'SOFT TURN' WON'T WORK

Damien Loveland (Courageous drug move, Letters, 27/7) extols the virtues of
the WA Police Service entering a partnership with the WA Alcohol and Drug
Office to divert illicit drug users for counselling to an already grossly
limited, over-taxed, systemically failed health system.

The Coalition Against Drugs (WA) believes it is vital to unravel the
background of lawlessness in our cities and towns linked to the
non-disclosure of horrendous results of police harm-minimisation strategies
that have become written-in-stone policy. Now there are plans for an even
broader concept of the police service catering for drug addicts.

The Clayton's "leak" by Wendy Pryer (Secret soft turn on hard drugs, 26/7)
defies logic that police, who should be the cornerstone of law enforcement,
plan to evade accountability when dealing with so-called "recreational"
drug users in possession of half a gram of heroin or amphetamine, or two
tablets of ecstasy. Added to this inexplicable and unworkable "public
health" partnership is the Federally funded government and police cover-up
backdated to 2000.

In the context of partisan planning for the Government's 2001 WA Drug
Summit, it is obvious with the benefit of this new information that the
then police commissioner, Barry Matthews, declined to divulge police and
Council of Australian Government (COAG) plans for widespread ingesting or
injecting and dealing of street drugs. The summit revealed a high profile
of police support for the Cannabis Control Bill on the grounds that police
diversion of cannabis could lead to accusations of police corruption. Can't
the same be said for narcotics and amphetamines?

The WA Police Service should forget attempting to rate highly in the reform
popularity stakes or ingratiating itself to the ever-suffering addicts who
are all, without exception, afflicted with a victim mentality. The police
are also usurping the role of the WA Drug Court by hedging their bets on
the hypothesis that police drug diversion is a cost-saving police strategy.

Geraldine Mullins, spokesperson for the Coalition Against Drugs (WA), West
Perth.