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Australia’s world-class drug monitoring systems have difficulty gathering metrics in rural communities for reasons due to, among other things, the size of the country and problems with recruiting sufficient sample sizes. Some rural communities in data shadows (where few metrics on substance use exist) may benefit from wastewater analysis (‘WWA’) as a means of estimating per capita drug consumption. Wastewater analysis could be employed when debates rise about the consumption of particular drugs in certain communities. Other ways to use WWA are examined, including long-term monitoring of community drug consumption and intervention studies to test the effectiveness of health or law enforcement drug strategies. To explore the utility of WWA, this article references media coverage of methylamphetamine consumption in a small Tasmanian town, Smithton, and presents the results of the first Tasmanian WWA pilot study of methylamphetamine consumption, conducted in 2014–15.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	wastewater-based epidemiology, wastewater analysis, drug monitoring, methamphetamine, ice, drugs, rural substance use, media, Australia
Research Division:	Health Sciences
Research Group:	Health services and systems
Research Field:	Health services and systems not elsewhere classified
Objective Division:	Health
Objective Group:	Public health (excl. specific population health)
Objective Field:	Public health (excl. specific population health) not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Prichard, J (Associate Professor Jeremy Prichard)
UTAS Author:	Bruno, R (Associate Professor Raimondo Bruno)
ID Code:	127787
Year Published:	2018
Web of Science® Times Cited:	1
Deposited By:	Psychology
Deposited On:	2018-08-15
Last Modified:	2019-04-15
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