BLAMING DEALERS IS NOT THE ANSWER

Treatment for addicts - they are victims. But tougher sentences for
traffickers - there should be no mercy for pedlars of death.

MANY Australians would have sympathy for these sentiments. But are they an
adequate basis for policy?

Over the past decade, I have been studying the ways Australian drug laws are
developed and enforced. In light of this research, I find it difficult to
accept that every person involved in supplying illicit drugs is the
embodiment of evil.

Partly, this is because I have reviewed the histories of people convicted of
selling heroin and other drugs at the street level. I have had to recognise
many are habitual users.

For them, selling drugs to other users is one of the few ways to finance the
next "fix". Morally preferable, many argue, to breaking into someone's
house, or robbing someone after threatening them with a syringe or other
weapon, or working in the sex industry.

More importantly, research has made it clear that the demonising of drug
supply is leading to some very poor policy decisions. This was brought home
a few years ago, when I was part of a team reviewing South Australia's
so-called "cannabis expiation notice system".

Under this system, adults using cannabis in private, or cultivating or
possessing it for personal use, can be given a written notice. As long as
relevant fines are paid, these people do not incur a criminal conviction.

Overall, expiation seems to be working. Many young offenders have avoided a
criminal record. The new approach has not opened the floodgates to cannabis
use: consumption trends in South Australia are much the same as elsewhere in
the country. And having initially been wary about the procedures, police
acknowledge that they improve the way the justice system deals with minor
cannabis offenders.

But research did reveal one problem. Police were aware of a loophole in the
cultivation provisions. Under South Australian law, anyone found with "up to
10 plants" had to be issued with a notice. Ten plants can produce a lot of
cannabis. A proportion of the "grass" from these small plots was finding its
way into commercial markets.

Soon after the research program was completed, South Australia reduced to
three the number of plants for which a notice could be issued. Undoubtedly
this was consistent with the legislators' intentions. But was it good
policy?

South Australia might have been better served if police and policy makers
had seen the emergence of "cottage industry" production as an opportunity to
loosen the grip of organised crime, and if they had begun to scrutinise and
regulate cannabis markets with this in mind. But abhorrence for the very
idea of trafficking made this impossible.

Much the same has been happening with debate about "safer injecting
facilities". Their purpose is to arrest the rising rate of drug overdose
deaths and to address other health problems affecting intravenous drug
users. Such facilities also can alleviate public disruption and other
problems (e.g. discarded syringes) that street injecting causes for local
communities.

But opponents do not want to hear about these benefits. Their concern is
that injecting rooms signal that we are "giving in" to the heroin trade.

Clearly, injecting facilities should be established only where street
trafficking and use are well established (and this is the case with the
Bracks Government proposals). Critics interpret the introduction of such
facilities as a concession that it is impossible to eliminate illicit drugs
from some locations. But surely good policy consists of working towards the
achievable.

Evidence is overwhelming that, in a consumer society such as Australia's,
elimination of illicit drugs is impossible. Saturation policing in locations
already characterised by high levels of trafficking and use at best simply
shifts the problem to other parts of a city, and at worst exacerbates
robberies, breaking and entering and other predatory crimes by users unable
to find alternative ways to finance their habit.

However, much can be done if we set the more realistic goal of minimising
the harm illicit drugs cause to users and communities. These safer injecting
facilities will be a significant step in this direction. They may signal
some relenting in policies of "zero tolerance" - but many participants in
street markets themselves are victims. Communities will benefit because this
policy will "take the heat" out of local drug scenes and help reduce visible
symptoms of drug use.

Phobias about illicit drugs and trafficking are deeply entrenched, but
should not be allowed forever to impede sensible policy.

At last some politicians are beginning to face down their fears. They should
be commended, not criticised, for this initiative.