AUSTRALIA is a lucrative market for international crime syndicates which earn about $US90 billion ($A87.7 billion) a year in the Asia-Pacific region, a new report has found. The first Transnational Organised Crime in East Asia and the Pacific threat assessment, released in Sydney on Tuesday, says drugs – primarily heroin and methamphetamine – account for more than a third of organised crime gangs’ profits.
Methamphetamine trade in the region brings in about $US15 billion, and heroin trafficking is worth roughly $US16.3 billion, the report compiled by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says.
The study put Australia’s heroin use at 602 kilograms in 2011, worth about $US645 million.
While this pales in comparison to China – where 47,316kg worth about $US1.05 billion was consumed – the price per gram was almost five times higher in Australia.
Similar price gaps were identified in the methamphetamine market.
The report estimates about 269,000 Australians a year use methamphetamine.
In China, where about 2,000,000 people use the drug, it sells for $US80 per gram.
Methamphetamine users in Australia and Japan, labelled by the report as the “expensive markets”, pay five times as much, about $US400 per gram.
Most of these drugs are manufactured in Myanmar, Laos, Afghanistan and China, the report said.
“The evolving markets of meth … should be of great concern,” the Australian Strategic Policy Unit’s Dr Toby Feakin told reporters at the launch of the report.
“There’s an ease of construction of this particular drug, distribution and low unit costs, high levels of addictiveness, which are really an appalling recipe which Australia has to be hugely aware of.”
International organised crime syndicates make $US24.4 billion a year selling counterfeit goods in Europe and the US, the report says.
Between 2008 and 2010, 75 per cent of counterfeit products were manufactured in East Asia, with 67 per cent coming from China alone.
The report also examined the profits organised crime gangs made from human trafficking and migrant smuggling, illegal harvesting and trade of timber and wildlife, and illicit trading in ozone-depleting substances and electronic waste and counterfeit medication.