HARD CHOICES ON DRUGS

The cost of drug abuse, in individual human suffering, social disruption and
money, has been so great for so long that it sometimes seems that despair
and fatalism easily overwhelm any sense of urgency or resolve to reduce the
problem.

It is easy to be cynical about the most recent expressions of concern,
whether from the Police Commissioner, Mr Ryan - who has called for greater
emphasis on carefully directed treatment and rehabilitation than often
futile law enforcement - and many others who have to deal with the actual
and often horrendous results of drug abuse.

But cynicism, a close cousin to despair, is no answer.

As Professor Ian Webster says: "If we had a person a day dying for any other
health reason we would throw whatever health resources we had at the
problem". But the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia, of which
Professor Webster is president, has concluded that NSW, with the biggest
drug problem, has been reducing spending on drug and alcohol programs and
now spends less per head than most other States. It is possible that NSW is
more efficient than other States, delivering more effective treatment
programs for less money spent.

But it is just as likely that NSW, as Professor Webster and others fear, is
simply not doing enough to treat people who are sick and at risk through
drug dependency.

More important perhaps than the question of how much is spent on treatment
and rehabilitation is the question how such money is spent. Here there is
much disagreement. There are not only fundamental differences in attitudes
to drugs and addiction.

There is disagreement about the facts.

It might be possible to say with reasonable accuracy how many drug-related
deaths occur in Australia. But it is by no means clear whether the level of
addiction in the community has increased or not in recent years.

Such factual issues assume huge importance in the debate over strategies to
combat the drug problem and should be made clearer.

Those who urge a new approach with greater emphasis on treatment and
rehabilitation are inclined to emphasise the easy availability and extensive
use of illegal substances. They argue that the problem is as bad as can be
and it is futile therefore to make anti-drug strategies reliant on stopping
supply or to fear "opening the floodgates", since they are already open.
Those, on the other hand, who resist the introduction or expansion of
treatment and rehabilitation policies based on, for example, methadone
supply programs and the introduction of "shooting galleries" as harm
mitigation measures, argue that continuing emphasis on criminal sanctions is
essential.

Those on this side of the argument point to the problems of illegal dealing
in methadone and the damaging effect they say would follow any move to
decriminalise hard drugs in the name of treatment and rehabilitation.

The arguments have been running for a long time. Until they are resolved,
there is not the slightest hope of change from the present position in which
political decisions in this area are far more inclined to fall down on the
side of punitive solutions based on the criminal law than on attempts to
treat and rehabilitate. That is unsatisfactory. The misery caused by illegal
drugs is so great and has remained that way for so long that some fresh
thinking is required.

At the very least, the political parties should agree to a new approach.

They should abandon posturing and point-scoring and look for new solutions
based on a genuine search for measures to reduce what, incontrovertibly, is
an unnecessary degree of human misery.

Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"