Arguments against Decriminalising illicit drugs (heroin, ice, speed, cocaine and ecstasy)

Our Vision: To support and educate young people, their families and communities to prevent the damage caused by drugs.

The NSW Greens and ACT Labor want to decriminalise all drugs, despite the failed Portugal model

Drugs harm much more than the user

Illicit drug use adversely affects a whole constellation of people – the drug user’s partner, their children, their children’s grandparents, siblings, friends, workmates, other road users, and the rest of the community (crime, welfare etc) drawn into the vortex of their drug use
The unacceptable level of harms of drug use are attested by a simple fact – our governments have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ‘harm reduction’ programs for drug use – it’s in the name

Why there needs to be legal consequences

Illicit drug use has historically attracted a conviction because of the unacceptable harms it causes to so many. For instance, the value of lost retirement and savings for grandparents raising their grandchildren due to drug-dependent parental neglect represents a ‘stolen’ cost infinitely greater than petty sums attracting criminal sanctions for shoplifters or embezzlers
96-99% of Australians do not approve the regular use of heroin, ice, speed, cocaine or ecstasy, suggesting that Australians would want less drug use, not more, which only rehab and recovery can achieve, making them mandatory. Decriminalisation will never drive recovery – it removes all meaningful limits or deterrence value in drug laws, being little different to fully legalising drugs practically-speaking. Australian Drug Courts have been an effective avenue for streaming drug users into rehab and treatment, where scrapping such interventions will lead to escalating drug use and associated harms
With no legal mandated deterrent for a user to cease drug use by entering rehab, drug use markedly increases as it has in Portugal (their preferred model), which decriminalised all illicit drugs in 2001 only to see drug use rise 59%, overdose deaths rise 59% and drug use by high school minors up 60% by 2017. By comparison, Australia’s Federal Tough on Drugs policy from 1998 to 2007 reduced drug use 42% and overdose deaths 75% by maintaining convictions and funding more rehab. Portugal increased societal harms, Australia reduced them
Drug Free Australia promotes the introduction of ‘spent’ convictions, where a criminal record is totally erased if a drug user can return drug free tests over a three-year period

Keeping drugs illegal works

73% of Australians say they have no interest in illicit drugs. Relevant to the remainder that likely would have an interest, 32% of Australians say they don’t use drugs because of their illegality. If cannabis was legalised here, 10% who’ve never tried it say they would use it, and 3% who use it would use more, multiplying the established harms caused by cannabis
Changing the legal status of drugs removes these deterrents. When cannabis was decriminalised in the ACT in 1992, 43% of Territorians thought it was now legal to use, explaining its skyrocketing use by 1993 where monthly use amongst lifetime users went from 0% to 31%

All use is problematic

The argument that few have problematic drug use is contradicted by Australia’s most prolific researcher on heroin use, Prof. Shane Darke, who wrote that very few heroin users “use it in a non-dependent, non-compulsive fashion.” 1 in every 3 Australian illicit drug users becomes addicted
Their argument ignores the harms of occasional use where, for instance, 29% of ecstasy deaths in Australia are from car crashes endangering the lives of passengers as well as people in other vehicles. Their argument is akin to saying that drivers who speed on our roads without causing loss of life should not be penalised for speeding. But the law does not work that way. And occasional users often promote their drug use to friends and family who can become dependent. In fact 3 in every 5 Australian illicit drug users were introduced to drug use this way

There is no ‘right’ to use drugs

A recent Uniting Church document supporting drug decriminalisation argued that our drug laws should “reflect the essential worth and rights of every person.” But Australian drug users have never been denied any right available to any other Australian. Of greatest importance, there has NEVER been a United Nations right to use illicit/controlled drugs. In fact the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child accords each the right to live unaffected by illicit drug use and the UN Drug Conventions have always kept drugs illegal
The aforementioned document argues for Equity in drug policy, i.e. all drug use should be treated the same – all must be decriminalised. This is the same principle that guided international drug policy for 110 years – all drugs with unacceptable harms, whether heroin or cannabis, should be equally illegal

CALL TO ACTION

Australian Parliamentarians must continue to work towards the drug free society that is suggested by Australian attitudes concerning illicit drug use – they do not approve of it. From 1912 until the 1960s, during those years when legislators had the will and commitment to keep their societies drug free, there was negligible drug use worldwide. ‘ Tough on Drugs.’ a successful drug prevention campaign in Australia from 1998 to 2007, showed us what works – all we need now is the Political W ill to take that approach again.

Gary Christian
RESEARCH DIRECTOR
Drug Free Australia
0422 163 141