Prime Minister John Howard says he is listening. However, when it comes to the drug problem it seems that he is only listening to what he wants it to here. If there is a squawking pressure group which is threatening to cost the Coalition some votes then Mr Howard is happy to throw some money at them to shore up his electoral support. However, if there is a really difficult policy decision which requires courage and leadership he turns a deaf ear.
Last week the head of the National Crime Authority, Gary Crooke, said governments should consider treating heroin addiction as a medical problem and should consider supplying heroin from a government-controlled repository to registered addicts. Mr Crooke cited damning statistics about heroin in Australia under prohibitionist policies. In the mid-1980s there were an estimated 34,000 heroin addicts consuming about three tonnes a year of heroin. Now, an estimated 74,000 people were addicted to the drug and they were using about at 6.7 tonnes of heroin a year. Authorities had seized just 734 kilograms of heroin in the past year, less than 12 per cent of the amount being used. The number of heroin users was up from an estimated 0.4 per cent of the adult population in 1995 to 0.7 per cent in 1998 and overdose deaths had gone from 302 in 1989 to 958 in 1999.
Mr Crooke came to the obvious conclusion that present policies are not working.
Mr Cooke could have gone further and said that present policies actually contributing to the heroin problem because prohibition is creating a black market that caused pushers to induce other people to take heroin in order to turn them into hooked customers who could help provide money to help feed the original pusher’s habit.
Mr Crooke is at the very coalface of fighting the scourge of drugs in Australia. He has first-hand knowledge of the illegal trade and of the crime which supports it. It was therefore dispiriting to see the Prime Minister in less than a few hours reject what Mr Crooke had to say and thump the prohibitionist drum again. Surely, the Prime Minister should have listened to a person with such high credentials.
Mr Crooke is not a lone voice. Several state directors of public prosecutions, several heads of state police forces and the Australian Medical Association have all urged a change of approach. They have a urged in varying degrees that the problem be treated as a medical one rather than a law-enforcement one. They have urged that treatment of addicts be dealt with in a range of ways other than locking them up or stupidly a urging them just to say no when it the medical attributes of addiction make such an approach fruitless.
Mr Howard made it plain in Parliament this week that he was utterly opposed to a trial of giving heroin on prescription to registered addicts or providing a safe injecting rooms for them.
While prohibition of policies continue it is inevitable that the number of people seeking to feed their habit will increase. As that happens more people will be adversely affected with family members or friends succumbing to addiction and possible overdose death or injury or their property will stolen by people desperate to feed their habit.
Mr Howard says that so long as he is Prime Minister there will never be a heroin trial in Australia. If that is the case increasing it crime and addiction rates will be the mark of his prime ministership and it will take another leader to make inroads into this dreadful scourge.