NO QUICK FIX FOR DRUG USE

Recognising the drug culture is half-way to finding a cure.

AN associate told me recently of a woman, in her 20s, intelligent,
attractive, bored and psychotic from her on-again off-again drug use over
more than half her life. Tragically, not an uncommon case.

I mention her because of the observation passed on about her motivation for
sticking with heroin, despite public opprobrium, the known dangers to health
and liberty and the availability of treatment programs.

It is an observation all too often drowned out in the drugs debate cacophony
I fear will be amplified at next week's Drugs Summit in the chamber of the
NSW Upper House, where 135 State MPs and a similar number of so-called
experts will assemble to thrash out supposedly effective solutions to
society's scourge.

While this young woman exhibited some capacity to curb, even temporarily
cease, her heroin use, she was fixed on an addiction not just to the drug
but to the danger and what she saw as excitement associated with the street
subculture.

Yet, we underpin our discussions as if every user is desperate to shrug the
monkey from his back, is abhorred and humiliated by his circumstances and is
screaming for redemption.

A lot of users do so because they enjoy it, not despite its risks and
stupidity but, in some measure, because of them.

Until we recognise all the unpalatable myths associated with the drug
culture, none of us will get within cooee of seizing on solutions, if they
do indeed exist.

The predictable already is shaping as reality for next week's feel-good
exercise, initiated in the mayhem of an election campaign to shift beyond
polling day the heat on politicians who otherwise would have been forced to
reveal that they have no magic wand.

There are several problems with such exercises, which largely serve to
comfort society but, at best, can only extend the Band-Aid.

They unrealistically raise public expectation (which Premier Carr tried to
dampen yesterday) that some mystical wisdom will ascend from the mire of
confrontation, dissent, prejudice and ignorance. When that doesn't happen,
disillusionment with the political process will be more entrenched and,
albeit appropriately, its impotence more widely recognised.

And the "solutions" must be expressed in terms that voters are expected to
comprehend. Dollars (and a lot of them), therefore, are not just the cause
of all evil but the salvation from it.

The billions already poured into attempts to counter licit and illicit drug
abuse ($270million a year in maintaining the NSW prison population alone)
must be endlessly added to, without firm evidence that much of what went
before was usefully spent.

The subtleties of the drug question get swamped by the clamour and certitude
of the two polarised divides. The leading American commentator and
researcher Professor Mark Kleiman draws the line between the dominant "drug
warriors", with their persistent advocacy of stricter controls and harsher
punishments, and the "legalisers", who urge relaxation of control.

Remember Kleiman's words, from his paper "Drugs and Drug Policy: the Case
for a Slow Fix", as the crescendo builds next week. "Anyone expressing real
optimism about the prospects for significant drug policy improvements in the
short run might reasonably be asked what he or she has been smoking (or
drinking)," he wrote.

"But because no quick fix is available, we can hope that some elected
officials, given adequate cover against the dreaded charge of being 'soft on
drugs', might be willing to accept a slow fix in the form of a more
realistic set of policies aimed at reducing the total social damage
associated with drug use ..."

Kleiman warns against simplistic assumption. While going easier on addicts
will diminish their need to steal and lessen violence associated with the
drug trade, "the [unanswered] question always is whether and to what extent
such reductions in risk would be offset or more than offset by increases in
the extent of illicit drug taking".

And the hard-core drug users, responsible for a disproportionate share of
the grief? "The hard truth is that most of them would rather have drugs than
treatment, as long as they can get the drugs."