[quote]
New stand shameful

AN ELECTION eight months away is the most charitable explanation for
the sudden change in emphasis on drug policy by Labor's health
spokesman, Wayne Berry,

Hitherto, Labor, the Liberals, the Greens and one of the two
Independents had given support to a trial to provide heroin to
registered addicts. True, they had done so with varying levels of
qualification, but there was no concerted dissent.

Now Mr Berry has used the trial to assert what he hopes to be a vote
catching message that the Liberals are soft on drugs. He has called
for an expensive education campaign to encourage young people to say
"no" to drugs. He hopes, of course, that his grandstanding will play
on the fears of some illinformed people who will change their vote on
this issue.

Robert de Costella, who is head of the healthfunding body Healthpact,
quite rightly points out that a glossy education campaign will do
virtually nothing about Canberra's drug problem. It will be nodded to
by those who do not and/or will never use hard drugs and be not seen
or ignored by drug users. In short a waste of money.

Heroin use and the use of other hard drugs has slowly spiralled in
Western societies since World War II. The reasons are undoubtedly
complex and interrelated, but there is a growing recognition by
serious peole in positions of great knowledge, that the present
prohibition policy is not working and, worse, that it actually
contributes to the spread of drug use.

It is the fact that prohibition is causing drug use to increase that
discredits the policy. With prohibition and heavy penalties the risks
for suppliers increase and so they put up the street price of their
drugs. As the price goes up, addicts resort to crime. Worse, they
resort to encouraging others on to hard drugs and become suppliers
themselves so they can get their cut of the drug cheaper or even free.
It is an insidious form of pyramid selling that encourages drug use.

It demands a search for a different approach. This call has been made
by people such as Justice James Wood, of the Wood Royal Commission,
and Nicholas Cowdery, the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, as well
as a growing range of former judges and health professionals.

Obviously, heroin and other hard drugs are undesirable and every
effort should be made to get people off them; in the meantime some
sort of stabilisation is needed to control their habit, to remove the
necessity for them to indulge in crime and to prevent them succumbing
to drugs with impurities or in such unknown strength as to cause
overdoses. In these respects the heroin trial offered some hope.

But the trial posed huge political risk for any politician supporting
it in an environment of fear generated by decades of exaggeration. It
required courage and cross party support.

In this context Mr Berry's opportunistic and newfound high moral
ground is to be regretted. He did not condemn the heroin trial head
on, but his willingness to grab a few votes with a toughondrugs
stand sets back its cause and in doing so condemns more Canberra youth
to addiction, crime and overdose.

The fact that Mr Berry knows that makes his conduct even more
shameful.
[unquote]