What drugs are Australians googling? ​

Are the rumours true? Are all Victorians ketamine dealers? Is everyone in WA knee deep on acid listening to Pond? Here at Ballistic, we conducted an in-depth analysis into what drugs our states are googling & finally put to bed the age old debate. ​ Who are Australia's biggest druggies?

Righto cun(t)s, enough fucking around, lets get stuck into some serious investigatory journalism. You can flick on some ACA if you want a shonky builder update, you can peruse through the Herald Sun if want a peek at the ratings of Rove LA. But if you want useless, drug infested, poorly written blog posts - then step right in to ballisticinsides.com ​ Using an extensive tool set, the team here at Ballistic FINALLY answered the question that nobody’s asking. What are the differences in the states drug preferences? ​ Remember that ill-conceived notion that everyone in WA is tripping balls and listening to Pond? Or how about that old chesnut that everyone in NSW is stressed out with their snoz in a bag of Jon snow? Remember? ​ These hypotheses and many more have been tested by the team at Ballistic and presented with poor grammar below.

Using google trends as our source, we had a look at which states are searching for which drugs. This was calculated by looking at which states get the 'highest value' for searching for a particular drug. For all the nerd lingers out there, this is how google calculates popularity of search terms (by region). ​ A higher value means a higher proportion of all queries, not a higher absolute query count. So a tiny country where 80% of the queries are for ‘DMT’ will get twice the score of a giant country where only 40% of the queries are for ‘DMT’.

Ketamine

Winner: VIC

No surprises here. Imagine for a minute that the states were at a house party. I imagine Victoria would rock in late, stinking of weed with corduroy pants tucked way way up. Fiddling with his bucket hat in one hand, he may have a suck of his vape pen and casually announce that he’s slinging 50 bags for the boys. This would receive a blank stare from most other states. "Ketta-what?" This one was a no brainer. Well done Vic.

Cocaine

Winner: NSW

Makes sense. Imagine the same house party as before. New south Whales would probably surge in with a nice shirt on, tucked in pair of chinos & boat shoes (no socks). They’d immediately start scoping the premise for the nearest bathroom. "Cmon mate, lets have a bit of fun" they'd jibe as they grab ACT and hit the bathrooms for a credit card chop up.

DMT, Acid, LSD

WINNER: WA

I’ve long suspected some weird shit is going on in the far reaches of Australia, i just didn't know what. Well now we know. The west gets freaky with psychedelics like no other. Well played dubba aye. Use promo code: JOE ROGAN at checkout.

Alcohol

WINNER: NT

Weed

WINNER: QUEENSLAND

​ Stoned surfers? Dole bludgers? Ideal growing conditions? Who knows. Regardless, QLD get its first run on the board.

SHARD (ICE)

WINNER: QUEENSLAND

Didn’t think the Queenslanders would miss out on an old-fashioned twirl of the glass barbecue did you? Deeper dive into what specific terms Queenslanders are searching saw‘Meth mouth’ in number one. Meth mouth?!?!?! At this point, i chose to stop researching any further.

MDMA

WINNER: QUEENSLAND

QLD again? Starting to think we're rounding in on an answer to our question team. This one took a while to click though. Queenslanders and MDMA? But if you think about it, this is the state our schoolies go to holidays. There’s nothing the youth love more than rolling deep on Molly Meldrum into the wee hours of summer holidays. I'm guessing schoolies boosted search results exponentially.

Xanax

WINNER: QUEENSLAND