourlife music festival in Sydney. The GDS group's aim is to make drug use safer regardless of their legal status by sharing credible and meaningful information. Just over 27 per cent of Australian respondents reported at least one drug-related police encounter, be it drug detection dogs, being stopped and searched for drugs, being cautioned, fined or arrested for drugs. Australia had the third-highest rate of drug policing behind Italy and Britain, almost double that of the US, (24.9 per cent versus 13.3 per cent) and well above the global rate of 9.5 per cent. Sniffer dogs were the most common type of drug policing globally, accounting for almost one in 10 reported encounters.

Police with sniffer dogs search people for drugs entering the Summadayze festival in Sydney. Credit:Angela Wylie Despite the high rates of policing, there were few reported arrests; just 1.3 per cent of encounters resulted in an arrest globally. False positives and high stakes The huge variation across Western countries was striking, the GDS team said, given the increasing evidence that police use of drug detection dogs have a high rate of false detections and can encourage high-risk behaviours, including people consuming all their drugs to avoid getting caught.

"It can also reduce police legitimacy, waste funds and increase risks of harms from drug use," Adam Winstock and Caitlin Hughes wrote in an accompanying opinion piece. In NSW in 2015, the number of searches made after police dogs indicated the presence of drugs was 12,893, according to data obtained by the NSW Greens. No drugs were discovered in 68 per cent of searches, an improvement on 2014 operations where no drugs were found in over 73 per cent of searches. The program costs the state, on average, $9.4 million per year. "Why do we have so much investment in drug law enforcement when the impact on drug taking is so limited and yet the collateral harms to the users and potentially to the integrity of the police is so high?" Dr Winstock and Dr Hughes wrote.

"Getting caught with drugs can be a very stressful event in people's lives. Criminal records for personal possession of drugs can ruin careers and opportunities and costs the police and legal system considerable time and money for uncertain gain." Greens MLC David Shoebridge said "Any other government program that was getting it wrong four times out of five would be immediately defunded". A NSW Police spokesman said its detection dogs are "very effective". "Any suggestion otherwise is incorrect," the spokesman said, pointing to 440 kilograms of illicit drugs seized between 2015 and 2016 with the help of dogs. "Drug detection dogs are one of a number of resources used by the NSWPF which assist in the detection and enforcement of those within our community who choose to be illegally involved with prohibited drugs." Drug policing targeting the young, poor, less educated

People under 25 are most likely to report drug-related police encounters, with roughly two-thirds of respondents affected, compared with 24.8 per cent of 25-to-35-year-olds and 8.9 per cent of over-35s, the GDS found. Less-educated people were also more likely to attract police attention over drugs. Almost 72 per cent of of respondents with no university degree said they had had an encounter versus 28.3 per cent of university-educated respondents. "Is current policing fair or just? And is it the best and most effective use of scarce drug policy resources?" Dr Winstock and Dr Hughes said. It's an especially vexed question in Australia after the Turnbull government's plans to drug-test 5000 Newstart and Youth Allowance recipients. In NSW, mobile drug testing units test for cannabis, MDMA (ecstasy) and methamphetamines, but not cocaine.

That is despite MDMA and cocaine being fairly evenly matched when it comes to drugs present in the blood samples of drivers after road crashes (40 and 51 crashes respectively in NSW between 2014 and 2016), according to the Centre for Roads and Safety data obtained by the NSW Greens. Cocaine is far more common among affluent Australians. The most "socio-economically advantaged" 20 per cent of Australian society use cocaine three times more than the bottom 20 per cent, according to 2013 federal government data. The German manufacturer of the MDT machines has also boasted about their ability to test for cocaine. "Testing for additional drug types beyond THC and amphetamines (the drug groups into which the current three prescribed illicit drugs fall), for example cocaine, would require a different testing device and may involve additional costs, and changes to legislation, laboratory procedures and systems," Centre for Road Safety executive director Bernard Carlon said.



"These costs need to be clearly justified and targeted to addressing a clear road safety need." The Centre for Road Safety is currently engaging with the community to refresh its strategies, Mr Carlon said. Global Drug Survey 2016: Take the Quiz