Post by
Australia21 Board Member Dr Alex Wodak AM, Senior Staff Specialist, Alcohol and
Drug Service, St. Vincent's Hospital, Darlinghurst, NSW
The War on Drugs, waged for at the last 40 years, has
failed comprehensively. Important leaders of the community in Australia and
other countries now increasingly acknowledge this. Governments in many
countries, including Australia, used a punitive rhetoric and allocated at least
75% of their expenditure in response to drugs to drug law enforcement (such as
customs, police, courts and prisons). While identifying the benefits of this
approach is difficult the many and major harms are self evident. The scientific
debate about drug prohibition is now over.
For decades the global cultivation, production, number of
drug users and number of different types of new drugs all soared. While the
price of street heroin and cocaine in US and Europe fell by more than 80% in
the last 20 years, the purity of street drugs has increased. But drug
prohibition is supposed to make street drugs more expensive, less pure and hard
to get. In an official annual survey, more than 80% of drug users in Australia
said that obtaining drugs like heroin, cocaine, amphetamine and cannabis was
‘easy’ or ‘very easy’. The number of prisoners serving sentences for drug
offences has grown as has the cost of drug prohibition to government, business
and the community.
While the global drug market under prohibition grew
spectacularly, so too did deaths, disease, crime and corruption. The number of heroin overdose deaths in
Australia increased 55 times between 1964 and 1997. The difficulties of
controlling HIV and hepatitis C among people who inject drugs were exacerbated
by the War on Drugs. Adoption of effective harm reduction prevention strategies
was delayed and implementation slowed because of the entrenched commitment to a
War on Drugs. The more intensively drug law enforcement was implemented, the
more violent the drug markets and the more dangerous the street drugs.
The threshold question now is to re-define drugs as
primarily a health and social matter. Funding for health and social
interventions should be raised to the level enjoyed by drug law enforcement
allowing the expansion, quality, attractiveness and effectiveness of drug
treatment to be substantially improved. Funding should be allocated by governments
to maximise the returns on investments. The human rights of people who use
drugs should have the same protection as other members of the community. Change
should be slow, cautious, incremental and carefully evaluated.
Cannabis should be taxed and regulated with packets
required to show warning signs, provide information for those struggling to cut
down or quit and provide consumer information. Hard-to-get but easy-to-lose
licences should be required for major cultivation, wholesale and retail. Purchase
should require proof of age greater than 18. Cannabis should be provided for
medicinal purposes regulated like other medicines.
Needle syringe programmes should be provided in the
community and prisons to maximally protect public health. Medically supervised
injecting centres should be established where there are large drug markets
spilling over into neighbouring streets, parks and supermarkets. Heroin
assisted treatment should be provided to the small minority of severely
dependent heroin users who have not benefited from multiple and diverse
previous treatments. One area where drug law reformers and supporters of the
War on Drugs agree is that 1 kg blocks of 100% pure heroin and cocaine should
not be sold at supermarket check-out counters. There may be a case, if the
results of the above are not considered adequate, for allowing the commercial
sale of small quantities of low concentration selected illicit drugs. Australia
has done this before. Small quantities of edible opium were taxed, regulated and
sold lawfully in Australia until 1906. Coca Cola contained cocaine until
1903.
The choice is between drugs regulated by the state or
regulated by criminals and corrupt police.
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