The results of the Canberra Times-Datacol poll reveal that the community is sharply divided on the questions of issuing heroin to addicts under medical supervision and on the trial of a safe injecting room for heroin users.
Originally, the ACT Government proposed to run a referendum on these very questions, but the proposal was abandoned. The proposal was flawed because government by referendum defeats the purpose of representative government. People elect a legislature which legislates and provides and executive government to govern. Referendums are a good device to settle big constitutional issues about the form and structure of government to apply in the future, but not to issues that arise from time to time. A referendum can destroy the flexibility that governments need to deal with complex issues. It can also lock a government into imposing the public’s mind-set at a particular time, rather than leading public opinion so that it ultimately changes for the better.
That is not to say that governments should not seek out public opinion and be responsive to it. But they should not be slaves to it. Members of legislatures – dealing with these issues full-time — often have broader knowledge and greater understanding than many referendum voters.
The opinion poll result indicates 48 percent support the injecting room with 47 against and 46 per cent the provision of heroin with 47 against. There were 5 and 6 per cent undecided. Females, the young and Labor and independent-minor voters were more in favour than males, the old and Liberal voters.
It is perhaps surprising that the result is so close and even more surprising that so few people are undecided or do not know. Indeed, people appear to have a more decisive view about the heroin issue than who they should vote for at the election.
The closeness of the poll indicates that putting off the referendum was probably the best result. It indicates there would have been a tiny “”win” for one side or the other which might have frozen government attitudes and resulted in paralysis.
The result also indicates a slowly changing attitude away from prohibition towards harm minimisation. It indicates that a growing number of people are becoming aware that prohibition is not working and that, indeed, it is making the problem worse as addicts coax others on to drugs to finance their own habit and is causing increasing drug related property crime.
Whether the change in attitude arises from compassion to help addicts and to reduce harm to them or out of sheer the pragmatism of people wanting to avoid becoming a victim of drug-related crime is open to question. But either way it indicates that more people are open to dealing with the drug problem in new ways because the war on drugs is not working.
The critical question is whether governments want to show some leadership or will they wait until public pressure for reform costs more votes than staying with the failed war on drugs.
It is obvious that under the present Prime Minister there can be no change, but Prime Ministers come and go.
If private polling by the Act Liberal Party had a similar result as the Canberra Times-Datacol poll it would have been a reason for timorous MLAs to back away from the referendum because they might have been faced with a Yes vote and an imperative to do something. But it should not take a referendum to address a major public health issue in an effective way.