FIGHTING A LOSING BATTLE

It is not easy being a drug-law reformer in the United States because
there's simply no public debate about the virtue or effectiveness of
fiercely punitive drug policy, according to Dr Ernie Drucker.

In a political system where the religious Right dictates to both parties on
issues like drugs and abortion, you are either on the side of the
righteous, or you are branded a "legaliser", the kind of person who would
feed crack to a baby, he says.

Drucker has run a methadone program - one of the few in the US - in the
Bronx for the last 20 years, and has spent most of his life pushing against
the stone wall of the "just say no" approach to drug policy.

He is the first to admit that he has made very little progress. Not only is
harm minimisation unpopular, Bill Clinton's chief drugs adviser, General
Barry McCaffrey, has declared the phrase a cover for legalisation, and it
is not used in any US drug policy document. (Australians will know
McCaffrey from the fuss this week at the drugs in sport conference).

Drucker says McCaffrey's visit to Australia is part of an organised
campaign to spread misinformation about what is happening in the US, and it
is working. Sweden and Japan are very strong allies.

Drucker, who will visit several Australian universities and drug programs
in the next year, says coming here is about learning from others, but also
about trying to regain some optimism about the possibility of change. He
finds it hard to understand why Australia should take advice from his home
on US drugs policy, which he describes as destructive and
counter-productive. What we can learn from the US, he says, is what not to do.

When AIDS came along in the mid-1980s, the stakes were raised: drug
injecting wasn't just killing people through overdose, but spreading deadly
disease as well. Drucker and friends tried to introduce a public-health
approach, with needle exchanges to stem the spread, but they were able to
do very little. US attitudes about drug use and drugs users were "so
primitive, so rooted in fear and prejudice,that it was very hard to make
that transition".

The then ALP Health Minister Neal Blewett visited New York in the mid-
1980s and, on his return, a nation-wide system of needle exchanges was set
up. Australia now has one of the lowest rates of HIV infection in the
western world.

"Drugs are not the principle problem in America, the laws are", Drucker
says. "Drug users are being locked up at a phenomenal rate, destroying
their prospects of treatment, or getting married or getting a job."

In 1996, 1.5 million people were arrested for drug offences in the US, with
a 10-fold increase in imprisonment on drug charges since 1979. Drucker says
this is not because of an explosion in drug use; as far as it can be
measured, drug use rates have stayed about the same for the last 20 years.
But US society has changed the way it deals with drug users. In states like
Texas and Florida, you can be banned for life from voting if you have a
felony conviction.

Last year, $US16 billion ($A24 billion) of federal funds were spent on
drugs; 67 per cent, or $US10.7 billion, was devoted to enforcement,
interdiction, and supply reduction in the US and overseas. Expenditure on
these activities has increased 10-fold over the past two decades, while
spending on treatment has increased only five-fold.

Drucker says many politicians understand that the American approach is
simply not working, and will say so in private, but not in public. "It is
political death for any federal politician to seem to be soft on drugs by
raising law reform."

The laws that determine the illegality of drugs are federal laws, and
Republicans and Democrats are terrified they will not win office if the
religious Right campaign against them.

Drug treatment programs are scarce, with only 15-20 per cent of those who
want treatment able to get it. Unless you are rich, "and then you go to
Betty Ford between making movies".

Drug courts, which can order treatment instead of jail, were introduced
about five years ago and were seen as a progressive step. But Drucker says
that because treatment programs are not adequately funded, those that want
treatment are being forced out by those who are obliged by the courts to
attend. Drug treatment has become subjugated to the criminal justice
system, he says.

The blame for the drug problem is placed on drug users and their families.
But in the US, the home of the support group, there is no group like
families and friend for drug law reform because there is too much shame
associated with drug use for anyone to admit that their family has been
involved, he says.