Use and possession of illicit drugs is a criminal offence in all Australian jurisdictions, with the potential to attract a wide range of criminal (e.g., arrest) or non-criminal (e.g., fines) sanctions (1). There is growing recognition that non-criminal sanctions can lead to significant social, health and criminal justice benefits such as reducing imprisonment, increasing uptake into drug treatment and protecting people from the wide-ranging and debilitating consequence of a criminal conviction (2). Various Australian jurisdictions (e.g., ACT, NSW, QLD) now provide on the spot fines or police diversion for low level drug offences. In addition, police have the power to ‘stop, search and detain’ anyone who they ‘reasonably suspect’ might be in possession of drugs, however such encounters which do not result in arrest or other formal sanctions are not routinely documented. This bulletin therefore aims to examine the experiences of drug-related encounters which do not result in arrest, with a particular focus on infringement notices, among two national samples of people who regularly use drugs (the Ecstasy and Related Drugs Reporting System (EDRS) and the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS)), recruited from all capital cities of Australia in 2023 and 2024.