DRUG ABUSE 'HEALTH ISSUE'

AUSTRALIA'S drug problem will worsen if governments continue to treat
substance abuse as a law-enforcement matter instead of a health issue,
a leading expert on the subject has warned.

Alex Wodak, director of St Vincent's Hospital's alcohol and drug
service, said harm-reduction initiatives such as injecting rooms and
needle-exchange programs had proven successful.

But he said the so-called "war on drugs" was costing a bomb and
failing to lessen the impact of drug use.

Dr Wodak was speaking in Canberra after addressing the Parliamentary
Group for Drug Law Reform.

"More and more people around the world are recognising there's really
a crisis in drug policy," he said.

"More and more countries are starting to adopt pragmatic,
public-health based, harm-reduction approaches.

"The scientific debate is well and truly over. Harm reduction clearly
works, it's effective, practical, affordable, whereas the war on drugs
more and more is seen as expensive, ineffective and severely
counterproductive."

Dr Wodak said there was considerable community support for harm
reduction but many people, wrongly, saw law enforcement as the only
way to reduce the impact of drug use.

"We're never really going to get deaths, diseases, crime and
corruption down to much lower levels in Australia in relation to
illicit drugs unless we adopt a health-based approach," he said.

"I don't think that has got through to enough people but I think in
many respects the community is ahead of the politicians.

"The community was well ahead of the politicians in terms of the
medically supervised injecting centre, in terms of the heroin trial
- - politicians were way behind in those areas.

"Drug use is a health and social problem primarily. There's always an
important role for drug law enforcement but the budgets for health and
social interventions have to rise to the level that drug law
enforcement has enjoyed for so long."

Dr Wodak said some countries were recognising drugs as a security
issue because terrorist groups obtained much of their funding from
trafficking.