Greg Denham: Our illicit-drugs policies aren’t working – we need new ones

The focus of strategies to reduce drug abuse needs to be on saving lives.

Read the original article in The Age

I had the pleasure of attending the Rainbow Serpent music festival near Ballarat last weekend. I was invited by the organisers to speak to the audience about the need for drug law reform. I am passionate about this topic, despite 25 years of policing experience, seeing the worst outcomes of drug use.

There has been a lot of coverage in the media about music festivals over the past few weeks, much of which was negative and focused on an isolated yet tragic incident that occurred last year.

There were more than 17,000 people at Rainbow Serpent, most of whom were there to have a safe and enjoyable weekend. There were few reports of violence. Imagine if there had been as many people at a similar event drinking alcohol?

On my way up to the festival, as I was driving along, I couldn’t help but notice the occasional clump of flowers sitting against guide posts; sad memorials to lives lost from road accidents. It occurred to me that as a society we put every effort into reducing the risk to those using our roads. When I first started driving, campaigns such as “declare war on 1034” helped lead to a massive reduction in the road toll. However, we didn’t just rely on campaign slogans. We took a broad-ranging policy approach to make our roads safer.

We introduced compulsory seatbelts, airbags, new braking systems and other safety devices in vehicles. Roads were better designed and engineered to reduce the likelihood of accidents. Driver education became far more comprehensive and, of course, the culture of drink-driving, once “acceptable”, was completely turned around.
We haven’t finished yet. We still lose more than 250 people on average each year on our roads, and every life is worth saving.

In most human endeavours we take a similar approach to reducing risk, even if the activity is potentially unsafe, such as swimming at the beach, mountain climbing, underwater diving, paragliding, skiing, and, my favourite pastime, mountain biking. Our aim is to reduce risk and prevent serious injury. We acknowledge that it is fun and people are going to do it anyway.

When it comes to drug use, however, our approach is almost the opposite. The death of a person from drug use is often used as confirmation that drugs are innately harmful, which they are not, giving policy makers ammunition to get tougher and feed the insatiable appetite for more law enforcement resources, wider invasive and coercive powers and harsher penalties.

Yet I wonder if anyone has asked the friends and families of those who have died from drug use what approach they believe would work best?

Life-saving measures do exist, and they are supported by science. Supervised injecting facilities, prescribing of heroin, needle and syringe programs in prisons, testing of pills at music and dance festivals and the provision of accurate information about how to use drugs safely are all proved to be effective. But they are often labelled ‘too radical’, deemed as undermining the anti-drug message and easily dismissed.

The anti-drug message is at the forefront of many who believe prohibition and the war on drugs will eventually succeed. It will not, despite continuing heavy investment in law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

Propaganda has never worked, and never will.

Propaganda relies on the receiver being uneducated and ignorant. Many people who use illicit drugs are neither, and there are a lot of them out there – about a third of the population has tried an illicit drug. So why continue with an approach that is not supported by evidence and has little impact on the target audience?

One can only assume that the death of a drug user gives those who champion the anti-drug message the moral high ground and absolves them of further responsibility. It’s an easy out.

Another person who spoke at Rainbow Serpent was Adriana Buccianti. She is one of many parents to experience the horror of their child dying needlessly from drug use, a preventable death. She is campaigning for more considered and humane drug policies to be adopted to help save lives. Her son Daniel died at the Rainbow Serpent festival four years ago and the anniversary of his death is today, January 29. I will be sharing Daniel’s story today when I participate in a round-table consultation convened by Greens leader Richard Di Natale, which aims to explore the best policy and legislative approaches to reduce illicit drug harms, and generate public debate to improve public policy on drugs. We can no longer treat drug users as collateral damage in the war on drugs.

New illicit drug polices are needed that are evidence-informed, comprehensive, supported by legislation and appropriately funded. They also need to prioritise saving lives, because every life is worth saving.

Greg Denham is a former member of Victoria Police and the executive officer of the Yarra Drug and Health Forum.