{"id":12194,"date":"2026-05-19T10:09:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T00:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/?p=12194"},"modified":"2026-05-19T10:10:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T00:10:40","slug":"cannabis-costs-in-australia-the-4-5-billion-figure-nobody-wants-to-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/cannabis-costs-in-australia-the-4-5-billion-figure-nobody-wants-to-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Cannabis Costs in Australia: The $4.5 Billion Figure Nobody Wants to Update"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"12194\" class=\"elementor elementor-12194\" data-elementor-post-type=\"post\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-feb5619 e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"feb5619\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-4e2b9af0 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"4e2b9af0\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p>Back in 2020, the National Drug Research Institute at Curtin University finally got around to tallying up what cannabis costs in Australia were actually doing to the country. The last time anyone had done this properly was 2007 \u2014 thirteen years earlier. The number they landed on for 2015\u201316? <strong>$4.5 billion. In a single year.<\/strong><\/p><p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12195 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/moneypot-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/moneypot-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/moneypot-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/moneypot-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/moneypot-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/moneypot-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/moneypot.jpg 1622w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>It barely made a ripple. And since then? Nobody in authority has bothered to update it.<\/p><p>That\u2019s not an oversight. That\u2019s a choice.<\/p><p><strong>What Did $4.5 Billion Actually Buy Us?<\/strong><\/p><p>In the 2015\u201316 financial year, more than\u00a0<strong>2 million Australians<\/strong>\u00a0used cannabis. Around 150,000 were clinically dependent on it. And 3,422 adults were serving prison sentences directly attributable to cannabis.<\/p><p>The bill broke down like this:<\/p><ul><li><strong>$2.4 billion<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 Crime. Policing ($475M), imprisonment ($1.1 billion), courts, legal aid, crime victims. More than half the total, right there.<\/li><li><strong>$714 million<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 Healthcare. Mental health programmes, hospital admissions, psychosis presentations.<\/li><li><strong>$560 million<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 Workplace. Absenteeism and lost productivity.<\/li><li><strong>$470 million<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 Other social costs, including child protection.<\/li><li><strong>$194 million<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 Road trauma.<\/li><li><strong>$106 million<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 The intangible cost of 23 people who didn\u2019t come home. Over 850 years of life, gone.<\/li><\/ul><p><strong>Total: $4.5 billion.<\/strong><\/p><p>Anyone still want to argue that cannabis is a harmless personal choice with no impact on anyone else? The numbers say otherwise and these are the\u00a0<em>conservative<\/em>\u00a0numbers from nearly a decade ago.<\/p><p><strong>The Counting Stopped. Funny That.<\/strong><\/p><p>The NDRI had been working through a series of national cost reports \u2014 methamphetamine, tobacco, opioids, then cannabis. Solid, rigorous work.<\/p><p>Then it stopped.<\/p><p>In the years since 2016, Australia\u2019s cannabis policy environment shifted dramatically. Decriminalisation pushes. Legalisation campaigns dressed up as social justice. And most significantly \u2014 the rapid expansion of dodgy \u2018medicinal\u2019 cannabis prescriptions.<\/p><p>It is hard not to notice that the national cost-accounting exercise was quietly wound down at precisely the moment it became politically inconvenient. When the evidence doesn\u2019t fit the narrative, apparently the solution is to stop producing the evidence.<\/p><p>The communities, families, healthcare workers and kids left dealing with the real-world fallout deserve better than that.<\/p><p><strong>\u2018Medicinal\u2019 Cannabis: Pull the Other One<\/strong><\/p><p>Here are the actual numbers, because they need to be seen to be believed.<\/p><p>In 2017 there were\u00a0<strong>231 medicinal cannabis prescriptions<\/strong>\u00a0in Australia. By January 2024, over\u00a0<strong>one million Australians<\/strong>\u00a0were using medicinal cannabis products \u2014 confirmed by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. More than\u00a0<strong>2.7 million prescriptions<\/strong>\u00a0have been issued since legalisation, according to TGA data.<\/p><p>Let\u2019s call that what it is: a regulatory loophole that has done more to normalise cannabis use across the broader population than any legalisation campaign could have achieved directly. And \u2014 worth noting \u2014 there is very little evidence it is even effective for anxiety or chronic pain, which are among the most common conditions it is now prescribed for.<\/p><p>And here\u2019s the thing:\u00a0<strong>the harms don\u2019t care what it says on the packet.<\/strong>\u00a0The link between cannabis and psychosis was already flagged as clinically significant in the 2015\u201316 NDRI data \u2014 cannabis-related psychosis presentations were the most costly cannabis-related hospital admissions in the country. Nothing since suggests that has improved.<\/p><p>The \u2018medicinal\u2019 label does not make the social costs disappear. It just makes them easier to ignore \u2014 and harder to count, because we\u2019ve stopped counting.<\/p><p><strong>That $4.5 Billion? Just the Opening Act<\/strong><\/p><p>The $4.5 billion figure reflects 2015\u201316. Here\u2019s what has changed since:<\/p><p>The\u00a0<strong>user population has grown<\/strong>. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare recorded\u00a0<strong>2.5 million Australians<\/strong>\u00a0using cannabis in the 12 months to 2022\u201323 \u2014 up from 2 million in the period the NDRI examined. Daily use among recent users has jumped from\u00a0<strong>14% in 2019 to 18% in 2022\u201323<\/strong>.<\/p><p>The\u00a0<strong>prescription numbers have exploded<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 from 231 in 2017 to over one million patients by January 2024.<\/p><p>And the\u00a0<strong>original $4.5 billion was already an undercount<\/strong>. The researchers themselves flagged that the cost of presenteeism \u2014 workers turning up impaired \u2014 hadn\u2019t been adequately measured and needed further research. Nearly a decade later, that research still hasn\u2019t been done.<\/p><p>Factor in a decade of cost inflation across health, justice, and social services \u2014 and that 2015\u201316 figure looks increasingly like a floor, not a ceiling.<\/p><p><strong>Kids, Families, Communities: That Is Who Is Paying<\/strong><\/p><p>Behind every dollar of that $4.5 billion is a person. A family. A young person whose developing brain was exposed to a drug that carries real, documented risks \u2014 risks that have been systematically downplayed as the normalisation machine has rolled forward.<\/p><p>The child protection cost alone \u2014 $470 million \u2014 doesn\u2019t exist in a vacuum. It represents kids removed from homes, families fractured, caseworkers overwhelmed. The mental health burden lands on communities that were never resourced to carry it. The road trauma touches families who never saw it coming.<\/p><p>This is not abstract. It is happening in suburbs and country towns across Australia, quietly, expensively, and with no updated national reckoning to show for it.<\/p><p><strong>So Where Does That Leave Us?<\/strong><\/p><p>Cannabis costs in Australia were $4.5 billion in 2015\u201316. The user population has since grown to 2.5 million. Daily use is up. Medicinal prescriptions have gone from 231 to over a million. And the national cost-accounting has not been updated once.<\/p><p>That number has not gone down. It has gone up \u2014 and nobody in authority is measuring it.<\/p><p>The only honest response is to demand the evidence be updated, the true costs be counted, and policy be built around protecting communities rather than accommodating an industry that profits from permission.<\/p><p>The families, schools, and young people carrying the real costs of this drug already know the answer. It\u2019s time the data caught up.<\/p><p><em>(<\/em>Source: <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/wrdnews.org\/cannabis-costs-in-australia-the-4-5-billion-figure\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WRD News<\/a><\/strong><em>)<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 2020, the National Drug Research Institute at Curtin University finally got around to tallying up what cannabis costs in Australia were actually doing to the country. The last time anyone had done this properly was 2007 \u2014 thirteen years earlier. The number they landed on for 2015\u201316? $4.5 billion. In a single year. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-next-phase-platform"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12198,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12194\/revisions\/12198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}