ANTI-DRUG ADS ARE NOT ENOUGH

The advertisements are confronting and poignant, but they are not shocking
in the way that the advertisements of the Transport Accident Commission are
shocking. Indeed, the images contained in the Federal Government's
anti-drug television advertisements are to some extent sanitised.

People who die of heroin overdoses do not usually look as unsoiled as the
young man who is shown being zipped into a body bag in one of the ads.
Drug-addicted prostitutes do not often look as wholesome as the 18-year-old
prostitute shown in another.

Paradoxically, the flashbacks to happier times - the seven-year-old girl
talking about baking scones with her mother, the little boy who wanted to
grow up to be a firefighter - appear to depict the stable,
middle-Australian families that Prime Minister John Howard believes are
most likely to sit down and talk to their children about the dangers of drugs.

Nevertheless, the advertisements serve as a reminder that even the children
of responsible, middle-class parents are not immune to drug addiction, and
so they are well worthwhile. And if the anti-drug campaign achieves only a
fraction of the success in lowering the incidence of drug abuse that the
TAC campaign apparently achieved in lowering road accident deaths, then
taxpayers' money will have been well spent.

When around 1000 Australians are dying from drug abuse each year, any
advertising campaign that might help to persuade young people that
drug-taking is destructive - or perhaps more particularly, uncool - is to
be welcomed.

But it is only one element of an anti-drug strategy, and this advertising
campaign should not give the impression that the Howard Government has had
an effective policy to combat the tragedy of drug addiction.

The conventional concentration on prohibition and punishment favored by the
Prime Minister has been comprehensively shown, here and overseas, not to
work. The most effective approach would involve an all-encompassing series
of policies - more punitive sanctions against dealers, a higher police
presence, widely available treatment centres, a variety of diversion
schemes and a trial of supervised injecting rooms, as well as an effective
advertising campaign.

Mr Howard remains opposed to such measures as supervised injecting rooms or
heroin prescription trials, despite evidence from overseas that these can
reduce deaths from overdoses, drug-related crime and the incidence of HIV
infection. Moreover, the recent removal of several outspoken advocates of
the harm-minimisation approach from the Australian National Council on
Drugs indicates that the government is intent on continuing its
zero-tolerance line. Without a policy that recognises that drug dependency
requires a variety of solutions, no amount of advertising will stop the
waste of young lives.