HARM MINIMISATION IS A FAILURE

I have a question for Alex Wodak and his fellow drug law "reform" advocates
(Herald, March 10). Australia has been following a policy of harm
minimisation for at least 15 years. During this time the number of people
taking methadone, a legal alternative to heroin, has increased 15-fold.

Despite this we have more people on heroin than ever, with drug-related
crime and overdose deaths (including from methadone) increasing.

A recent study of 11- and 12-year-old children in Western Australia found
19 per cent of boys and 14 per cent of girls drinking alcohol at least once
a week, half to excess.

There is no prohibition of alcohol and effectively none for methadone, yet
we seem to be in as much trouble with these drugs as with prohibited drugs.
It was always a possibility that increasing the availability of a legal
narcotic would simply enlarge the total user pool. So why is it prohibition
that's failed, rather than current policy?

Were we in fact doing a lot better while methadone was hard to get, there
were campaigns focusing on problems with legal drugs, far more treatment
facilities, and harm minimisation had not yet made abstinence a dirty word,
even for children?

Dr Jean Lennane, Birchgrove, March 12.