DRUGS BACK IN FOCUS IN PARLIAMENT

Drugs are back in focus in Parliament: tighter rules on tobacco, huge
hauls of methamphetamine and its ingredients and a 1.5-centimetre-thick
new bill on alcohol which drew a mix of emotion and rationality in the
initial debate. Is liberal New Zealand turning wowser?

There are two ways to cut the use of damaging recreational drugs:
limit supply and reduce demand. How either is done is a test for the
liberal society, especially when the drug is alcohol.

Last Monday, John Key trumpeted supply-side success in intercepting
methamphetamine. Others, including former policeman Mike Sabin, have
argued the Government should also focus heavily on users.

Locking up all methamphetamine users would freeze the market. But
police cite liberal-democratic rights arguments: recreational users
who pose no or little harm to others and users who are in effect sick
because they are addicted would thereby be treated as criminals.

So, on the supply side, cough tablets are banned. Pharmacists selling
painkillers containing codeine must treat all buyers as if they are
potential criminal manufacturers of heroin substitutes.

The United States criminalised alcohol in the 1920s. It promoted gang
activity. So has criminalising marijuana and hard drugs here.

New Zealand narrowly rejected a national alcohol ban in 1918 but did
allow individual electorates to go "dry", which stifled a promising
wine industry. In the recent more liberal times wine has become a star
high-quality export.

Two weeks back the Key Cabinet tightened the screws on supply of
another damaging recreational drug: tobacco.

It is less militant on the demand side. Budget stringency is
constraining the intensive and expensive help that can get some
(many?) addicts clean. It ducked the drink-drive and higher-tax
options. Sabin wants more education and "social marketing" to
dismantle the presumption, demonstrated by Eden Park hoons on November
6, that being drunk is socially acceptable.

The new bill's architect, Simon Power, in effect worried about that
acceptability in debate on Thursday: "Excessive drinking and
intoxication contributes to our crime rate [and] injury rate and affects
our general health. It impacts on workplace productivity and contributes
to family violence and child abuse. The direct cost to the Government of
alcohol-related harm [is] $1.2 billion a year. The costs to society are
significantly greater."

There was much along that line in Sir Geoffrey Palmer's huge and
disturbing Law Commission report in April.

The Labour, Maori and Green parties said on Thursday that report
justified a much tougher bill than Power's - and they might eventually
prevail. But as National MPs pointed out, it was a Labour Cabinet, led
by Palmer, that greatly liberalised alcohol supply: now you can stock
up at your local dairy. Nick Smith recalled Lianne Dalziel backing
that legislation on an election platform in 1990.

In the 1980s, Palmer assumed we had matured and no longer needed
nanny-state coddling. Even 18-year-olds were old and wise enough to
drink sensibly.

That was before RTDs, which taste nice on the way down and get
youngsters drunk for piffling outlay - and, if laced with caffeine,
without them realising how drunk they are getting. Supermarkets push
cheap wine.

Mr Moderation (Power) is uncomfortable with Palmer's mood
swing.

Power is for "balance. Addressing harm must be weighed against the
positive benefits associated with responsible drinking."

Is this still the liberal society? Three ACT MPs, echoing Business
Roundtable criticism of Palmer, said: "Those supporting [the bill] are
taking away everyone's right to make their own choices in order to
prevent a small group of individuals from self-harm by alcohol. If we
do this for every problem in society, we will soon live in a society
that is no longer free."

There is a hitch in this argument, exemplified by their ultra-liberal
former colleague Stephen Franks' rock-hard line on law and order.
Franks wanted those who caused harm to be locked up to ensure others'
freedom.

Addicts and drunks harm not just themselves, but usually also others.
That is, they limit freedoms.

That illustrates the devilish choices the liberal society must make to
keep itself liberal.

The ACT MPs have a point: though regulation may be necessary to
preserve freedoms (Heather Roy as minister backed consumer
protections), there is a point at which curbing some freedoms, even
aiming to enhance general freedoms, begins to curb general freedoms.

But the reverse is also true, as bankers' freedoms in the 2000s have
demonstrated to tens of millions whose freedoms are now curbed by not
having jobs or houses.

So the balance point constantly shifts. It is now shifting towards
more regulation on a number of fronts (mostly social) but towards less
on others (mostly economic).

This much is certain: in 20 years the alcohol balance point will not
be where it ends up next year. Then there will be another big alcohol
bill.