TAKE CARE NOT TO LEAP INTO AN ABYSS

THE CURRENT questioning of heroin prohibition seems to miss one
disturbing aspect: prohibition has the effect of driving the price of
heroin up because of inherent costs to heroin traffickers. Those costs
include the operation of elaborate schemes to acquire, import and
market the drug in such a way as to avoid detection.

The laundering of profits is also an expensive business requiring the
services of willing lawyers and financial advisers.

The price of heroin must also generate sufficient rewards to
compensate for the risks of arrest and imprisonment. The present high
price of heroin, about $50 per "cap", has kept many from trying the
drug, a situation perhaps reflected in research suggesting that only
about 2 per cent of Australians have ever tried heroin.

Demand, and therefore the price of illegal heroin, will be lowered by
partial or total decriminalisation of the drug, and by removing users
from the illegal market using government heroin-prescription programs.
Dramatically lowering the price of illegal heroin runs the very real
risk that many people will use illegal heroin for the first time.
Illegal traffickers will recruit ever-increasing numbers of mostly
young people.

The illegal traffickers will have a customer long enough only for
addiction to take hold before losing them to free government-supplied
heroin programs.

We may very well see an explosion in the number of
addicts.

The nightmare is that a frighteningly high proportion of the
Australian population would become addicted to heroin supplied by
their own governments. The current debate is understandably passionate
given the continuing human tragedy we face. Present strategies clearly
need to be reviewed and all options must be carefully considered. We
must be cautious not to leap into an abyss from which there is no return.

If we stand at the precipice too long and stare into that abyss we
will, however, surely fall in. Time is short and lives are at stake.

WAYNE SIEVERS
Gowrie