Drug trafficking charges in Queensland

Carrying on a business, not selling drugs

Section 5 makes it a crime to carry on the business of unlawfully trafficking in a dangerous drug. Every word of that matters. Selling drugs is supply under section 6. Trafficking requires a business.

Queensland courts look for the ordinary hallmarks of a commercial enterprise:

• Repetition. Transactions occurring more than occasionally, over a period.
• Continuity. A period of operation rather than isolated events. The indictment will allege a date range, and the length of that range drives the sentence more than almost anything else.
• An intention to profit. Buying at one price and selling at another, or being paid in drugs for the work.
• System. Price lists, a customer base, stock, scales, packaging, records, runners, multiple phones, cash handling.

A single sale with proof that a business was being carried on can constitute trafficking. Equally, dozens of transactions between friends without profit, system or continuity may be supply on multiple occasions rather than trafficking. The distinction is worth fighting for, because supply is a District Court charge and trafficking is not.

The evidence: phones, not drugs

Most Queensland trafficking prosecutions involve little or no seized drug. The brief is built from an extraction of one or more phones, and it usually runs to thousands of pages.

The typical components are message threads over the alleged period, contact frequency analysis, records from encrypted applications where available, bank and cash deposit records, surveillance and telephone intercept product in larger matters, and the evidence of co accused or customers who have already been dealt with.

That has three practical consequences:

1. The disclosure task is enormous, and it is real work. Trafficking cases are frequently reduced or resolved because a careful reading of the messages shows a shorter period, a smaller role, or transactions that are personal use rather than commercial.
2. Attribution is a live issue. Whose phone, whose handle, whose messages. Shared devices and shared accounts create genuine reasonable doubt.
3. The section 205A problem. Police can obtain an order under section 154 of the Police Powers and Responsibilities Act 2000 (Qld) requiring a person to provide the access information for a device, and contravening it is an offence under section 205A of the Criminal Code with a maximum of 5 years imprisonment. Get advice on that specific decision before you make it.

Sentencing, and the two things that dominate it

Actual imprisonment is effectively inevitable on a trafficking conviction. What is genuinely in play is the head sentence and the parole eligibility date.

The serious violent offence scheme

Under Part 9A of the Penalties and Sentences Act 1992 (Qld), trafficking is a listed schedule 1 offence. A sentence of 10 years or more attracts an automatic serious violent offence declaration. A sentence of 5 years or more but less than 10 attracts a discretionary declaration. The consequence is the 80 per cent rule: you must serve 80 per cent of the sentence, or 15 years, whichever is less, before you are eligible for parole. That converts a nine year sentence and an eleven year sentence into radically different realities, which is why sentencing submissions in this range are fought so hard.

The serious organised crime circumstance of aggravation

If the offence is alleged to have been committed in association with a criminal organisation, section 161Q of the Penalties and Sentences Act 1992 (Qld) applies. Where it is proved, section 161R requires the court to impose a mandatory additional term of 7 years, or the maximum for the offence if lower, served cumulatively, wholly in custody, and incapable of being mitigated or reduced. A control order also follows. An indictment alleging that aggravation requires the consent of a Crown Law Officer.

What actually reduces a trafficking sentence

• The period. Narrowing the alleged trafficking period from eighteen months to four is the single most valuable outcome available in most of these matters.
• The role. A street level seller funding a personal habit is sentenced very differently from a principal directing others, even on the same drug.
• The drug and the scale. Schedule and quantity remain central to where a sentence sits in the range.
• Cooperation and an early plea. A plea under section 13 of the Penalties and Sentences Act 1992 (Qld) and, where applicable, cooperation with authorities under section 13A, materially affect the outcome. Section 13A submissions are made on a closed basis and need to be handled properly.
• Rehabilitation. Where a personal drug dependence drove the offending, documented treatment and sustained abstinence before sentence carry real weight.

The associated charges and orders

A trafficking charge rarely arrives on its own. Expect to see supply counts under section 6, possession counts under section 9, possessing a thing for use in a drug crime under section 10(1), and receiving or possessing property obtained from trafficking under section 7, which carries 20 years.

Separately from the criminal charge, the State will usually move against your assets. Restraining orders and forfeiture under the Criminal Proceeds Confiscation Act 2002 (Qld) run as civil proceedings on the balance of probabilities and on their own timetable, and they can freeze a house, a car and bank accounts while the criminal matter is still years from trial. Read our proceeds of crime page, and deal with that proceeding properly rather than waiting for the criminal matter.

Bail is the other early front. Trafficking is a serious charge and bail is frequently contested. Our bail applications page sets out what a properly prepared application contains.