Comment by Ruth Birgin
Why, in the present Australian federal and state governments, is there not one vocal politician with enough backbone to tackle the "drug problem", not as a legal, but as a socio-medical issue?
The overwhelming majority of the "problems" associated with drug use — particularly injecting drug use — are directly connected to the context of prohibition. The cost has been absurdly great; prohibition leads to increased transmission of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis among users and their partners and children; it allows corruption to flourish; it debases every Australian citizen's right to personal privacy; it means jail where up to 80% of the inmates are criminals only because of drugs. Is this not too expensive?
On a grander scale, international policy regarding drugs allows powerful nations, especially the US, to intimidate and manipulate less affluent nations. For example, in Pakistan (where opium use has long been a tradition) US aid is withheld pending the filling of a certain quota of convictions and punishments of drug dealers, smugglers and users in Pakistan.
Through drugs, in this era of prohibition, enormous sums of money pass through the hands of international organised crime, high level police, customs officials and big business. Some is thought to partly fund the CIA. In the name of drugs, many wait on death row.
So many people seem prepared to swallow false logic based on the bizarre premise that some people require "protection from themselves". What nonsense — but many people are left with the vague impression that drug use has always been bad and a problem.
In fact, before active prohibition, many people used drugs, including opiates, for a variety of reasons without the attached alleged "problems". At worst, in some societies, it was regarded as a sort of weakness, in the same way that some people now regard alcohol use. How easily a government committed to justice could educate the public in the truth about drugs!
The comparison with alcohol, a legal drug, is an interesting one. Alcohol is known to be bad for the body, especially liver, heart and brain. Opium and heroin, in contrast, are of minimal impact on the health status of the user, and are unlikely to cause premature death provided the dosage is identified (most overdoses are accidental).
If all this were not enough to convince any thinking politician of the urgent need to rethink the prohibition policy, we have well-documented evidence of the glaring failure of prohibition with alcohol in the US in the 1920-30s. Despite the massive "drug war" and our own "drug offensive", it is possible to score whatever a user wants in any Australian city.
"Apart from using drugs, I've never committed a crime in my life. Since I finished uni, I've been lucky enough to secure a series of challenging jobs, all of which I've performed well, and most of the time I have been using heroin. When I told my family and friends, the results were, frankly, traumatic. I try to be philosophical and persuade myself that it was a positive event in that I got to see who my real comrades and kin are. Nonetheless, it really hurt to see some people who I'd previously been close to suddenly regard me as some invalidated shadow of my former self; total waste of energy to attempt to explain anything to them. This is the classic 'knee jerk, don't think or learn' reaction, as actively fostered and effectively promoted by the media." — Comments from an injecting drug user in Darwin.
Laws and legislative policies are meant, are they not, to protect the interests and well-being of the community? On a number of fronts, prohibition offends the basic tenets of law.
Most Australian states and territories have recognised the need for peer education as a means of facilitating injecting drug users' (ID) response to HIV/AIDS. The Northern Territory too has a user group, the Territory Users Forum. It is remarkable that this group exists at all, given that it has no funding and is operating in such an adverse political climate. Its continued, if struggling, existence reflects the level of indignation felt by many ID over the discrimination and neglect they experience.
Methadone is one of an array of options which must be considered a minimum provision in the face of opiate prohibition. There are no methadone programs in the Northern Territory (the only part of Australia where it is not available), and furthermore, legislation specifically prohibits its prescription to people who are dependent on opiates. If you feel moved to protest about this, please write to Mike Reed, NT Minister for Health, NT House, GPO Box 4546, Darwin NT 0801.
We need to implement urgently a national drug policy of acceptance and real harm minimisation. Wherever these have been tried, the results have been consistently positive. What justification for persistence with a policy of prohibition can possibly warrant so many needless deaths and such a compromise of human rights? This murderous war cannot be maintained forever; the casualties are already too great. In the future, this era of prohibition will be regarded as the darkest folly. Enough is enough.