“WHY I OPPOSE DECRIMINALISATION/LEGALISATION OF ILLEGAL DRUGS”
I have had letters/articles on drugs published by every capital city paper, and by the Uni of Melbourne (Educational Unit) Magazine “MEANJIN”. One of my essays appeared in the company of Prof. Pennington and Major Brian Watters then head of the Salvation Army in Australia. I contributed to the magazine by invitation. My positions shown below are not an exercise in pride, simply an outline of my 35 years history in the drug scene.
When working in the Commonwealth Department of Health (1) I helped introduce a ban on cigarette advertising on TV (September 1976) (2) instigated a ban on smoking on Qantas aircraft, which through Parliament became a complete ban on smoking on aircraft in Australian airspace (3) initiated smoking bans in all Commonwealth Health buildings (4) instigated a phased-in ban on smoking in all Commonwealth public service buildings (5) accompanied the Medical Director of public health in face-to-face discussions persuading the Australian Associated Brewers to introduce low alcohol beer.
It should be clear that certain of these achievements happened in cooperation between the Commonwealth Health Department and State and other relevant authorities and agencies.
BEHIND AUSTRALIA’S DRUG STRUGGLE
No reasonable or meaningful discussion can take place on drug policy unless all parties understand the 3 levels of prevention in public health principles when dealing with epidemics – be they, for example, influenza, measles, smallpox, zika virus, cholera, dengue fever, Ebola etc or drugs. The 3 levels of prevention are Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. The greatest failure of Primary prevention occurred during the 1918 influenza pandemic when an estimated 20-50 million people died from influenza, more than from the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351.
PRIMARY prevention applies measures to prevent a disorder from occurring e.g., tetanus or flu vaccinations and health education/messages. In the case of illicit drug use, or abuse of legal drugs, areas of law enforcement can act as primary prevention – the most prominent being the multiple Tonnes of drugs seized by border control forces which stop over time hundreds of millions of street hits reaching us, especially our children. SECONDARY prevention applies to treatment measures of a disorder in its early/middle stages of development, and then preventing any further relapse (s) or recurrence. TERTIARY prevention is management of a case (s) at a later stage – to apply measures to slow down progression or reduce the number of relapses (often these are extreme cases of drug-related morbidity). In all 3 preventions, the overriding aim must be to maintain or restore normal lives – i.e. life without illicit drugs or over-use of prescribed drugs.
What decides the progression or regression of a drug epidemic? If the number of first-time users does not fall the epidemic cannot be contained or diminished. Take opiates as an example. According to C/W Health figures issued in 1995, there were an estimated 10,000 persons on methadone in Australia. Leading health bodies now estimate this number has risen to 51,000! A rise in the numbers on methadone points to a rise in the number of opioid users (often heroin) and dependency.
In 2014 a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found Australia had ” the highest proportion of per capita recreational drug users in the world……… with the number of drug users continuing to rise steadily” (refer Andrew Carswell, Daily Telegraph, July 5 , 2014). The sad truth of course is that the model referred to is Harm minimisation/Harm reduction. Treatment (secondary prevention) is essential, but efficiently applied primary prevention will reduce first-time users and reduce costly resources needed for secondary treatment, unless that treatment is laissez-faire (drug maintenance) and not based on returning the drug afflicted to normal (drug-free) lives. So let’s change the model. Sweden is recognised internationally as having one of the most successful drug policies in the world. Why do I say that? In 2008 the UN Office on Drugs and Crime conducted a study of 180 countries using serious drug problems as the principal benchmark – 180 being the best, and 1 the worst. Australia came in the first 12. Sweden came in at 162.
Sweden’s policy states it is common, nationally and internationally, to formulate aims which express a basic standpoint and indicate a direction, even if the aim can hardly be achieved in the short term. The UN conventions on human rights are one such example. They represent the international community’s consensus view on the rights which are to apply to people the world over. Knowledge of the occurrence of worldly violations of human rights and of the aims being far beyond many countries’ horizons makes it more important than ever to safeguard the vision of universal human rights. Acceptance of human rights violations relating to the situation in certain parts of the world would amount to capitulation.
Similarly, limiting the aims of drug policy to basically “reducing the harmful effects of drugs” is to capitulate to illegal drug trafficking and to accept that drugs have come to stay in our societies. A limited aim of this kind is in practice a lowering of society’s ambitions and sanctions the marginalization of certain groups in society. Limiting the harmful effects of drugs is one part of the efforts made in drug use care on behalf of persons who have become addicted to drugs, but if a strategy is formulated and implemented essentially in terms of alleviating the situation of those who have already become dependent/addicted, the role and effectiveness of primary prevention is severely reduced and results in growing numbers of first-time users – a situation which if allowed to continue must derail the principles of public health governing epidemics which include the dimension of the numbers involved and the concept of prevention – especially primary prevention.
Recommendation 8 of the Commonwealth House of Representatives 2007 report recognised this by saying that “The Commonwealth Government develop and bring to the Council of Australian Governments a national illicit drug policy that replaces the current focus of the National Drug Strategy on harm minimisation with a focus on harm prevention and treatment that has the aim of achieving permanent drug-free status for individuals with the goal of enabling drug users to be drug free”. No government since has made any serious attempt to implement this recommendation, and so morbidity/mortality and taxpayer funded costs for secondary and tertiary treatments balloon – while primary prevention, the core of resolving epidemics, continues to remain a prisoner to misguided ideologies and minds.