Ahead of Happy Mag Issue 10, our inaugural Drug Issue, we’re throwing our voice into building a more drug aware world. Pre-order your copy of Issue 10 here.
Bar a few areas of life and love, there has been a shift away from cash payments over time. In terms of illegal drugs, Australians are putting their cash money where their mouth is.
The central bank estimates that Australians spent A$13.5bn on illicit drugs over the year ending August 2017. 70% of that is made up by Methamphetamine and cannabis purchases alone.
The Reserve Bank of Australia estimated that 2% of all cash spent annually is used to purchase illicit drugs.
Australians spent A$76bn worth of banknotes in total.
Excluding cannabis, methamphetamine is Australia’s most frequently used illicit drug, followed by cocaine and MDMA.
The findings were released in a report by the Reserve Bank of Australia assessing how bank notes are used in Australia. It estimates that two percent of bank notes are used to buy illicit drugs.
This comes to just over $1bn notes used in drug purchases.
Among its claims, the report states that around 15-35% of banknotes are used for legitimate transactions, 1-2% are used to purchase illegal drugs, and 5-10% of banknotes are lost. This is approximately 5.7bn worth of lost bills… whoever finds that stash, hit us up.
Via Bloomberg.
