DRUGS: HEALTH AND SOCIAL RESPONSES MUST BE FIRST

UNDER current policy 84 per cent of Commonwealth and state government
expenditure on illicit drugs is allocated to law enforcement.

In recent years this criminal-justice-based approach in Australia has
achieved spreading illicit drug use, a doubling of drug-overdose deaths,
rapidly increasing crime rates and sufficient official corruption linked to
drug prohibition to launch two Royal commissions.

Yet the communique released after the 9 April drugs meeting of the Council
of Australian Governments only promises more of the same.

But not all countries are going backwards.

Drug-overdose deaths in Switzerland halved in the same period that ours
doubled.

Drug use, deaths, disease, crime and corruption will keep on increasing in
Australia until our politicians give priority to health and social responses
to this issue.

That is how Australia handled heroin dependence up till 1953.

(Dr) ALEX WODAK President, Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation,
Darlinghurst, NSW Director, Alcohol and Drug Service, St Vincent's Hospital,
Sydney