LOOK TO COUNTRIES WHERE DRUG USE IS DECLINING

Mr John Miller is quite right to suggest (Letters, 29 June) that Australia
should look overseas to see whether any other countries are responding any
better than we are to illicit drugs.

Drug-overdose deaths increased in Australia from 6 in 1964 to 737 in 1998.
The number of people injecting drugs in Australia has been doubling every
10 years for the last three decades, while 84 per cent of Commonwealth and
state government expenditure in response to illicit drugs has gone to
Customs, police, courts and prisons.

Does he really believe that we can arrest and imprison our way out of this
mess when we cannot even stop drugs entering our prisons?

And why should Australia look, as he recommends, to Sweden, where drug use
and drug overdose deaths are also increasing rapidly?

Drug use and drug-overdose deaths are both declining in Switzerland. There
were 419 such deaths in 1992 and only 181 in 1999. The community in
Switzerland strongly supports the national four-pillar approach, which
started a few years ago. This involves a balanced combination of law
enforcement, prevention, treatment and harm minimisation.

(Dr) ALEX WODAK President Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation
Darlinghurst, NSW