Drug Related Hospitalisations Surge While Prevention Lags

Australia recorded its steepest rise in drug related hospitalisations in almost a decade during 2023 to 2024. New figures from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at UNSW Sydney show hospital admissions linked to illicit drugs, prescription medicines and other substances climbed 10.5 percent on the previous year. That growth was more than double the rise seen across all causes of hospitalisation nationally.

The National Illicit Drug Indicators Project tracked 56,797 hospitalisations from drug use in the twelve months to June 2024. That works out to 216 admissions per 100,000 people. It marks the first statistically significant annual increase since 2015 to 2016. This reverses three years of decline that followed the early pandemic period.

Methamphetamine sits at the centre of the surge. Hospitalisations tied to the drug reached 53 per 100,000 people in 2023 to 2024. That was up 27 percent on the previous year, the highest rate recorded since national monitoring began. Methamphetamine now accounts for 83 percent of all amphetamine type stimulant related hospitalisations. Amphetamine type stimulants as a group rose 24 percent, making them the single largest driver of the national increase.

GHB related admissions climbed even faster. Hospitalisations linked to the drug and its precursor chemicals GBL and 1,4 BD rose 77 percent the year before. They then grew a further 59 percent in 2023 to 2024. That nearly doubled the rate in the space of two years, reaching a record 13 admissions per 100,000 people. Cocaine related hospitalisations rose 29 percent. MDMA related admissions climbed 44 percent.

However, opioid related hospitalisations told a different story. They held broadly steady at 21 per 100,000 people. This is close to the lowest rate recorded in two decades, and well below the peak reached in 2015 to 2016.

Young Australians and Regional Communities Carry the Weight

More than half of all drug related hospitalisations in 2023 to 2024 involved people aged between 20 and 39. Rates climbed across almost every adult age group compared with the previous year. Males accounted for 52 percent of admissions, and the rate among men grew far faster than among women.

Geography shaped the picture just as clearly. People living in remote and very remote parts of Australia faced the highest hospitalisation rate of any region. It reached 267 per 100,000, well above the rate recorded in major cities. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of all admissions occurred among residents of the most disadvantaged areas. This pattern held across almost every drug type the report examined.

What the Data Leaves Unanswered

For all its detail on who ends up in hospital and why, the report says little about what happens next. Its tables cover diagnosis type, length of stay and intensive care admission in depth. Yet nowhere does it account for how many people went on to access treatment. Nowhere does it record what recovery support was available to them, or whether prevention and demand reduction programmes exist to stop the next admission.

The one part of the report that addresses a policy response is a short panel on naloxone, the medicine used to reverse opioid overdose. It is a useful tool, but a narrow one. Naloxone only works on opioids, and opioids are the one major drug category in this report that is not rising. Methamphetamine, GHB and cocaine are actually driving the surge. Yet none of them receive any mention of a matching public health strategy.

That gap matters. A report documenting record growth in hospitalisations from drug use among young adults and disadvantaged communities offers little sense of whether prevention education is reaching them. It says nothing about whether demand reduction investment matches the scale of the problem. Nor does it show whether people leaving hospital have a genuine pathway into recovery, rather than a route back into the conditions that put them there.

Closing the Gap Between the Data and the Response

Hospital statistics can describe a crisis, but they cannot fix one. Australia’s rate of drug related hospitalisations has returned to growth after several years of decline. This resurgence is driven overwhelmingly by drugs that receive little visible investment in prevention or demand reduction. It is also driven by an outcome the national data does not even attempt to measure: recovery.

Therefore, closing that gap will take more than better surveillance. It will take prevention programmes that reach young people before drug use begins. It will take demand reduction strategies matched to the drugs actually driving admissions. And it will take recovery pathways that give people leaving hospital somewhere to go besides home.

Source: unsw