Shouts from the desert

It now seems that both of the major parties are determined to trot out their attacks on the Greens drug policy every election. Today Barry O'Farrell, the deputy leader of the opposition in New South Wales, has told the ALP to drop their preference deal with the Greens because Iemma ought to:

stand up for himself, for his party, for families and for people who are against drugs in society...

The implication is that the Greens policy is pro-drugs, but that is simply not true. The Greens policy is about taking a new approach to combatting the problem &emdash; it is as much about eliminating drugs as any other policy.

Even with my own liberal beliefs I am strongly opposed to drugs since drugs of addiction deprive people of the capacity to make decisions for themselves. I do not have to claim not to have inhaled because I have never even touched a joint. Not only have I managed to go without illegal drugs - I have never even touched a cigarette or cigarette pack. People have asked me to pass their drugs or cigarettes to them in the past and I have refused to do so. I think addictive drugs are a scourge on society that needs to be eliminated.

The problem is that making it illegal for all participants has not done much to stamp out the drug problem, and drug prohibition has been the policy for over 70 years. That is a long time to stick to a policy that has not worked.

The real dishonesty in the major parties' description of the Greens policy as pro-drugs is that most of them will have discussed these kinds of policies with others and that many in their number agree with them. They will not admit to this of course &emdash; it is better to go with the flow if you want to preserve your political career. It is better to lie and attack a policy you know to be good if supporting it will open you up to being described as pro drugs.

Experts in the field of addiction are generally highly supportive of the Greens approach as the best method of reducing drug use. Yes, I do mean that &emdash; decriminalisation along the lines of the Greens policy can actually reduce the use of illegal drugs in the community. No doubt most readers will be asking why that is so.

There are two core problems with absolute prohibition. The first is that by criminalising both sides of the transaction you eliminate the witnesses you need to get the crime reported. The buyer cannot report the crime because they can be convicted. If the buyer's act is not criminal then for the seller each individual customer is potentially somebody who will report the crime and act as a witness against the seller. This dramatically increases their risk of being caught &emdash; in terms of the effect on disincentive it is equivalent to increasing the penalty for selling by more than a factor of ten.

The second problem is that criminalisation forces the addicted person to go to the criminal to get their supply. It actually creates the market it seeks to suppress. We should be seeking to eradicate the market &emdash; to take away the supply of profitable customers so that there is not enough money in the transaction to make it worthwhile to be a drug pusher.

I want to eliminate trade in drugs of addiction. Despite all the rhetoric from the major parties, prohibition is not doing that and will never, ever do that.

Decriminalisation of drug use is one element of a comprehensive approach to dramatically reducing and potentially eliminating the supply of drugs in society. In brief the overall plan is as follows:

1. Selling the drugs should remain illegal;
2. Buying the drugs for personal use should be decriminalised. When addicts are identified (and it is trivial for medical professionals to test if somebody is an addict) they should be given medical assistance, including drugs administered in a controlled environment where this is necessary to deal with the addiction;
3. Because the addict is getting the supply elsewhere, they will not go back to the pusher and the pusher loses their captive customer, and so there is less profit in it.

Pushers cannot get the kinds of prices they need to make the risk worthwhile by selling solely to people who are not already addicted. If you reduce their profits by taking the addicts away from them, and increase the risk by turning all their customers into potential informants, you can make a real difference.

You may say that sounds nice in theory, but that it would never work in practice. You would be wrong &emdash; this approach has been tried in Switzerland and has actually worked. In the face of empirical evidence showing a comprehensive approach that includes decriminalisation of use can work, the only reason to oppose such a policy is paranoia &emdash; perhaps, given recently publicised cases in New South Wales, that paranoia comes from politicians who have been smoking too much dope.