HIGH PRICE OF PROHIBITION

IAN MATHEWS says all the main players in the drugs debate, even the
traffickers, who will benefit from the ''Get Tough on Drugs'' package,
think the ban on heroin is in their best interest.

IN THE welter of praise and criticism for the Prime Minister's ''Get Tough
on Drugs'' initiative, it is unlikely that we will hear the reactions of
any of Australia's major illicit drug importers and distributors. They are,
however, significant players in the campaign. Their views will, to some
extent, dictate how successful John Howard's campaign will be.

Their initial reaction will be one of confirmed relief. Their biggest scare
came earlier in the year when health and police ministers from all States
and Territories agreed, some reluctantly, to a scientifically monitored
trial of supplying heroin to registered addicts in the ACT.

Much to the drug entrepreneurs' relief, the Prime Minister stopped that in
its tracks. The danger to illicit drug traders is any weakening of
prohibition. The heroin trial could only could have indicated that a system
of controlled supply of clinically monitored drugs reduces harm to
dependent drug users, cuts crime and paves the way for reducing dependence.
For illicit drug importers and for the Prime Minister such research was
pointless.

It is one of the ironies of the illicit drug trade that the main players
importers and distributors, governments and some politicians, some
nongovernment carers and some parents have a common aim. They are
convinced and united in their opinion that prohibition is in their best
interests.

Prohibition getting tough on drugs is in the best interests of drug
entrepreneurs. It guarantees their market. Let's look at Mr Howard's
strategy of ''moral leadership'' from the point of view of a business
operator whose main source of income comes from the importation of heroin.

Mr Howard's $87 million plan averages just under $30 million a year or, to
an importer, 60kg of heroin at street prices. But, as both the Prime
Minister and his Minister for Health, Michael Wooldridge, have made clear,
it is not the amount of money injected (or restored) to a drug offensive,
it is where you spend it. Half of it is going on policing: surveillance,
intelligence, interception at ports and within Australia, three ''strike
teams'' to nail syndicates.

A dedicated trafficker might say, ''about time too''. For far too long, in
the entrepreneur's opinion, police and other authorities have been either
too lax or too underresourced to cut back the number of
Johnnycomelatelies to the drug trade. The effect of such negligence has
been an expansion of the number of small operators, a flood of higher grade
heroin and a disastrous cut in prices. A few years ago, an addict could
rely on the fact that his or her hit was 20 per cent heroin and 80 per cent
rubbish and relatively ''safe''. Now, thanks to too many competitors, it is
80 per cent heroin and 20 per cent rubbish, if that and cheap.

A few strategic task force raids, a general crack down on the street trade
and a bit of muscle on the wharves would flush away some of the smaller
fry. Major entrepreneurs can help with a welldropped tipoff which results
in a rival being taken out of the business.

In that first flush of getting tough on drugs, the wise trafficker will
take a short holiday, devoting time to his or her other business interest.
It is important to emphasis that he or she will have other, legitimate
sources of income through which to launder the illicit drug profits. Mr
Howard's initiative to enhance the capacity of the Australian Transaction
Reports and Analysis Centre to monitor suspicious financial transactions is
on firmer ground here, but experience shows that dodgy paper work takes a
long time to get to court.

If Mr Howard's strategy of ''stemming the trade'' is given half a chance,
street prices for heroin should rise as supplies artificially dry up. For
the dependent user, the addict, higher street prices or a drop in purity
will dictate increased criminal activity: theft and prostitution.

Mr Howard has anticipated this with his promise to fund a National Heroin
Signature Program which will identify trafficking patterns, improve
research into drugcrime links and will increase Federal police funding for
informant handling and witness protection.

None of this will worry the astute trafficker, but will benefit him or her
if it targets the smaller operator who is usually a user. The Shorter
Oxford English Dictionary gives four meanings for the word ''education''.
For the second prong of his strategy, Mr Howard has chosen the last of
these ''Culture or development of powers, formation of character. Often
qualified, as intellectual, moral etc''.

The successful trafficker will have no quarrel with this approach for two
longterm reasons. The first is that from welldocumented experience it
takes at least two generations to change habits within a society. To coin
the current idiom, the fight against tobacco has been going on for 30
years, intensifying over the past 15 years. But only in the past 10 years
have governments actually brought their full powers to bear and even then
whimping out on some forms of advertising.

Even if Mr Howard's education onslaught at schools and the wider community
achieves what virtually all other education campaigns have not, it is not
unreasonable for a trafficker to be confident that there will be
backsliders. After all, every generation of teenagers challenges authority.
They all know they shouldn't do it, but no ''next'' generation has yet
fully obeyed its elders.

Secondly, if the trafficker thinks a generation ahead at all, he or she
will see merit in educating for ''zero tolerance of drugs in schools''. It
means that enough members of the coming generation will, to some extent,
endorse the current prohibition policies, thus preserving a market for
traffickers. The last thing a trafficker wants is a legal, regulated
market, based on strict food and drug standards, policed by heaven forbid
bureaucrats.

If there is one element of Mr Howard's gettoughondrugs package that
might worry an illicit importer, it is the Prime Minister's qualified
acknowledgment of nambypamby, ''poppy'' harmminimisation schemes. Any
switch in emphasis from law and order to the drug problem being primarily a
health problem, does not augur well for a trafficker. If that view were to
prevail, one could see it as a precursor to the whole trade being handed
over to chemists and doctors.

The one bright spot a trafficker might see in the Prime Minister's
statement on the health side, is his insistence that research should only
be on ''abstinencebased treatment''. Ironically, Mr Howard has provided $9
million for research into harmminimisation measures, into prevention and
treatment and on rehabilitation. This is slightly more than the combined
ACT's heroin trial pilot study, feasibility study, limited trial and
expanded trial would have cost had Mr Howard had the courage to learn from
scientificallybased research.

MR HOWARD has given himself three years before a judgement can be made on
the success of his drugs strategy. Unfortunately, because his strategy is
not to be scientifically monitored at every stage, there will never be a
valid judgement. Each observer will extract ''success'' and ''failure'' to
suit their own perspective.

If more die from overdoses, who is to say they would not have died if the
Prime Minister had not acted? If fewer die who is to say it is because of
the new measures?

The illicit drug trade is controlled, managed, administered, indeed
policed, in its own disorganised and brutal way, by the people who profit
from it. Selfregulation of the illicit drug trade has never been
challenged by blanket prohibition. Increased ''law and order'' measures,
far from being a threat, are an inevitable business overhead which will be
reflected in higher prices.

For the illicit drug entrepreneur, the Prime Minister's ''Get Tough on
Drugs'' policy is a welcome intervention into a market that was in danger
of moving consciously, if slowly, towards a health perspective.

Ian Mathews is coauthor with former Federal Court Judge Russell Fox, of
Drugs Policy: Fact, Fiction and the Future, published by the Federation
Press, Sydney.