SEIZE RECREATIONAL DRUGS AND USERS GO ON THE HARD STUFF - BOOZE

Working out why youth are into ecstasy would do society more good than
reducing supply, writes Ryan Heath.

The most significant effects of the recent seizure of 750,000 ecstasy pills
in south-west Sydney will not be saved lives or a smashed drug ring. It
will be reduced retail spending, and increased hospital admissions and road
deaths.

Retail spending will be affected as ecstasy prices rise and soak up the
disposable income of the young and fun. Alcohol-related hospital admissions
(already 72,000 a year) and road deaths (31 per cent alcohol-related) will
rise as injuries inflicted on the self, sexual partners and innocent
bystanders increase because recreational drug users resort to binge drinking.

Reducing supply is a costly and ineffective way to deal with recreational
drug use. The Tough on Drugs strategy launched by the Prime Minister, John
Howard, in 1997 hands millions of public money to Christian groups and
private charities to impose values, not solutions, on drug problems.

Most of these organisations have been too busy trying to rescue
recreational drug users from themselves to address binge drinking or ask
the one question that might have saved them a lot of trouble. Other less
dedicated anti-drugs campaigners would probably have bothered to ask young
people why, not just if, they take illegal drugs.

One of the fundamental reasons is that drugs make people feel better. Leave
ideology and parenting guide books at the door, step into the bedrooms of
the young people who swallow, snort and inject illegal drugs and you'll see
the example of ecstasy users who do it because it makes them feel happy, on
top of the world, and as though they can engage with strangers.

One would expect these feelings to be commonplace in our liberal democracy.
They're not. And things are likely to get worse as Sydneysiders are whipped
into a state of fear that sees us more likely to suspect a stranger of
terrorist intentions than say hello to them in the street.

Strategies to convince young people they are going to drop dead from taking
ecstasy also fall on deaf ears. Enough young people have taken ecstasy and
lived to know that the scare campaigns are over-hyped. As the former police
commissioner, Peter Ryan, famously admitted one New Year's Eve: even the
police are grateful for ecstasy use because happy people are far less
likely to engage in violent acts and disrupt crowds.

The "war on drugs" combatants find it suits them best to blame single
parents and a culture of loose morals - what the Centre for Independent
Studies calls behavioural poverty. If behavioural poverty really is to
blame for illegal drug use then Sydney's comfortable middle classes rank
poorest. It is common knowledge that the city's private school students and
middle-class young professionals are major recreational drug users. Indeed,
small-time drug dealers who service their friends are more likely to travel
to a North Shore school playground than Cabramatta to close a deal.

North Shore parents have nothing to feel guilty about, however. It is a
hypocritical and nonsensical drug law regime that is the problem. The
damage done by occasional illegal drug use (the bulk of users take drugs
only once a year) is surely less than a tax system which taxes low-alcohol
beer at five times the rate of cask wine.

A government which claims to be tough on drugs, while effectively
subsidising teenage binge drinking and the road deaths and sexual assaults
it causes, lacks credibility.

One can also only wonder how many lungs would be saved if quit smoking and
other education campaigns were funded as well as anti-drug programs.

As we wait for news on the next sensational drug seizure, these questions
will have to go unanswered.