A STEP CLOSER TO UNIFORM DRUG LAWS

IT IS 18 years since the Williams Royal commission into drug use in
Australia completed its work and made recommendations for new and uniform
laws as part of a national drug strategy.

Obviously, nothing much has happened since 1980 in terms of implementing
that key element of Justice Sir Edward William's ground-breaking report.

Australia still has nine sets of drug laws which vary markedly from
jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

A person could be jailed for up to 21 years in Tasmania for doing something
which would attract a maximum two-year sentence in the ACT. The laws
relating to the possession of small amounts of cannabis vary significantly
from state to state.

In late 1998, however, Australia appears to be one significant step closer
to achieving what the Williams inquiry said was essential nearly two
decades ago when the drug trade was not anywhere near as pervasive as it is
now.

A committee of government lawyers from across the country have produced a
report on uniform national drug laws. Its report is now in the hands of the
Standing Committee of Attorneys-General. The task of the Attorneys is to,
convince the nine governments they represent to jettison their own laws and
adopt the model code.

The current law, the report says, is often illogical and unfair and varies
markedly across the nation. Variations in laws dealing with essentially the
same subject impede law enforcement efforts and are a source of potential
injustice to individuals charged with offences.

Commercial And Personal Use

"In a mobile society like Australia, where organised crime involving
illicit drugs transcends state and national boundaries, there is a
persuasive case for uniformity in the definition of serious offences such
as drug trafficking," the committee wrote. It is difficult to see how a
counter argument could be mounted.

A key element of the Williams reforms was that the law should distinguish
between commercial drug crimes and those associated with personal use.

The committee's proposals are, accordingly, directed primarily at those who
deal in drugs for profit. That there should be uniformity in this area of
the law was "clear and compelling".

One of the major problems with the law in some jurisdictions - Western
Australia, Tasmania and the ACT are prime examples - is that governments
had persisted in lumping together in the one Act provisions meant to
achieve the dual objectives of regulating the licit market and destroying
the illicit one.

The committee said anomalies were inevitable when the law tried to deal
with both simultaneously.

In the ACT, drugs-of-dependence legislation imposes a maximum sentence of
life imprisonment for cultivating a commercial crop of cannabis but only a
10-year sentence for manufacturing amphetamines. The reason for the
discrepancy is that cannabis prohibition is directed solely at the black
market, while the prohibition on amphetamines applies to the legal and
illegal markets alike.

The result, the committee said, was a too harsh a penalty for a legitimate
manufacturer who exceeded licence conditions, and too low a penalty for the
criminal manufacturer.

The report focuses on those who make a business out of drug trafficking. It
proposes three levels of liability, according to whether the offender
traffics a large commercial quantity, a commercial quantity or in any
quantity at all.

If the drug is heroin, the maximum penalties would be life, 20 years and 10
years, respectively. The same categorisation and penalties would apply to
the manufacture of amphetamines and the cultivation of cannabis.

A trafficable quantity of heroin, cocaine or ecstasy would be 3g, of
amphetamines 6g, and cannabis 300g. A commercial quantity would be 50g of
impure heroin, cocaine or ecstasy (or 25g of pure heroin or cocaine), 125g
of amphetamine and 2.5kg of cannabis. And a large commercial quantity would
be 1kg or more of the hard drugs, 2.5kg of amphetamine or 50kg of cannabis.

These figures represent a liberalisation of some of the ACT laws (a
trafficable quantity of heroin is currently 2g) and a toughening up of
others (a commercial quantity of heroin is 1.5kg, and of cannabis 100kg).

The committee was not persuaded that it should treat cannabis differently
to other drugs, despite arguments that the level of harm to users caused by
cannabis was lower than with other drugs.

One of those arguing against the committee's stance was Dennis Pianca, of
the ACT Analytical Laboratory, who said, "The justification for anti-drug
laws is the harm to the community caused by drug abuse, not the magnitude
of the profits Š But in the report profits are used to determine the grade
of the offence. This results in penalties which treat small time growers
and sellers of cannabis in the same way as importers of heroin who are
involved in organised crime."

But the committee would not change its view - that cannabis traffickers
should face the same penalties as other traffickers.

"The history of corruption, violence and murder associated with commercial
cannabis production and distribution in Australia run contrary to any
suggestion that the evils associated with commercial cannabis trafficking
are of a lesser order than those associated with the traffic in heroin," it
said.

One of the biggest gaps in the current laws is the absence of anabolic
steroids from most trafficking legislation. If the committee's views are
accepted, that will change.

Interestingly, the Commonwealth Department of Health and Family Services
argued against the inclusion of steroids. It said steroid users were not
drug-dependent and their motivation was body image, sporting performance or
recovery from injury.

The committee considered this submission but rejected it. Whatever the
differences in the "culture" of use to that of other drug-takers, "the
mechanisms of illicit supply are depressingly familiar and no different in
their essentials from illicit trafficking in other manufactured
pharmaceutical drugs".

The 1995 Pennington report in Victoria noted that among teenage boys in
that state, the use of steroids was as high as that of ecstasy.
Uncontrolled steroid use could result in fatalities and serious damage to
mental and physical health.

Exploiting Young People For Profit

"These substances, including repackaged veterinary steroids, have the same
potential for criminal profits and the development of black market
structures as any other drug for which demand is high and supplies
limited," the committee said.

The report recommends penalties of "exceptional severity" for drug
offenders who exploit young people for profit. Simply supplying drugs to a
child should be treated as seriously as trafficking, unless the situation
was no more than one friend supplying another.

While those who exploit young people for profit clearly deserved severe
punishment, extreme care was needed in the design of new laws.

"There is no area of prohibition in which inappropriate resort to the
criminal law is more likely to aggravate, rather than minimise, the harms
associated with illicit drugs," the committee cautioned.

The severe penalties the committee has in mind include life imprisonment
for employing children to distribute a commercial quantity of drugs (say,
26g of pure heroin) and 20 years if any amount of a drug is involved.

The supply in other circumstances of a drug to a child would attract a
10-year maximum, in the light of the "well-recognised damage that early
drug abuse can have on the prospects of a child".

But because a significant proportion of those who supply minors are friends
and associates of similar age, and who are not operating commercially,
"discretion and humanity are essential" in the administration of the
proposed laws.