Pubdate: Thu, 29 Aug 1999 Source: Australian, The (Australia) Copyright: News Limited 1999 Contact: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/ Author: Alex Wodak Note: Dr Alex Wodak is president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, and, as director of alcohol and drug service at St Vincent's Hospital, will play a key supervisory role in the injecting room trial. CARR WARILY GETS IT RIGHT ON DRUGS Thinking Outside The Square JOHN Enrlichman, the notorious Watergate conspirator, is credited with originating the “war against drugs” in 1971 to ensure president Richard Nixon's reelection. Ehrlichman was one of the first to realise that “narcotics suppression is a very sexy political issue”. But he was also aware that “the people in the federal government [are] just kidding themselves and kidding the people... when they know darned well that the massive war they have mounted against narcotics is only going to be effective at the margins”. Slowly but surely, the costly and ineffective response to illicit drugs based on law enforcement is starting to crumble. What was once a "sexy political issue" is rapidly becoming a political liability. NSW Premier Bob Carr has acknowledged the widespread perception that current approaches to illicit drugs have failed. This is an indispensable beginning to any serious attempt to achieve better outcomes. But Carr failed to acknowledge the magnitude of the policy failure. Failure on such a scale in the corporate world would have resulted long ago in the dismissal of all senior executives. While Commonwealth and State governments have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on Customs, police, courts and prisons, there has been a staggering increase in deaths, crime and corruption in recent decades. National drug overdose deaths increased 55-fold between 1964 anf 1997, and NSW currently accounts for almost half those deaths. There is much to admire in the decisions announced this week. The package canvasses a broad range of areas. Some of the ideas, especially the novel emphasis on early intervention for problem families, show evidence of welcome thinking "outside the square". Funding for treatment has been boosted substantially (although details are not yet available). It is self-evident that the package is based on a prodigious amount of work by officials since the Drug Summit. With three years and eight months to the next State poll, government support at all-time high and an all but invisible Opposition, the NSW Government has taken some bold decisions - but with astonishing trepidation. The proposed cannabis reforms, for example, are extraordinarily modest. Smoking cannabis became popular among young people in the 1970s. The demographic equivalent of bracket creep means that voters who have tried cannabis form a majority of an ever-increasing number of age brackets. CARR has emphasised repeatedly a fear that new and well-intended innovative responses may make already dreadful matters worse. Yet no such fear is evident when the Government reaches for the "tough on drugs" rhetoric and policies. Well-meaning efforts to control drug supplies have all too often not only squandered scarce resources but produced counterproductive outcomes. Under the influence of "tough crackdowns", drug markets have been displaced to new neighbourhoods and less harmful drugs have been replaced by more harmful ones. Increased spending on sniffer dogs and urine tests in prisons means heroin injecting will increasingly replace more readily detectable smoking of cannabis. The inadvertent encouragement of injecting in prison is a serious public health conern. The proposed trial of an injecting room in Kings Cross, to be conducted by the Sisters of Charity, had attracted more publicity than any other recommendation. It is important to remember that this recommendation came from a royal commission into police corruption, was supported by compelling arguments in a parliamentary inquiry (though not by a majority of the committee) and was also supported by a majority of participants in the Drug Summit. The argument that this "sends a wrong signal" to our young people preposterously reduces an important policy debate to semaphore signals. John Howard now clearly intends to remain irrevocably "part of the road". Carr's cautious change in direction means that NSW joins Victoria and the ACT as "part of the steamroller". Howard's only important allies from now on will be Queensland, where the Government's options are limited by a parliamentary majority of one, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Carr's greatest contribution to the debate has been to emphasise that our future lies in better management of a difficult problem rather than chasing after fantasies such as zero tolerance. - --- MAP posted-by: Don Beck