Drugs: high time for decriminalisation
By Simon Frew
Last week, the establishment media in Sydney went into a frenzy after the Sun Herald printed a photo of a 16-year-old boy (initially described by the media as 12 years old) shooting up heroin. The needle exchange where the boy got the syringe was promptly shut down by the state Labor government.
The closure makes it harder for local addicts to use clean syringes and thus means they face a massively increased risk of contracting HIV or hepatitis C.
According to the results of a schools drugs survey released by the NSW government on February 1, more than half of the population has used illegal drugs by the age of 18. Marijuana is the most commonly used (56%), but one in 20 male high school students has tried heroin or cocaine, and 3% of 12-year-old boys have tried heroin, cocaine or amphetamines at least once.
Prohibition has failed to stop people using drugs. The government needs to look at why young people take drugs rather then victimising them.
Even a brief look at the situation young people face today — high youth unemployment rates, low-wage jobs, less access to education, less to do because of poverty, police harassment, alienation, victimisation — reveals why they use drugs to escape reality.
There are alternatives to forcing the drug trade underground and thereby creating unnecessary dangers to users' health and wellbeing. Where marijuana use has been decriminalised or is tolerated by state authorities and publicly available (such as in Holland), studies record a decline in both marijuana use and heroin addiction among young people.
If drug addiction was treated as a medical condition rather than a crime, and drugs were available over the counter, the black market in drugs would be broken and addicts would not be forced to pay huge prices for drugs. This would significantly reduce the costs associated with the property crimes addicts are forced to commit in order to pay for their habit.
Decriminalisation of drugs would also end the corruption associated with the drug trade. In Queensland, it has been estimated that marijuana is the second largest cash crop, after sugar; that means some people are making an enormous amount of money out of this drug. Prohibition ensures that the big crime bosses and the crooked cops they bribe rake in massive profits, while small-time users are busted and fined.
The decriminalisation of drugs, coupled with an extensive drug education program based on medical facts rather than "moral" hysteria, would not only make the drugs on the market safer for recreational users and addicts, but also reduce the abuse of drugs and users.