WAR ON DRUGS FAILING: EX-JUDGE

FORMER royal commissioner and inaugural National Crime Authority
chairman Don Stewart says attempts to deal with the growing illicit
drug problem through traditional law enforcement methods have failed.
The retired judge, who headed a royal commission into drug
trafficking in Australia in the 1980s, says illegal drug use should
be treated as a public health issue.

"I have slowly come around to the point where I believe the handling
of it in a criminal way is never going to work," Mr Stewart told The
Weekend Australian. "Punitive measures will not work. We can't go on
the way we are."

In a book to be published next week, Mr Stewart says the five years
he spent as a NSW District Court judge before retiring in 2003 had
convinced him illicit drugs were "a problem of gigantic proportions".

"The use of such drugs has become part of our culture, particularly
among young people who treat such use as the norm," he says in the book.

"Prohibition of alcohol didn't work in America, why should
prohibition of other drugs that people want work anywhere else?

"All sorts of solutions are put forward, but as more and more
experienced people recognise, there cannot be total elimination, only
reduction."

As a royal commissioner, Mr Stewart carried out the first detailed
examination of drug trafficking in Australia, including the
operations of the notorious "Mr Asia" drug ring.

As chairman of the NCA he travelled around the world looking at law
enforcement strategies in the war on drugs.

He found that Britain and France admitted to stopping only about
10per cent of illegal drugs crossing their borders.

In an interview to mark the release of his autobiography,
Recollections of an Unreasonable Man -- From the Beat to the Bench,
Mr Stewart said he had no reason to believe Australia was any more
successful in stopping illicit drugs entering the country.

Governments were afraid to move away from the law enforcement
approach to illegal drugs because "people feel safer leaving it the
way it is", he said.

Mr Stewart said he had become a "great fan" of the Alcohol and Drug
Service at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, headed by Alex Wodak,
which was helping lead the way in detoxification programs.

"I am as convinced now that the medical solution is the only way
forward as I was once convinced that the criminalisation approach was
best approach," he said.

Mr Stewart's book claims that the NCA "lost most of its clout and had
lost its way" before it was succeeded by the Australian Crime
Commission in 2003.