WE MUST KEEP THE YOUNG ALIVE

I WAS privileged to take part in the Community Drug Summit in Perth
last week. Speakers with very different opinions from quite different
backgrounds were given an opportunity to present their arguments.

Delegates, who also seemed to represent a wide range of views,
listened to the arguments of both sides and then voted on the
recommendations.

The Drug Summit has helped to clarify the kinds of policies that WA
will have to embrace if the problem of illicit drugs is to be reduced
to manageable proportions. Most recommendations were passed with
overwhelming support. Sizeable majorities supported even the more
controversial recommendations.

There is almost universal recognition that what we have been doing
has not worked. Most agree that simply doing more of the same will
not work. Until it is easier for drug users to get into treatment
than to buy drugs, we will not make any progress. What stops us
providing enough attractive, evidence-based treatment is the view
that illicit drugs are first and foremost a law-enforcement problem.
But it is clear that we cannot arrest and imprison our way out of the
mess we are in. In all the years we have been relying on law
enforcement, a once-small problem has grown to mammoth proportions.

Last week, Iran recognised that relying on efforts to cut drug
supplies was getting it nowhere. So Iran has now started a methadone
program, even though this was anathema to it until very recently.

Nothing is more precious to us than the lives of young Australians.
Surely young people are more precious to us than any ideology? We
must do whatever it takes to keep our young people alive because
while there is life there is always hope. We will also have to work
hard to make life more attractive to young people so that fewer
people are interested in taking drugs.

Dr ALEX WODAK, director, Alcohol and Drug Service, St Vincent's
Hospital, Darlinghurst, NSW.