Subject: Re: Drug users are getting younger: why?
Date: 11 Sep 1997
From: (Andrew Bromage)
G’day.
* Rowland Croucher <> writes:
* Heroin use in Australia has reached epidemic proportions with more than 600 deaths recorded in 1996 and the age of first-time users falling to 16, according to a top drug research center at the University of New South Wales. The National Drug and Alcohol Research Center said there were 620 heroin-related deaths in Australia in 1996 compared with 79 in 1979. A survey of 800 heroin users found the average age of first-time users had fallen to 16 from 21 in the 1970s, but the average overdose victim was an unemployed man in his 30s. See story at http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=4855768-bc9
I went to a talk by Prof David Pennington (who is a fellow of the college at which I tutor — he’s a lovely gentleman, BTW) who headed the Victorian State Government’s Drug Advisory Council.
The media focussed on only one aspect of their report, namely the decriminalisation of marijuana in small quantities for personal use and allowing everyone to grow five plants to supply this personal use. At the time I thought it was an incredibly bad idea. Now I’m not so sure.
Their proposal was a very broad one, and as far as heroin goes can basically be summarised thusly:
To stop heroin-related deaths you can’t just attack the supply. You have to remove the demand. Attacking the demand has to occur on several fronts:
– Believable education. Standing up in front of a class and saying “drugs are evil and you shouldn’t touch them” is not believable. Neither is “marijuana can kill you”, since people try it and don’t die. Education for school-age people has to come from people they know (ie their teachers) and present actual facts, not speculation.
– Encouraging communication within families. Many parents whose children die of heroin say, “I never thought for a moment that my child would use drugs!” Well, if families can’t discuss controversial topics openly, that’s exactly what will happen: you won’t know and won’t think about the possibility.
– Dealing with how people get _on_ to heroin.
The answer to that last point is that people get onto heroin via marijuana. If you can remove the illegal supply of marijuana, you have lost the way that people get onto heroin. Hence the proposals about decriminalisation of small quantities.
Now I realise that I didn’t do Prof. Pennington’s argument justice here. He’s obviously an expert in this area and I am not. But I found his arguments extremely well thought-out and quite compelling. It certainly made a change from hearing it second-hand through the Australian media.
Cheers,
Andrew Bromage
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