PUNITIVE RESPONSE NO HELP ON DRUGS

Liberal backbencher Bronwyn Bishop is well known for her conservative
social views and the forthright manner in which she expresses them.
In August 2005, she called for a ban on Muslim headscarves in public
schools, and last year she told a federal Young Liberal convention
that burning or violating the Australian flag should be made a federal offence.

She is also well-known as a strident anti-drugs campaigner. Whether
that background makes her ideally suited to chair a 10-member House
of Representatives Committee looking at the impact of illicit
drug-use on families is open to debate, but such is the
uncompromising nature of the committee's report that it would be easy
to conclude that Bishop dominated proceedings even though the three
Labor MPs wrote a dissenting report.

Among the most controversial of the recommendations is that the
infant children of illicit drug-users be put up for adoption, that
Centrelink direct drug-using parents to spend their welfare payments
only on food and essentials, and that what are disparagingly called
"drug industry elites" that is, treatment services, counsellors and
research organisations should only receive taxpayer funding if they
abandon the philosophy of harm minimisation in favour of zero tolerance.

In short, the committee wants the focus of the National Drug Strategy
shifted away from harm minimisation to harm prevention and given the
specific aim of ensuring that illicit drug-users achieve permanent
drug-free status. The best way to wean opioid users off drugs
completely, it says, is to make abstinence-based treatments the norm,
and it recommends this be given effect by adding Naltrexone (an
opioid-antagonist medication) to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Notwithstanding the overtones of social engineering one of the
recommendations is that contraception and family planning be
integrated in the treatment of drug-using women of child-bearing age
the approach of the committee shares many of the underpinnings of the
other social policies implemented by the Coalition. Indeed its focus
on protecting infants and children from the neglect of drug-addicted
parents evokes the Government's recent decision to fight child sexual
abuse in remote indigenous communities in the Northern Territory by
intervening directly in the administration of those settlements.

During its deliberations, the House of Representatives committee
heard similarly harrowing stories of the accidental death and
ill-treatment of children whose parents were drug-users, and while
forcing parents to give up custody of their children might seem like
a justifiable response to such neglect, there are many people who
fear that implementing such a regime will only discourage parents
from seeking treatment.

Many experts who made submissions or were called before the committee
are unhappy with its methods and findings.

Indeed, they have suggested the hostility shown toward those who
argue for the continuation of harm minimisation strategies indicates
the majority of committee members were far from open-minded about
different drug treatment methods, or were simply determined to
deliver findings in tune with the Federal Government's "tough on
drugs" approach.

The debate about whether prohibition and tougher law enforcement,
allied with strategies to force people to become drug free, is more
effective at alleviating the harmful effects and myriad costs of
illicit drug-use than harm minimisation is far from settled, of
course, even if prohibitionists point to the current heroin drought
as proof that being tough on drugs works.

Similar controversy rages about whether substitution treatments,
specifically those involving methadone or Buprenorphine to tread
opioid dependence are better or worse than opioid-antagonist
medications like Naltrexone. The evidence is that both appear to be
useful in different circumstances. Opioid substitutes are generally
credited with reducing overdose deaths, preventing HIV and reducing
criminal behaviour.

The downside is that they create dependence in the user, preventing,
or complicating a complete break from drug use.

Given the widely differing needs and circumstance of drug-users, it
should be self-evident that the prospects of rehabilitation are
greatly enhanced by retaining all treatment options, regardless of
whether they conform to particular policies or prejudices. In fact,
despite Prime Minister John Howard's advocacy for zero tolerance and
harm minimisation, Australia maintains a largely pragmatic,
outcomes-oriented approach to illicit drugs policy and one based on
all the available expert evidence.

It is to be hoped that Bishop's demand for a rethink on drug
rehabilitation is recognised for what it is an unreasonably harsh and
punitive approach that is more likely to drive drug-users underground
than to Naltrexone clinics and that the minister for Families and
Community Services, Mal Brough, gives it the response it deserves.