SOFT IN THE BRAIN

Taking the soft options on drugs will just lead our society into more
trouble. We've tried "harm minimisation" for 15 years.

PEACE, people. As the smell of dope and the sound of rock rose on Woodstock
'99 last week, the world had a chance to remember those old-time hippie
values.

“Free love” and “do what you want to do, so longs you don’t harm others”.

Sad, really, that the 50th anniversary celebration of the great Sixties
“summer of love” didn’t quite turn out that way.

In fact -- according to reports by rape counsellors who attended Woodstock
'99 -- the festival featured not so much free love as widespread sexual
assault.

Amid rioting, fire-lighting and attacks on police, four women reported
being raped at the festival, while rape counsellors said they treated many
more victims.

One counsellor said he saw women being pulled into a pit, stripped and raped.

Woodstock '99 is a timely symbol of the moral confusion at the heart of our
post-Sixties world. Where we should see peace, love and brotherhood we see
increased destructiveness and lawlessness.

Australia is little different from America on this score. On drugs, we’ve
had a compassionate, government-endorsed policy of “harm minimisation” for
the best part of 15 years now.

But instead of less harm, we’re getting more and more drug addiction.

Sydney health researcher Lucy Sullivan points this out, reminding us that
free distribution of needles for injection of illicit drugs was first
introduced in Australia during the 1980s, with backing from governments and
health workers.

NOW, there’s a sea of needles on our streets. And the death rate from
heroin overdoses has shot up, year after year.

Yet despite the apparent failure of this harm minimisation approach, we’re
now facing a renewed push to legalise “recreational” heroin injection via
safe injecting rooms.

It’s like Woodstock on a national scale. Post-Sixties values are in crisis
- -- and our only answer seems to be more post-Sixties values.

This week, the Victorian Law Institute has become the latest community
organisation to back calls for legal injecting rooms in Melbourne.

This follows moves by NSW and ACT governments to legalise injecting rooms
on an “experimental” basis.

Against this rushing tide of “expert”, pro-legalisation opinion, it’s
ludicrous to hope society will go back to an imaginary golden age of
drug-free innocence.

But surely we can still look facts in the face and acknowledge that at its
very core, the drugs problem is neither a health problem, as the
pro-injecting room lobby insists, nor a criminal problem, as some
Right-wingers claim.

At the bottom of it all, it’s a behavioral problem, a problem of dangerous
behavior. And it must be treated that way Like road accidents.

During the 1970s, Australia suffered monstrously high death rates from
traffic accidents, which led us to address driving behavior as a serious
national and state concern.

We focused on the behavior of motorists, through increased policing,
education and punishment for infringements.

The message got through. Driving behavior has improved, death tolls have
dropped and suffering has greatly decreased.

With heroin, there are signs that effective policing is now having an
effect. Recent reports indicate heroin shortages in Sydney and Melbourne
because of big police hauls.

But more must be done, especially in public education.

AND in tougher sentences for trafficking. As A Court of Appeal Justice
Clive Tadgell said, while urging tougher sentences recently, soft options
on the drugs issue are undermining society.

Yet amazingly, we hear more voices suggesting drug prohibition cannot work
and that we need safe injecting rooms.

At the heart of the matter, one question remains clear. Should we choose
to try and influence the behavior of those who might, and do take drugs to
discourage them from doing so?

Or should we simply take the Woodstock option and declare the law our enemy?

Even noted harm minimisation supporter Jeff Kennett says he doubts legal
injecting rooms will reduce the death toll from heroin.

He's right. It won't. But it might make things worse.