Illegal drug use dropped in Australia significantly in the past year, according to the 2021 Global Drug Survey.
More than 32,000 people, including 1,663 Australians, answered the Global Drug Survey last year. The survey received research ethics approval from University College London, the University of Queensland
and RMIT University.
Australians' rate of alcohol consumption stayed about the same from 2020 to 2021, according to the survey, with about 94 per cent of Australians surveyed reporting they had drunk alcohol in the previous 12 months both this year and last year. Cannabis dropped somewhat between 2020 and 2021, with 65 per cent of people saying they'd consumed cannabis in 2020 and 57 per cent saying the same in 2021. The most significant drop was in MDMA usage, which went from 38 per cent to 26 per cent between 2020 and 2021. The survey does not speculate as to the reason for the drop, but clubs being closed for significant portions of 2021 might play into that change.
Australians drank an average of 106 drinks in the previous 12 months, which is significantly below leading country France, where an average of 132 drinks were consumed. Our neighbours across the Tasman also drank significantly more than we did, an average of 120 drinks a year. However, even though we did not drink nearly as many drinks as other countries, Australians reported feeling drunk more often than people in any other country. Australians reported feeling drunk about 27 times in the previous 12 months, compared to 18 times for France and 10 times for New Zealand.
The GDS also asked Australians to sum up 2020 in one word. "Challenging", "stressful", "shit" and "fucked" were the most popular words chosen. The GDS created a word cloud of the most chosen words to describe 2020, and "interesting" was the only word selected that was not overtly negative:
