What are they on?
I was worried I might have been having a bad trip this morning when I read today’s opinion piece by Kenneth Davidson in The Age. Ordinarily, I find the columnist is off his head. But today I’m in high agreement with Davidson. The topic: drug laws, and prohibition’s inability to improve community outcomes. Davidson’s take is that the supply of drugs is made more lucrative by criminalisation, encouraging people into the trade. Hence, while cracking down on one link in the supply chain might capture headlines periodically, traffickers can adapt quickly, with no long-term impact on sales.
For me this is just another illustration of the futility of drug prohibition … and if criminalising drugs hasn’t worked, what you need to do is treat drugs as a health and social phenomenon
Alex Wodak, drug and alcohol specialist at St Vincent’s Hospital
Laws against the use of ‘illicit’ drugs clearly leave a lot to be desired. To the extent that they are intended to stop people from inflicting harm upon themselves, they fail — plenty of people continue to take drugs. From uni students smoking pot to high-flying sports stars snorting cocaine, prohibition does not mean that people don’t touch drugs. What it does mean is that the problem is buried, and that any underlying problems that exist are left unresolved. And now there’s another dimension to the problem: the failure of legislators to keep up with changing trends. Hence the appearance of so-called ‘legal highs’, which can be purchased by school kids online. Strictly speaking, not all the substances captured by this term are legal in Australia, but customs officials are struggling to keep up with the inflow of goods being ordered. Just one more piece of evidence that victory can never be achieved in the costly ‘war on drugs’.
The mindless 'war'
Politicians of virtually any persuasion love to perpetuate the ‘war on drugs’. The ridiculous thing is that many of them have tried illicit substances in their youth. They’re seemingly happy to stand by while others get prosecuted for doing the very same things they once did themselves. And for what? The criminal behaviour associated with drugs is typically the result of the sorts of shady characters with which users must associate. Prohibition exacerbates, rather than minimises, any costs that are imposed on the community.
