DRUG RULING DANGEROUS PRECEDENT

AN extraordinary Federal Court ruling has gone almost unreported.

The court has decided that heroin addiction is a legally recognised
disability. It ruled the Coffs Harbour and District Ex-Servicemen and
Women's Memorial Club was wrong to expel a member for not being a person of
good character. The club thought this because the member had once been a
heroin addict and was now on a methadone program.

This is pretty amazing. Because heroin addiction is illegal, it means clubs
no longer have the capacity to exclude certain criminals, or former
criminals. However the real kick lies in the implications for the workplace
and elsewhere. Companies might now be forced to hire known drug addicts.

Landlords could be in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act if they
do not rent a house to heroin addicts, even though many such people are
thieves and prostitutes. (It is pretty hard to find the money to buy heroin
in any other way.)

But perhaps the grossest aspect of the ruling is that it puts junkies, most
of whom are enemies of society, in the same category as blind people, and
people in wheel chairs. (What next? The Heroin Olympics?) Thts is
obnoxious, because such unfortunate folk have no choice in being disabled.
Junkies, on the other hand, do have a choice. There is a growing body of
research suggesting heroin is not as physically based as we used to think.

It is a personal choice, even a lifestyle one. And it's not a choice the
Federal Court of Australia should be encouraging.