Pubdate: Mon, 16 Nov 2015
Source: Marlborough Express (New Zealand)
Copyright: 2015 Independent Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.marlboroughexpress.co.nz/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1139
Author: Jane Bowron

DUNNE DEAL ON DRUGS MAKES SENSE

While some may view the government dishing out of tips on howto get 
high safely as cynical and degenerate, surely this is a health issue 
rather than a moral one?

Last week's announcement by Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne 
that government experts may be able to offer advice on recreational 
drug-taking will probably go down like a cup of cold sick with 
conservative Kiwis.

In Dunne's time as associate minister, the very flexible centrist 
politician who prides himself on his common sense has been learning 
on the job, his rocky journey into legal highs taking him to professional lows.

During that debacle it was revealed Dunne's son James was a lawyer 
working as a key lobbyist for legal highs. At the same time 
broadcaster John Campbell invited the minister to accompany him on an 
early morning stakeout outside seedy premises trading in legal highs 
to witness the desperation of users of the so-called harmless drug.

The minister admitted he was shocked at what he saw.

The floating of Dunne's latest idea for government experts to help 
drug users learn safe limits to minimise harm is a hard call for any 
politician in government to make. And it signals how far attitudes 
have changed since Nixon declared war on drugs and Reagan instigated 
his hypocritical "Just Say No" campaign (during Reagan's 
administration the CIA were accomplices to a large narcotics 
smuggling ring to the US by the Contras, a counter-revolutionary 
group fighting against the Sandinistas to return the corrupt 
US-backed Somoza regime to power in Nicaragua).

Dunne wants to look at using the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs 
to offer the kind of government-endorsed guidelines existing for 
standard alcohol drinks and safe consumption and apply it to more 
serious drugs.

Historically the success of the government-backed needle exchange 
programme providing sterile for intravenous drug users dramatically 
reducing the rate of HIV and Hepatitis C infections, and is an 
excellent example of a common sense approach to the problems of 
illegal drug use.

While some may view the government dishing out of tips on how to get 
high safely as cynical and degenerate, surely this is a health issue 
rather than a moral one?

Dunne's suggestion that the Government might support a drug-checking 
service at night club and festival venues, where users can have their 
pills and liquids tested, is enlightened and would protect young experimenters.

On the flip side, in the law of unintended consequences it could be 
argued that drugchecking services might encourage indulgence in drug 
use because it had a government testing safety net.

However illegal substances are here to stay so it is better to try 
and remove recreational users from a dangerous demimonde where the 
user swallows, snorts or injects at their own uneducated risk.

Drugs, for some, is a quick term loan of the spirit while for others 
it can be a heavy mortgage of the soul.

The government risk is that if it is seen to condone illegal drug use 
it would be hard to argue how any state advisers would want to be 
seen shaking hands with the devil that is methamphetamine, aka P.

That pernicious, highly addictive drug should in an ideal world fall 
outside any umbrella but because all illegal drugs are an unknown 
recipe for disaster if P was found to be evident in party drugs such 
as ecstasy, one would 'hazard' a guess that most users would choose 
not to take it.

Logically it would be a case of better the devil you know than the 
devil that hadn't been tested.

Dunne's proposal for government guidelines is welcome  and unexpected 
from a Government that has, along with previous administrations, 
removed all support from rehabilitation treatment centres such as the 
world renowned facility at Hanmer Springs.

Better to be at the top of the cliff offering expert advice than 
carting off the comatose corpses at the bottom. The best of all 
progressive ideas is the one that is provocative. Bring it on.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom