BISHOP MISFIRES IN SHALLOW AIMS OF ONE-EYED WAR ON DRUGS

Drugs are a hard issue. Ask anyone with a drug-using son or daughter.
No one in the world has discovered the formula to stop societal drug
use, but plenty are making a profit from it, and not just drug
dealers. Drugs and mental illness is a complex area and we are still
learning, whether police, scientist, parent or policymaker. We can get
caught up in reaching for miracle cures and simple "magic bullet"
solutions, outlandish claims and hallucinations.

The latest misfire is Bronwyn Bishop's parliamentary committee report,
The winnable war on drugs: The impact of illicit drug use on families,
an artefact of shallow thinking. Bishop has sadly followed the wrong
leads and aimed at the wrong enemy. Her inspiration comes from Drug
Free Australia (DFA), the dads' army of illegal drugs policy in
Australia. She has taken up this policy agenda and elevated moralism
over the suffering of fellow Australians grappling with drug problems,
and she has been suckered into celebrating their pet hates. The DFA
approach is to attack outspoken harm reductionist Dr Alex Wodak and
others who are determined to reduce the burden of drugs. Harm
reduction has the audacious premise that drug use has a very long
history. That we must apply ourselves to the reality that hundreds of
thousands of Australians have broken the law and to be responsible we
must have policies that respond to this, rather than the pyrrhic "just
say no".

At the DFA conference earlier this year, there was a failure to be
enriched by diverse perspectives and to rise above petty personal
attacks to address these difficult issues. There was applause when
individuals (who weren't there) were maligned. They were referred to
as "the other side".

Like Bishop, some speakers even held dedicated professionals
responsible for our drug problems. Wodak, a drug-treatment physician,
supporter of harm minimisation and highly regarded all over the world,
is DFA's bete noir.

Science, evidence and compassion are sacrificed on the altar of Bishop
and DFA's twisted logic that people wanting to reduce the harm from
drugs are actually responsible for creating the problem. Just like the
argument at the conference that condoms are fuelling the HIV epidemic.

The conference even went to the extent of flying in one of DFA's
purists, Dr Kerstin Kall, of Scandinavia. How does the obscure, hardly
published Kall gain Bishop's attention to supposedly unravel the
evidence of harm-minimisation programs in Australia, including the
internationally successful needle and syringe programs?

There is an escape clause for Kall though: according to the strong
praise and amens (literally) of the delegates, the scientific
standards are an enormous conspiracy too. Peer-reviewed academic
journals are not truth-seeking research journals aimed at improving
knowledge and building our civilisation, they are just pedlars of pap
and, in the drugs area, dominated by the legalisers and other enemies
of the people, "the other side".

I support harm reduction as a viable public-health approach to drug
issues. Harm reduction coexists with interdiction, but for Bishop they
are mutually exclusive. She mischievously forgets it is the drug
pedlars, with no regard for our community but with enormous financial
clout, who should be a key focus of our attention and interdiction
rather than ordinary Australians struggling with their drug problems.
These criminals hold hard-working, community-minded and compassionate
Australians in contempt. They should make us all worry. They are
misery profiteers, willing to corrupt our police and judiciary, and to
pay no tax. But at the DFA gig, and in Bishop's report, Wodak got more
negative attention.

In the worst tradition of political correctness, Bishop wants to
change the language from harm minimisation to harm prevention.

This is not a great leap forward, but it is code for dismantling
Australia's global leadership in drugs policy. This ideological
posturing is reprehensible.

For the past 20 years Australia has taken a comprehensive approach to
drug use, and it is called harm minimisation. It includes police and
drug treatment as well as interventions for current users. The "war on
drugs" is a re-badge, but part of the Australian tradition, aiming to
balance supply control with interventions for people who are using,
including drug treatments, and needle and syringe programs.

Bishop wants to move the goal posts so that anyone who delivers and
supports harm-minimisation programs in Australia should be de-funded.
The result would be worse drug problems and more lives lost. I wish we
could eradicate drugs too, but let us stay real and seriously engage
with a global phenomenon.

Seeing drugs are already banned, Bishop wants to ban words. Words like
"recreational drugs" because it sends the "wrong message". That this
is a priority when people are losing their sons and daughters to drugs
is reprehensible. Bishop is yet to figure that "ice" sounds really
cool, but sooner or later we won't be able to describe this pernicious
form of amphetamines in shorthand.

These are not socialists whining about correct language, but drug
zealots carping about conspiracy theories of endless mendacity. They
tut-tut together about evil language being used as a beach-head in
efforts to spread drug use.

Even the Minister for Ageing, Christopher Pyne, acknowledged at the
DFA conference that in a liberal democracy we must indulge a diversity
of opinion. He even celebrated the fact that he had sponsored
conferences where some speakers criticised the Government.

At the recent Anex Mental Health and Illegal Drugs Conference,
attended by more than 400 harm-reduction workers in Australia, there
was a thematic thread to the sessions: stick with the evidence and
lead with compassion. I wish Bishop could have been there perhaps her
opinion and the resulting recommendations would have been more
balanced and founded.