LET'S INJECT A BIT OF COMMON SENSE INTO THE DRUGS DEBATE

All methods, including zero tolerance, have failed to stop the trade
in narcotics. Now it's time to recognise reality and legalise them.

Last week in this space I asserted that those out there on the front
line guaranteeing themselves endless grief by organising safe
injecting rooms for heroin users at Kings Cross should be thoroughly
applauded by the rest of us hand-wringers and pontificators alike. I
based this on three simple premises:

1. Drugs are an abomination.

2. No amount of "zero tolerance" has ever wiped them out.

3. Therefore, harm minimisation programs like safe injecting rooms
must be supported.

The emails and letters flooded in. But apart from one or two nasty
diatribes written in crayon, the response was overwhelmingly positive
and no-one even attempted to mount a serious argument against point
2. For if you accept that, then the next point inevitably follows.
(Unless of course you are one of the let-em-die! brigade. But enough
about talkback callers.)

At the risk then of alienating all those who believe in the safe
injecting rooms, but do not wish under any circumstances to take it
further, here goes ...

Let's just legalise drugs entirely. Let's acknowledge the truth, that
when you know that heroin is cheaper, purer and more available on the
streets than ever before*; that the number of users in Australia has
doubled in the past 10 years to between 67,000 and 92,000 Australians
using every day ; and that 46 per cent of all Australians over 14
admit to having tried heroin, cocaine, marijuana and amphetamines**,
it is obvious that the current system is completely unworkable.

By legalising it, the very first effect will be to remove its
dreadful glamour. You will remember, of course, the tremendous thrill
you and I got when we smoked our first cigarette behind the boys'
toilets. The damn thing was horrible - you couldn't stop coughing, as
I recall - but we continued because it was so much fun to get away
with it. We've all been there. Surely when that same childish thrill
of "getting away with it" grows into adulthood it is a large part of
what sends people that first step down the path of drugs. They're so
wicked.

The most frequent argument put up against this is that "it sends the
wrong message to our children". Firstly, "the wrong message to our
children" view rests on the reckoning that our children are such
gullible little Munchkins that they will use a change in the drug
laws as an excuse to try hard drugs. Respectfully, you've got to be
kidding. When you know 46 per cent of us have already tried them it's
hard to believe the fact that they're against the law is much of a
deterrent in the first place.

More to the point though is, what message are our children getting
now? What message is being sent when they see powerful people from
the Prime Minister and Police Commissioner down continuously
thundering that drugs are against the LAW and will be wiped out, and
yet every Saturday night they can't spit over their shoulder without
hitting a drug dealer in the eye? Could there be anything more
calculated to make them totally disrespect the whole notion of laws?

What, though, if we made it legal? What if drugs were like hard porn?
What if they were available and legal but totally without glamour,
just like adult bookshops. What, if instead of the so-called "heroin
chic", the whole thing become equated with loser-dom? What if you
obliged the whole underclass that is currently making millions out of
its willingness to indulge in criminality to operate like the rest of
the business community, above board? As one of my correspondents put
it: "Let those bastards start filling out BAS forms every three
months, and then see how long they want to stay with it."

What if all the resources being wasted trying to stop the unstoppable
could be put into all the other areas crying out for resources where
they can really be of some use, such as hospitals and education and
all the rest? It's radical of course, and will not eliminate the drug
problem, but it cannot be worse than the current catastrophe of
hand-wringing hot air that clearly has had no effect whatsoever.

(Seriously, if you send emails or letters attacking this - and you
are most welcome - could you begin with an appraisal of the included
stats, and then tell me the current system has any chance whatsoever
of working?)

* Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence report, last month.
Report carried in the Australian Medical Journal last November.

** National Drug Strategy Household Survey, May 1999.