Senior police and prison officers stand side-by-side with drug
users to
Media release
Embargoed until 00:01 on March 20,
2017
Senior police and prison officers are today standing
side-by-side with drug users calling for law reform, to bring an end to killing
and criminalising young Australians.
Drug-related deaths, diseases, injuries, crimes and
social costs continue to rise despite more than 80,000 consumer arrests in
Australia each year.
So now four former Police Commissioners and Assistant
Commissioners, two former heads of Corrective Services, a former Supreme Court
Judge and a former Director of Public Prosecutions have made history, putting
their names to a report that says it is time for decriminalisation.
‘Can Australia respond to drugs more
effectively and safely?’ is being launched by Jeff Kennett, founder of BeyondBlue and former Liberal
Premier of Victoria, and Bob Carr, former Labor Minister for Foreign Affairs and former Premier of New
South Wales.
This remarkable Australia21 report does something that has never been
done before: it tables solutions backed by the very people who were enforcing
drug laws until recently.
It comes out of an unprecedented Roundtable convened
by Mick Palmer, who has served as Commissioner of both the
Australian Federal Police and Northern Territory Police.
“What we now have is badly broken, ineffective and
even counterproductive to the harm minimisation aims of Australia’s
national illicit drugs policy,” said Mr Palmer.
“We must be courageous enough to consider a new and
different approach.”
Drug users and their families have welcomed the
stand.
“If I had been given support instead of being jailed
I would have spent 20 years as a productive member of the community instead of
succumbing to my heroin habit that repeatedly ended me up in prison,” said Kat
Armstrong, who has finally gone straight, cleaned up and founded the Women’s
Justice Network to support other offenders trying to do the same.
“I don’t want more kids or anyone to die, or to ruin their
lives like I did – we must intervene and help them now, before it’s too late,”
she said. “I know, because I lived it.”
‘Can Australia respond to drugs more effectively and
safely?’ recognises
the weight of evidence from Australia and overseas that proves policing is
singularly unsuccessful in reducing harms or changing drug use habits.
“The
threshold step is to redefine drugs as primarily a health and social issue
rather than one of criminal justice,” said Dr Alex Wodak, Director of the
Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney from 1982 to 2012 and
current President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation.
The
Australia21 report makes 13 key recommendations, aimed at:
- minimising harms for drug users and those around them,
- reducing the use of untested, unregulated drugs in unsafe environments,
- providing health and social programs to reduce drug-related problems,
- reducing and even eliminating criminal control of the drug market,
- reducing the prison population and its associated progress to hard drug use,
- supporting police and the judicial system to focus law enforcement more usefully.
The
Australia21 report calls for
an approach that distinguishes between high-end production and trafficking on
the one hand, and personal use and possession on the other.
It does not recommend open-slather legalisation of
all drugs; instead, it supports incremental, robustly evaluated steps towards a
national policy of decriminalisation, standardising the discretionary approach
to personal use and possession of cannabis and other substances that is already
being adopted by front line law enforcers at the State and Territory level.
Advertising
of any legalised and regulated drugs would not be permitted and some harder substances
would require stringent controls, such as prescription by a doctor.
Recognition of the disconnect between harm
minimisation and arrests for use or possession has already led to
decriminalisation in many countries, including the USA (11 states),
Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Belgium,
Italy, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ecuador, Armenia, India, Brazil,
Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico,
Paraguay, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Jamaica.
The
Australia21 recommendations have not been made lightly. They have been
carefully considered after rigorous debate among the diverse group of
Roundtable participants and it has taken more than a year to reach consensus on
the details and sign off the text.
‘Can Australia respond to drugs more
effectively and safely?’ is the third in a series of Australia21 reports
examining drug law reform. The others are:
This
latest report is being launched at 10:45am Monday 20th March, in the
Jubilee Room at NSW Parliament House.
YouTube link to social video: https://youtu.be/cXrpNoXbQNE
For
further information:
Executive
Officer Anne Quinn: 02 62880823 anne.quinn@australia21.org.au
‘Can Australia respond to drugs more effectively and safely?’
Summary of Recommendations
1.
The
overriding objective of Australia’s national policy on drugs should be the minimisation of harm
to users and those around them.
2.
The
policy should include substantially reducing the size of (or eliminating) the
criminal supply, by incrementally moving psychoactive drugs from the black
market.
3.
More
proportionate funding should be directed into harm minimisation and away from ineffective
drug law enforcement.
4.
It
should be recognised that criminal and antisocial behaviour resulting from drug
use is largely a result of the high costs of maintaining a drug habit and only
in some cases the specific effect of the drug.
5.
Users
should be able to submit drugs for testing in a controlled environment to
prevent avoidable deaths and overdoses.
6.
Current
practices to test drivers for the presence of psychoactive substances should be
to ascertain whether the driver is unsafe or unfit to drive, especially as new
laws governing use of medicinal cannabis come into effect.
7.
Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs) that include arrest rates for use and possession of
psychoactive substances should be considered only partial measures of ‘success’,
unless they also include harm
reduction measures.
8.
Savings
made from cutting back unproductive law enforcement activities
should be
re-allocated within law enforcement to areas of greater benefit to the
community.
9.
Opioid
Substitution Treatment (OST), including methadone and buprenorphine, should be
available for all heroin-dependent prisoners, sentenced and remanded, and
should continue to be available following release at reduced cost.
10. The potential for an expanded OST service
to substantially reduce the Australian prison population and associated costs
should be explored by state and federal taskforces and warrants serious
attention by the Australian Productivity Commission and the Australian Law
Reform Commission.
11. In view of the long and successful
operation of the medically supervised injecting centre in Sydney, serious
consideration should be given to the establishment of controlled drug
consumption rooms in other parts of Australia.
12. Australian authorities should review the effectiveness
of the 2013 New Zealand Psychoactive Substances Act.
13. Two pilot projects to trial and evaluate
the health and social programs recommended in this report should be conducted —
one in a remote disadvantaged community and another in an urban community with
substantial social and drug related problems.
‘Can Australia respond to drugs more effectively and
safely?’
Roundtable participants
Mr Bill
Bush
International Lawyer and Drug Law
Reform Advocate
Mr Nicholas
Cowdery AM
Director of Public Prosecutions NSW
1994–2011
Mr Keith
Hamburger AM
Former Director General Qld
Corrective Services Commission
Superintendent
(Ret’d) Frank Hansen APM
Former NSW Police Force
Dr Stephen
Jiggins AM
Professional Communicator
Mr Jack
Johnston
Former Commissioner of Tasmania
Police
Professor
Desmond Manderson
Social Historian Australian National
University
Mr Denis
McDermott AM APM SIM
Assistant Commissioner Australian
Federal Police
Mr Ken
Moroney AO APM
Commissioner NSW Police Force
1965–2007
Dr Anne
Marie Martin
Assistant Commissioner Offender
Management and Policy Corrective Services NSW
Ms Vivienne
Moxham-Hall
Secretary Australian Drug Reform
Foundation
Mr Matt
Noffs
CEO of the Noffs Foundation
Mr Mick
Palmer AO APM
Vice President Australia21 and
former Commissioner Australian Federal Police and Northern Territory Police
Professor
Alison Ritter
UNSW and former President
International Society for the Study of Drug Policy
Ret’d
Justice Hal Sperling
Former Judge of the NSW Supreme
Court and member of NSW Law Reform Commission
Mr Gino
Vumbaca
Former National Director of the
Australian National Council on Drugs
Dr Alex
Wodak AM
Director Australia21 and President
of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation
The Roundtable was held under
Chatham House rules, allowing comments to be recorded but without
identification of the individuals who made them.
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