Speech given at the South Australian Drugs Summit 2002, Adelaide, 26 June 2002, by Adam Graycar, Director, Australian Institute of Criminology, and co-authored by Kiah McGregor, Toni Makkai and Jason Payne. This speech is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/The overwhelming majority of those who use illicit drugs do not commit property crime or violent crime. There is however, a strong link between predatory crime and illicit drug use and the focus of this paper is on law enforcement and the reduction of crime associated with illicit drug use. This includes two key groups: those whose "drug" crimes are directly associated with drugs (such as possession, dealing, trafficking and manufacturing) and those whose "drug-related" offences are to support a drug habit (that is acquisitive crime) or while intoxicated (that is violent crime). Police activities are examined as well as the targets, programs and strategies used, and how to assess the effectiveness of drug law enforcement
