Editorial: 'Tough on drugs' hypocrisy
At a record low in the opinion polls, confronted with mounting criticism of his positions on greenhouse and Wik, and still smarting from Cheryl Kernot's defection to the ALP, PM John Howard on November 2 announced an $87.5 million "tough on drugs" strategy intended to regain the electoral initiative.
After he killed off the widely supported ACT heroin trial, Howard's alternative is a barely concealed pitch to the huge public concern about drug use and abuse. The language is meant to impress ("getting tough", "zero tolerance"): lives are at stake and this government means business.
The hypocrisy is stunning. Four months after it was elected, the government scrapped the almost identical (but better funded) ALP drug education program. Last year, it diverted back into consolidated revenue confiscated criminal assets which had previously been allocated to drug research and treatment (around $7.6 million between 1993 and 1996).
The funds allocated to the Federal Police and Customs Service to curb the flow of drugs are, according to most experts, a complete waste. Australia already spends $500 million-$1 billion annually enforcing drug laws, yet it is estimated that no more than 10% of incoming illegal drugs are intercepted. Why would an additional $43.8 million make any difference?
And if Howard really believes it will, why did he cut funding, causing almost 300 customs officers to be sacked earlier this year?
Giving more funding to the police to restrict the flow of drugs is laughable in light of the Wood royal commission into police corruption. Reports of renewed police corruption in Queensland, an official inquiry into corruption in the WA drug squad and last month's report by the NSW ombudsman that a "disturbingly high number" of complaints about police last year referred to police involvement in the drug trade all indicate that de-funding the police would be far more effective in combating the illegal drug trade.
All the international evidence is that the $14 million campaign to teach young people to have "zero tolerance" for drugs will not reduce young people's drug use. Labelling and treating young people, the majority of whom try illegal drugs at some stage, as criminals doesn't even attempt to address the reasons they are attracted to drugs.
Just as the prohibition on that other drug, alcohol, failed in the 1930s USA, today's "zero tolerance" approach simply drives the problem underground.
Given the Coalition's funding cuts to youth services, benefits, education and so on, all of which make life more difficult for young people, telling them to "just say no" to one means of escape (however illusory) is the height of hypocrisy.
The $29.8 million allocated to non-government treatment facilities and research focusing on abstinence is almost as pointless. The executive director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, Wayne Hall, says that more than 60 years of experience have shown that many heroin users will find it impossible to become and remain abstinent.
Only methadone treatment has been shown to reduce heroin use and associated crime, and to prevent overdose and HIV infection. Yet the government has just withdrawn $15 million from methadone treatment programs.
Howard is not concerned with minimising the harmful effects of illegal drug use ("A heroin trial will never take place so long as I'm PM"). Nor is he concerned with solving the social problems that result in and from drug abuse. His strategy is much more about "law and order" than about drugs.
The Coalition's "law and order" campaign, fully supported, and in NSW led by, the Labor Party, enables politicians to divert public attention from the causes of worsening living standards by creating scapegoats. The ideological onslaught against "youth gangs" and Asian "drug lords" blames the victims for increasing unemployment, escalating racism and the insecurity felt by the majority.
If Howard was serious about solving the drug problem, he would decriminalise all illegal drugs, taking their production and distribution out of the hands of profiteers. He would also massively increase funding to the public education and health care systems, increase welfare and youth support services and launch a major job creation program. That would truly be "getting tough on drugs".