Former sailors from HMAS Stirling have confirmed a culture of drug abuse exists at the West Australian naval training base.

One confidential source told 7.30 the biggest drug dealer at the base was a chief petty officer who would buy drugs such as ice, cocaine and ecstasy cheaply while on deployment in Asia and sell them to junior sailors.

The informant also claimed sailors took drugs while they were manning a ship’s combat operations room, and that they were high when they were monitoring safety and navigating a warship.

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The Royal Australian Navy has been urged to change its policies following the ABC investigation, which revealed a hidden culture where the drug ice was used on the West Australian base and on Navy ships.

Jake Casey, who committed suicide while based at HMAS Stirling.

The ABC’s 7.30 program has established there have been nine suicides of Stirling sailors over the past four years.

Stuart Addison was the first of three close friends based at HMAS Stirling who hanged themselves between February 2012 and May 2013.

Mr Casey had been a pallbearer for Mr Dwyer.

Incredibly, the suicides of these three young men were not the first at HMAS Stirling.

The year before, three other Stirling sailors, also boatswains, died too.

Many friends and colleagues of those young men are still suicidal and have spent time in psychiatric wards. One ended up in jail.

A former sailor at HMAS Stirling, who wanted to be identified only as Brendan, was a friend of two of the sailors who took their own lives.

“When I was, at times, living on the base, it [drug use] was rampant and rife, and it was just a matter of fact,” he said.

“You finished work on a Friday afternoon, you head straight for the Tammar Tavern onboard HMAS Stirling and you drink away your sorrows.

Brendan said part of the reason party drugs like ice had become popular at Stirling was because, unlike marijuana, they do not stay in the body long enough to be captured by random drug tests.

“You’ve got an 18, 19-year-old kid, he’s come from recruit school, he’s joined his first ship, a whole new world has opened up to him,” Brendan said.

“He goes out with his mates and one of them puts a couple of eccies [ecstacy] in his hand, some dexamphetamine, or cuts up a line of speed or something like that, goes, ‘there you go mate’. ‘Oh, I don’t know if that’s my thing.’ ‘Well it’s all you can have because if you turn up to work on Monday and they do a urine test you’re gone. That’s your naval career over.’

“They’re not trying to initiate peer pressure, they’re just saying, ‘well, it’s just the most normal thing in the world to do but you can’t do this because it will linger. So do this instead. We’ll look after you. Someone will get you home’.

“It’s not thought of within [the Navy] as a rife or rampant culture. It’s just normal.”

Assistant Minister of Defence Stuart Robert said he had spoken to the Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Tim Barrett, and had asked him to establish an internal review into the suicides at HMAS Stirling and reports of drug use.

“I’ve instructed that they be thoroughly reviewed and that the responses come back to the Chief of Navy and to me as the minister,” Mr Robert said.

He said a lot of work had already been done to change the culture in the armed forces.

“Navy changed a vast amount of process and procedures at the time the Pathways to Change began right across the Defence Force: a range of programs came in, including suicide awareness, drinking processes were changed, hours to the soldiers’ drinking holes and the messes were changed.”