SUBSTANCE MISUSE IN ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS

Australia's Aborigines lived in isolation from the rest of humanity as successful hunter-gatherers for tens of thousands of years. That isol ation ended abruptly with British colonization in the late 18th centur y and was followed by a traumatic 200 years for Aborigines who are now seriously disadvantaged, socio-economically and in terms of their hea lth standards. It has often been assumed that the Aborigines had no ac cess to psychotropic substances before permanent European contact but several pieces of evidence dispute this view. The history of Aborigina l contact with and usage of intoxicating substances, including alcohol , is extremely complex and affected by a maze of restrictive governmen t policies. These interact with a wide range of other Federal and Stat e policies which have changed rapidly since the late 1960s when Aborig ines were first granted the franchise; access to unrestricted drinking followed soon afterwards. Today Aborigines suffer disproportionately to other Australians from the physical and social consequences of exce ss alcohol consumption, tobacco usage, petrol and other solvent sniffi ng, usage of marijuana, amphetamines, cocaine and heroin, as well as o ther drugs. The Aboriginal population is dispersed in cities, towns, f ringe settlements, rural and remote areas over this vast continent and there are different patterns of drug usage from place to place. This review attempts to synthesize some of this information in order to giv e an overview to the history, background current status of substance m isuse by Aborigines as well as some strategies being used to try to ov ercome this serious problem.