Pubdate: Sat, 19 May 2012
Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Copyright: 2012 The Sydney Morning Herald
Contact:  http://www.smh.com.au/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/441
Author: Catherine Armitage
Referenced: Australia21 Report: http://drugsense.org/url/ZGqTrh1I

DRUGS: IT'S TIME TO TALK

The war on drugs has raged for decades with organised crime the only 
winner. Catherine Armitage reports.

Retired Salvation Army officer Brian Watters was startled to see Mick 
Palmer's name on the recent Australia21 think tank report which 
declared the war on drugs a failure and called for a national debate 
on ending drug prohibition.

When Major Watters was made prime minister John Howard's key adviser 
on combating illicit drugs, Palmer, then Australian Federal Police 
commissioner, was his deputy.

Heading the Australian National Council on Drugs from 1998, the two 
men fought side by side to implement Howard's "tough on drugs" 
policy. Palmer, then part way through what was to be a seven-year 
stint as head of the AFP, was responsible for implementing many of 
its beefed-up law enforcement measures.

"He was just as strongly supportive of the [tough on drugs] approach 
as myself," said Watters this week. "If he went down the line with 
the stuff that was put out by Australia21, I would be be very, very surprised."

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, might also have been surprised to 
learn her freshly minted Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, lent his name to 
the report.

There were raised eyebrows at Michael Wooldridge's presence, too - as 
health minister in the Howard government he was responsible for 
implementing much of the tough on drugs policy.

Palmer is taking no backward steps from the controversial report. His 
experience in law enforcement, and a drug-related family tragedy, 
have caused him to rethink his views.

"It is really time for a conversation," he said this week. "To 
pretend this country's [drug prohibition] system is working, that 
it's really as good as we can expect of ourselves, is nonsense."

Palmer says he has concluded over time that no matter how effective 
police investigations are, no matter how many criminals are 
apprehended, "the end result, and the more you look at it the more 
obvious it becomes, is we make no difference".

"For us to be satisfied at the government level and at the community 
level with the current state of play is for us to put our heads in the sand."

According to the opposition spokesman on health, Peter Dutton, it's a 
conversation the Labor ministers in the two key drug-related 
portfolios of Health (Tanya Plibersek) and the Attorney-General 
(Nicola Roxon) are anxious to avoid, lest they be exposed as being 
out of step with community opinion.

He "suspects" both Plibersek and Roxon are "ideologically much more 
closely aligned with those who advocate decriminalisation - but they 
realise they are out of step with the wider community".

"I think if the lie detector were attached they would struggle to 
give a straight answer on this topic," Dutton said.

In response to the Australia21 report, Gillard quickly declared 
herself "not in favour of decriminalisation of any of our drug laws". 
Roxon told ABC Radio that the challenge in "stopping" illicit drugs 
did not mean deregulation and legalisation would be the right 
solution. Plibersek has so far been silent, directing inquiries to 
the Minister for Mental Health, Mark Butler.

In response to Herald questions this week, Butler said through a 
spokeswoman that "far from having failed, Australia's long-term 
National Drug Strategy and our harm-minimisation approach has seen 
major successes in reducing the prevalence and harms from drug use".

The strategy, which includes spending $646 million on 
harm-minimisation programs over the next four years, rested on the 
three pillars of demand reduction, supply reduction and harm 
reduction, the spokeswoman said. On whether a national debate or 
summit was needed, she said the government would continue to engage 
with public health, law enforcement and other experts on the issue. 
Law enforcement would "remain focused on the supply and distribution 
rather than use of illicit substances", consistent with the harm 
minimisation approach.

The Australia21 report might yet turn out to be a turning point in 
the Australian debate on illicit drugs, not because it persuades the 
majority towards a path of decriminalisation but because it exposes 
more starkly than ever a divergence between expert and public opinion 
on the issue of how to tackle drugs.

Dutton is critical of what he sees as the Australia21 report's 
inference that supporters of decriminalisation are more experienced, 
more scientific and more caring than opponents. He pledges to conduct 
an urgent review of drug treatment programs within the health 
portfolio if the Coalition is elected to government. "I commit to 
doing that because we should make sure that money is being spent 
effectively and we should make sure that our priorities reflect the 
community's views."

He does not believe law enforcement is performing as well as it could 
in apprehending drug criminals, partly because the federal police are 
distracted by the "huge surge" in people smuggling. "The core 
business for all law enforcement should be to stamp as hard as 
possible on those at the top of the tree in terms of distribution and 
manufacture", says Dutton, a policeman in Queensland for 10 years 
before entering Parliament.

A Coalition government would take a more holistic approach to the 
fight against drugs. Dutton would like to see social welfare agencies 
more involved, for example, in quarantining welfare payments to drug 
addicts. "I would advocate that we look at everything that is 
available to us, including suspension of welfare payments, including 
the way in which we fund existing programs both in terms of the 
health portfolio and enforcement as well".

He is "absolutely confident" his view - anti-decriminalisation, rock 
hard on the drugs trade, empathy and treatment for addicts and users, 
education for prevention - "aligns with the majority of Australians".

Among those closely involved in the drugs issue contacted by the 
Herald this week there was consensus that the problem was worsening 
and policy settings needed revisiting. Several called for a national 
drugs summit, among them Gino Vumbaca, for the past 10 years 
executive director of the Australian National Council on Drugs. The 
office is a direct conduit of policy advice to the Prime Minister's 
office. He was appointed by Watters.

Illicit drugs began making headlines as a public policy issue in 1953 
when the federal government prohibited the importation of heroin, 
previously in widespread medical use for pain relief, fighting off 
opposition from the states and howls of protest from the medical 
profession. Fast forward to 1985 when the then prime minister Bob 
Hawke, then with a heroin-addicted daughter, called the states to a 
drug summit.

According to Ian Webster, physician, emeritus professor of community 
medicine and public health at the University of NSW and often 
described as the grandfather of Australia's harm-reduction strategy, 
this was perhaps the first time Australian heads of government came 
together to discuss a social issue. It also led to harm reduction (as 
opposed to law enforcement alone) becoming set in stone as a pillar 
of the drugs policy.

Experimentation in harm reduction policies continued through the next 
decade. Illicit drugs, especially heroin, were never far from the 
headlines, and heroin deaths soared. In July 1997, Howard, the then 
prime minister, intervened personally to stop a scientific trial of 
prescription heroin on the grounds it would "send the wrong message", 
despite a 6:3 majority support of the Ministerial Council on Drug 
Strategy for the trial. In the wake of the ensuing controversy he 
launched the $500 million Tough on Drugs strategy, with more than 
$200 million going to drug law enforcement and an approximately equal 
amount to states and territories to encourage diversion of drug users 
from the criminal justice system to drug treatment programs. Harm 
reduction strategies were also front and centre at the NSW Drugs 
Summit which Carr, then the premier, called in 1999. It set the scene 
for Australia's first and still only medically supervised injection 
centre in Sydney's King's Cross.

Through the warring rhetoric which has characterised the drugs 
debate, Australia has emerged with a "world-leading" and "in many 
respects very effective" national drugs policy incorporating harm 
reduction, according to David Templeman, chief executive of the 
Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia, the peak body 
representing non-government organisations working to reduce drug harm.

He says the program that provides clean needles to injecting drug 
users, the medically supervised injection centre and the information 
campaign on the risks of cannabis use are all world leading policies.

But Vumbaca of the Australian National Council on Drugs is concerned 
the focus on illicit drugs has lessened in recent years. "Services 
are struggling, demand is rising, costs are rising but funding is 
staying the same," he says.

If policy is standing still, the drug trade is not. Laboratories 
creating new synthetic compounds for sale are working overtime, with 
a European Union report Vumbaca cites identifying 49 previously 
unseen compounds, mainly synthetic cannabis. The internet, meanwhile, 
has emerged as an important drugs market place, with the number of 
websites promoting "legal highs" doubling last year to about 700.

Perceptions of a resurgence in drug crime and use were reinforced by 
an Australian Crime Commission report this week indicating the number 
of cannabis seizures and arrests were the highest in a decade, as 
were the number and weight of amphetamine-type detections at 
Australia's borders. The weight of heroin seizures, at 357.7 
kilograms in 2010-11, was the highest recorded since 2002-03.

Proponents of a policy shift towards decriminalisation argue that 
growing global drug use, a continuing high death toll and high levels 
of crime associated with drug supply and use despite the billions of 
dollars spent on law enforcement, show that current policy approaches 
are failing. They argue that drug prevention and treatment programs 
are better value than law enforcement programs.

One influential 2006 US study by the RAND Drug Policy Research Centre 
found that $US1 million applied to mandatory minimum sentencing for 
cocaine use would reduce its consumption by 13 kilograms; the same 
money applied to drug treatment would reduce cocaine consumption by 
103 kilograms.

The experience of Portugal, which in 2001 decriminalised possession 
of personal-use quantities of all drugs, is cited as evidence that 
positive health and social effects can flow from relaxation of prohibition.

But opponents of decriminalisation, including Don Weatherburn, the 
director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, argue 
the evidence is not clear-cut. There are cases where 
decriminalisation has resulted in an increase in cannabis use, such 
as the Netherlands. In South Australia a study found no significant 
increase in the rate of cannabis use after 1987 when arrest and 
prosecution for possession of small amounts were replaced by fines 
and infringement notices.

But the rate of lifetime cannabis use increased, Weatherburn points 
out, and the relatively small sample sizes used severely constrained 
the study's capacity to detect changes in weekly use. Studies on 
cannabis also give little indication of the likely impact of 
decriminalising more dangerous or addictive drugs such as heroin, 
amphetamines or cocaine.

Watters, the former head of the the Australian National Council on 
Drugs, is bitter that proponents of less severe penalties attribute 
the drop in heroin deaths in Australia in the late 1990s - from more 
than 1100 to about 400 a year now - to reduced production in supplier 
countries rather than the "tough on drugs" approach. Australia21 
concluded the available data did not settle the question of which was 
responsible.

The polarising, black or white language of the debate - "war on 
drugs", "tough on drugs", "soft on drugs" - obscures the complexity 
of policy options. These range from prohibition (all behaviour 
related to drugs is a criminal offence) through decriminalisation 
(specified behaviour is dealt with under civil law) and 
depenalisation (reducing the severity of penalties) to legalisation 
(specified forms of behaviour are no longer offences under the law) 
and regulation (a controlled legal market such as occurs with 
tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical drugs).

Support for the latter option in relation to highly addictive drugs 
is close to zero. Most individuals have a more nuanced view. For 
example Ingrid van Beek, a doctor and the founding medical director 
of the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre at Kings Cross for its 
first eight years until 2008, has reservations about the "somewhat 
sweeping" anti-prohibitionist view adopted by the Australia21 group.

She has particular concerns about any lifting of prohibitions which 
would make highly addictive drugs with high mortality rates such as 
heroin and cocaine more available or cheap. "I think that would lead 
to higher levels of addiction in our community," she said. "It would 
worry me if heroin was to become reasonably available to people 
through anything beyond a well-controlled heroin prescription treatment".

Wooldridge, the one-time federal health minister, says the drugs 
issue is tough for governments because there is no clear-cut 
consensus, and because it taps into people's fears. He says there has 
been a big shift in the drugs debate. In the past it has been 
incumbent on those proposing change to make the case for it, but 
increasingly the onus has switched to those who defend the status quo 
to argue the case for it. He also believes support for change is 
"starting to cross the political divide".

Former AFP commissioner Palmer captures in appealing vernacular a 
commonly held view in the debate: "I don't have a golden bloody 
bullet here. I don't have any wonderful answers. I just know we need 
to have a better conversation about this."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom