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Dope, pingers, weed,
coke, eccies, molly, junk, smack.
These are all street names for drugs that are illegal in Australia.
But you probably know what we're talking about. How?
Chances are you've tried one or two of them.
The National Drug Strategy Household Survey estimated that
approximately eight million Australians over the age of 13
had tried illicit drugs at some point
in their lifetime. And almost three million
had used drugs in the past year. Millions of Australians
are using drugs on the regular. And according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics
accidental overdoses and deaths are increasing.
So, the criminal law isn't stopping people from using drugs,
or even dying from them.
But what alternatives are there?
Governments have three options
to regulate drug use and try to minimise
the harm that drugs can cause. They can:
criminalise, legalise or de-criminalise.
Criminalising drugs is what Australia currently does for drugs like
***, ice, speed,
*** and cannabis.
This makes using or distributing the drug illegal
and tries to prevent people doing so by threatening
them with things like jail sentences and criminal records.
But the data shows that
the threat of criminal law isn't really stopping anyone from using drugs.
Very often, what happens with prohibition
is that we see
a phenomenon that people refer to as the Iron Law of Prohibition.
And that is where
more dangerous drugs emerge because of prohibition.
So, what happened in the United States is that when
alcohol was prohibited in 1920,
was that beer disappeared and was replaced by wine and spirits.
Why did that happen?
Because, let's say I had a truck that had a capacity to
carry 10,000 gallons of liquid
from Kentucky to Tennessee,
prohibition comes in, severe penalties if I get caught,
very risky, not worth doing just for beer.
Really worth doing for wine or spirits.
So that's what happened.
Prohibition was repealed in 1933
and immediately beer comes back.
*** going to crack, methamphetamine going to ice,
there are so many examples where the Iron Law of Prohibition
encourages more concentrated, more dangerous
drugs to emerge.
A second option is to legalise drugs.
We've done that for things like tobacco, alcohol,
even paracetamol.
Government-approved chemists can test the drug, standardise dosage and price
while also reaping the tax rewards.
The US state of California legalised cannabis in January this year
and they raked in more than $2.5 million in taxes in the first month.
I mean, to lock a young person up in NSW
right now costs over $300,000 per young person,
per year.
$300,000!
For one kid.
I mean, just imagine how much money they'd save.
If most of this kid's issue was around drugs,
then having that young person in treatment
would be far more beneficial.
economically speaking.
Some people argue that legalisation may encourage drug use and
"normalise" it. With more people using drugs,
the health impact could end up taking a massive toll
on the health system, like cigarettes and alcohol have done.
Marijuana is a gateway drug.
The risk of graduating
to ice, or to ***
from extended marijuana use
is real and documented.
However, while alcohol causes about 15 deaths
and 430 hospitalisations every day in Australia,
there's not one single reported incident of
someone dying from marijuana.
The final option is a sort of middle-ground.
De-criminalising drugs means drugs are still illegal,
and punishment for trafficking remains the same.
But instead of sending people to prison for possessing personal-use quantities,
you give them a fine like a parking ticket.
No criminal record.
It's what Portugal did in 2001 for all drugs
even *** and ice.
And *** infection plummeted by 90 per cent.
But what about drug use? Wouldn't de-criminalising drugs
make more people use them? Well, no.
The Portugal Ministry of Health reported that
*** users had dropped by three-quarters,
from 100,000 users in 2001,
to just 25,000 users.
California legalised cannabis for recreational use in January
and Canada is preparing to follow suit with national laws
in 2018. So, before we decide on any new plan
for Australia to legalise cannabis,
let's consider all our options first.