OFFICIAL DRUG HYPOCRISY IS A POLICY FOR DOPES

The Truth Is Plain: Legal Alcohol Is Our Deadliest Drug

FEW Australians will speak comfortably of drugs because to do so is to
include themselves in the ranks of the mind-altering or psychotropic
drug-takers. Fewer still worry that the alcohol industry pushes its
products in ways prejudicial to drinkers, particularly the young.

The latest industry profits attributed to excessive alcohol consumption
gave added point to Natasha Bita's exposure (Opinion, November 15) of the
dangerous directions the advertising push is taking.

Our continuing concerns with alcohol have much to teach us about handling
other drugs. Prohibition, the attempt to ban alcohol in the US, failed in
1933. National legislation outlawing the manufacture and sale of the
substance was abandoned under the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution.
Law enforcement had proved impossible, and for the duration of the attempt
there was unparalleled bootlegging and drinking.

Whether alcohol might be deemed a licit or an illicit substance is no
longer seriously at issue. What matters is that it came to be generally
acknowledged as another mind-altering drug with attendant problems of
addiction and abuse like other drugs.

Recently I attended a national conference on drugs for families and
communities. Mainly it was for the small non-government organisations and
many parents compelled to try to make good the federal Government's
abdication of responsibility for life-saving among drug victims, or for
responding to their plight with medical treatment. Almost all the several
hundred participants regarded themselves as, in one way or another, health
workers. Several Aboriginal participants made moving contributions and,
like Tim Costello, who was the first of the voices to be heard, they
pointed to the significance of alcohol in the wider drug problem.

The conference's first recommendation was that an impost of 1c be placed on
every alcoholic drink sold, and the proceeds used to assist drug victims.

Two small organisations that attended from Queensland work with the
problems of ``alcohol, tobacco and other drugs'' or ``alcohol, tobacco and
illicit drugs''. The point of this inclusive approach is not to attempt to
obscure the illicit status of, say, heroin, although pressure should
continue for heroin to be available legally on limited prescription.

The point is honesty -- between and within the generations. Without it the
subculture of illegality begins to suborn our children as early as their
pre-teen years. Hiding in a hedge to smoke a first cigarette, as my
generation did, is a far cry from first smoking an illicit substance, such
as cannabis, procured by a child from a predatory crook -- an illegal
initiation rite. Add to that the grotesque evidence from the latest
commonwealth statistics, for 1997, that more than 18,000 deaths could be
ascribed to tobacco, while only one single fatality was connected with
cannabis. Yet our young people see that tobacco remains legal, and so does
alcohol -- their parents' drug of choice -- and that its harmful use killed
nearly 4000 Australians in that same year. Those who think they can reach
out to provide drug education to their children through this pall of
denial, dishonesty, and hypocrisy are themselves hallucinating. It simply
has to be acknowledged that a drunk is on a drug.

John Howard is determined not to send the wrong message in his war on drugs
(other than smokes and drinks). The Royal Colleges of Psychiatrists and
Physicians in the UK have this question for him. Is it sending a wrong
message, they ask, to juxtapose the annual number of deaths in Britain
attributable to various illegal and legal substances -- none (at all) due
to cannabis, about 20 to ecstasy, many hundreds to heroin and methadone,
and about 30,000 to alcohol?

In the 1920s the US also began, and continues, to prohibit narcotic drugs,
creating untold criminal wealth and human woe. The lesson to be learned
from alcohol is that such substances cannot be banned without sabotaging
the legal system. Society has no choice but to accept the substance, try to
avoid its abuse, and provide medical and moral assistance to those who
suffer from addiction to it. Marketing of alcohol or any other licit drug
can be controlled. Criminal drug trafficking plainly cannot.

Alcohol belongs on the drug agenda to carry those messages, to open up
communication with our children and to rebuke governments for giving
criminals a monopoly to supply other ``recreational'' drugs.