An election eight months away is the most charitable explanation for the sudden change in emphasis on drug policy by Labor health spokesman Wayne Berry.
Hitherto, Labor, the Liberals, the Greens and one of the two independents had given support to a trial to provide heroin to registered addicts. True, they had done so with varying levels of qualification, but there was no concerted dissent.
Now Mr Berry has used the trial to assert what he hopes to be a vote catching message that the Liberals are soft on drugs. He has called for an expensive education campaign to encourage young people to say no to drugs. He hopes, of course, that his grand-standing will play on the fears on some ill-informed people who will change their vote on this issue.
Robert de Castella, who is head of the health funding body Healthpact, quite rightly points out that a glossy education campaign will do virtually nothing about Canberra’s drug problem. It will be nodded to by those who do not and/or will never use hard drugs and be not seen or ignored by drug users. In short, a waste of money.
Heroin use and the use of other hard drugs has slowly spiralled in western societies since World War II. The reasons are undoubtedly complex and inter-related. But there is a growing recognition by serious people in positions of great knowledge, that the present prohibition policy is not working and, worse, that it actually contributes to the spread of drug use.
It is the fact prohibition is causing drug use to increase that discredits the policy. With prohibition and heavy penalties the risks for suppliers increase and so they put up the street price of their drugs. As the price goes up, addicts resort to crime. Worse, they resort to encouraging others on to hard drugs and become suppliers themselves so they can get their cut of the drug cheaper or even free. It is an insidious form of pyramid selling that encourages drug us.
It demands a search for a different approach. This call has been made by people such as Justice James Wood of the Wood Royal Commission and Nicholas Cowdrey, the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, as well as a growing range of former judges and health professionals.
Obviously, heroin and other hard drugs are undesirable and every effort should be made to get people off them and that in the meantime some sort of stabilisation is needed to control their habit; remove the necessity for them to indulge in crime in the meantime; and to prevent them succumbing to drugs with impurities or in such unknown strength as to cause overdoses. In these respects the heroin trial offered some hope.
But the trial posed huge political risk for any politician supporting it in an environment of fear generated by decades of exaggeration. It required courage and cross party support.
In this context Mr Berry’s opportunistic and new-found high moral ground is to be regretted. He did not condemn the heroin trial head-on, but his willingness to grab a few votes with a tough-on-drugs-stand sets back its cause and in doing so condemns more Canberra youth to addiction, crime and overdose.
The fact Mr Berry knows that makes his conduct even more shameful.