Australia’s drug problem has reached record levels. The nation’s war on illegal narcotics has failed.

Analysis of wastewater by the National Wastewater Drug Monitoring (nwdm) program concluded that between August 2023 and August 2024, Australians consumed a staggering 24.5 tons of illegal drugs.

The primary narcotics taken were methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and mdma (ecstasy). The findings represent a 34 percent increase over the year prior.

Cocaine usage was up 69 percent; methamphetamines, 21 percent; mdma, 49 percent; heroin, 14 percent. Every single state and territory witnessed a rise in drug use.

The street value of these illegal drugs is estimated at $11.5 billion. Methamphetamine alone accounts for $8.9 billion, or 78 percent of the total.

It is little wonder then that the state of Victoria just recorded its highest number of fatal overdoses in a decade: 584 in 2024. Looking back further, overdoses have caused 8.1 deaths per 100,000 people over the past 10 years.

According to the Penington Institute, a Melbourne-based drug health and safety organization, on a national scale, 2,272 people died of drug overdoses in 2023. That’s 189 people per month, enough to fill a Boeing 737.

Tragically, this is no great departure from the norm. Australia has recorded 10 consecutive years of more than 2,000 overdose fatalities.

A monthly plane crash would elicit public outcry, but for 10 years, little has been done to check the rampant drug use ravaging the nation. Following the nwdm report, some are beginning to question the government’s approach, as well as the ability of federal police to stop the drug trade.

Despite law enforcement officials seizing a record of 42.5 tons of illicit substance, the nation is still flooded with narcotics. As the Australian Strategic Policy Institute reported last week, “The reality is that global drug production, both synthetic and plant-based, has expanded to a point where supply reduction has become an uphill battle, if not impossible.”

Authorities are just as incapable of curbing demand. Drugs are being made increasingly potent and easier to come by. The result is tens of thousands of addicts impervious to the intervention of friends, family and hollow public messaging campaigns.

Advancements in synthetic opioids mean the next generation of Australians face an even greater danger. As availability increases, so too does the lethality of the drugs. Some synthetic drugs called nitazenes are as much as 50 times more potent than fentanyl. With the current policies clearly proving inadequate to tackle the problem, the only recourse is to acknowledge the failure and do something different about it.

But it’s hard to get an addict to face reality. It’s hard to get the government to acknowledge its efforts have failed. But do you know what is hardest of all? To admit we individually are wrong. And not just wrong: evil.

All the evidence suggests that we humans lack the means to rule ourselves. We are failing—in the drug war and in all our wars. Despite rapid acceleration in scientific advancements, we cannot get a handle on our problems. Why so many crippling addictions? Why so much suffering? Why so many broken homes? So much disease? So much war? So much death? If this is the effect, what is the cause?

The cause is our rejection of our Creator and His laws. God is the Lawgiver, and He set in motion laws that bring blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. Our rejection of God doesn’t negate His existence or the existence of His law. When you break the law, there is a penalty to be paid. Australia is paying that penalty in full.

Can we admit that we have failed to keep God’s law? Like Adam and Eve, we have chosen for ourselves what is right and wrong. Can we face the reality that the experiment has failed?

“It is very difficult to keep God’s law,” Mr. Flurry writes in his free booklet No Freedom Without Law. “But the problem isn’t with the law, it is with us. We need to change and conform ourselves to that law. We need to replace the wickedness of our hearts with the righteousness of God by writing God’s law in our hearts!”

It is hard to accept that our nation is enslaved to drugs and other vices. But that’s just what God writes in 2 Peter 2:19: “They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man [or a nation], to that he is enslaved” (Revised Standard Version). Can we admit our national failure and humbly look to God for His divine intervention? What about you, the reader? God warns in Proverbs 29:1, “He who is obstinate, in spite of many a warning, will suddenly be done for” (Moffatt). Look at the warnings all around us.

God doesn’t want us to die. He wants the wicked to “turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11). But we must turn. We must accept the error of our ways and repent. There is a way out of drug problems, both individual and national. But it takes real repentance.

That takes some honesty and courage to admit. But if you want the honest truth, then consider subscribing to our free magazine, the Trumpet. Here you’ll read the unvarnished truth about world events, all from a Bible-based perspective.