Most wars end. One of the longest in history, the Hundred Years War, finally ended in 1453. However, a war that has been fought internationally for nearly as long, the “war on drugs”, continues almost unabated, causing havoc and misery for many people in our community.
Winston Churchill once said: “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” Rarely do we look closely at the effectiveness of drug prohibition and the war on drugs.
A close analysis, however, shows that globally over the past four decades more than a $US 1 trillion has been spent on a strategy that has led to the incarceration of millions worldwide solely based on their drug choice, thousands have been put to death as a “deterrent” (including two Australians in Indonesia this year), families have been destroyed because of overdoses and HIV, young lives ruined because of a criminal record, law enforcement and public officials have been corrupted, and criminal gangs have reaped the rewards of a policy that has failed to curb demand. Yet illicit drugs are cheaper, and more available and accessible than ever before.
A good example of the failed war on drugs was the recent comment made by Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graeme Ashton, who highlighted the risks that powerful psychoactive stimulants “Turbo Ice”, may pose in the near future. There’s no doubt that the illicit drug market is constantly shifting and new drugs are a worry. However, the current alarm over the use of ice is not a new phenomenon. This is the third time in recent history that the drug has caused major concerns.
The shifting drug scene is a direct result of global market forces and prohibition. Once the “squeeze” is placed on a certain type of drug, another one takes its place. Imagine you are grabbing a balloon and squeezing it, the other side of the balloon pops out. This is the result of displacement.
There’s a strong demand for drugs in Australia. We are an affluent society and we like to enjoy ourselves. This may come as a shock to many people (except the third of the population who have used an illicit substance), but most people use illicit drugs because they enjoy them. Yes, drug use is “FUNctional” for many. It’s highly unlikely that drug use, even recreational use, will ever be eliminated. Nearly every society throughout history has used drugs. Drugs are here to stay.
Research shows that people who use illicit drugs want certain things from their drug of choice: they want to know exactly what it is that they are taking, they want it to be safe, they would rather use something that is legal and they don’t want to be stigmatised and discriminated against purely based on their drug choice. Yet the prohibition policy, in setting out to deter drug use, contradicts all of these and, in effect, leads to drugs becoming dangerous and deadly. It’s not drugs that are necessarily harmful, it’s drug policies.
We can no longer hide behind the scapegoating, stigma and discrimination of drug users to blatantly try to deter others from drug use when we know that prohibition is in itself counterproductive to drug safety. Statements such as “we can’t arrest our way out of this”, by retired Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Ken Lay, are encouraging, but very little is changing at the ground level. Drug crime statistics are still dominated by drug users and we continue to pursue net-widening laws such as those that target people at dance parties and drivers with historical drug use.
So, if prohibition has failed, what are the alternatives? In Portugal, where all drug use was decriminalised 15 years ago, the results are positive. Drug use there has declined and overdose and HIV rates among users has reduced significantly. Portugal shifted much of the resources it once directed towards policing and the criminal justice system to health, education and employment programs.
One of the only criticisms of the Portugal drug decriminalisation policy is that it did not go far enough. There is still an illicit drug market there because of the prohibition policy.
It’s time that Australian policymakers started to seriously look at what is happening overseas and reflect the global trend in drug policy reform. We can no longer turn our back on alternatives by using the excuse that things aren’t so bad here because we have the “balance right” – because we don’t. Scaling up harm reduction such as supervised injecting facilities, needle and syringe programs in prisons, heroin prescriptions and increasing access to treatment would be a good start.
However, unless we invest in alternatives to prohibition and look at a regulated and controlled system of accessing currently illicit drugs then we will continue to repeat the mistakes of the past. A system can be developed that allows access but tightly controls and regulates drug availability and eliminates the mistakes we have made with alcohol, especially the pricing, access, promotion and marketing of this harmful substance.
As Albert Einstein said: ”The definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.”
Greg Denham is a former member of Victoria Police and the Australian representative for the US-based Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.