Darren R Middleton wrote: >

> “Richard Kerr” <> wrote in message

> .

> |

> | On the other hand it is abundantly clear to me that the current approach

> | of criminalising people because of their addictions only makes things

> | _worse_.

> | We need to do something else. We have had crackdowns and get-tough

> | schemes before, they don’t work.

>

> G’day Richard,

>

> How do you come to the conclusions that they don’t work?

The US prohibition against alcohol was a disaster and the War Against Drugs was a failure. Rates of consumption and abuse rose under both.

Our current response to the drug problem is simply not working. 100,000 Australians use heroin regularly and 200,000 use it occasionally. 600 of us died in 1997 because of overdoses.

That’d be how I define “not working”. What about you?

> What do you think a get tough policy seeks to achieve (surely harm

> minimisation)?

Get tough policies seek to stamp out drug use by force. They don’t work.

> IMO, we need to maintain the legal sanctions against illegal drug use, the

> message needs to be clear.

Decriminalising drug _use_ may have the effect of making it easier for addicts to get treatment and live mainstream (as opposed to criminal)

lives. I’m not sure that it would work here, but it’s might be worth a try, as I’ve said I think prescription of legally produced heroin may also be worth a look. At the very least it would force the price of the drugs, and hence the supplier’s profit margin down. Anything we can do to squeeze the supply side is a good thing.

> Moreover, we ought to increase the sanctions against those who push/supply

& > profit by the cultivation/production & sale of illegal drugs.

I agree 100% with this. Better detection and seizure of drug shipments has made more difference than anything else in the current situation and we ought to keep it up.

> However, anyone who has worked with addicts will know that even if you

could > get them off the drugs (and this is fairly easy to do) they will return to

> their addiction unless you address the underlying causes for why a 16 year

> old wants to take such a strong depressant (heroin).

Absolutely. Let’s all admit that the main game is dealing with the root cause. All this hysteria is about band aid solutions that we _have_ to take because our governments are unable to get a grip on how staunch demand.

> BTW, what evidence is there that such methods are successful, the data I

have > seen from Holland is that it increased the usage of drugs.

The first two matches from google for “medically supervised injecting rooms” are:

http://www.acon.org.au/about/policy/misc/drug/msir.htm http://www.adca.org.au/_private/DP2000/88_medically_supervised_injectin.htm

That’s the AIDS council of New South Wales and the Alcohol and other Drugs Council of Australia. They are both worth a read and the sites themselves have links to foreign studies.

The upshot: supervised injection rooms _always_ reduce deaths due to overdose and _always_ increase referrals for treatment. Whether or not they decrease the use of drugs overall is not clear to me, but on the strength of those two arguments alone I’d say we need a trial.

— Regards,

Richard Kerr