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Australia: OPED: Blaming Dealers Is Not The Answer
Adam Sutton, adamcs@clyde.its.unimelb.edu.au Age, The (Australia)
Friday 21 Apr 2000 Subject: Australia: OPED: Blaming Dealers Is Not The Answer Pubdate: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 Source: Age, The (Australia) Author: Adam Sutton, adamcs@clyde.its.unimelb.edu.au Note: Dr Adam Sutton is a senior lecturer at Melbourne University's department of criminology. BLAMING DEALERS IS NOT THE ANSWER Treatment for addicts - they are victims. But tougher sentences for traffickers - there should be no mercy for pedlars of death. MANY Australians would have sympathy for these sentiments. But are they an adequate basis for policy? Over the past decade, I have been studying the ways Australian drug laws are developed and enforced. In light of this research, I find it difficult to accept that every person involved in supplying illicit drugs is the embodiment of evil. Partly, this is because I have reviewed the histories of people convicted of selling heroin and other drugs at the street level. I have had to recognise many are habitual users. For them, selling drugs to other users is one of the few ways to finance the next "fix". Morally preferable, many argue, to breaking into someone's house, or robbing someone after threatening them with a syringe or other weapon, or working in the sex industry. More importantly, research has made it clear that the demonising of drug supply is leading to some very poor policy decisions. This was brought home a few years ago, when I was part of a team reviewing South Australia's so-called "cannabis expiation notice system". Under this system, adults using cannabis in private, or cultivating or possessing it for personal use, can be given a written notice. As long as relevant fines are paid, these people do not incur a criminal conviction. Overall, expiation seems to be working. Many young offenders have avoided a criminal record. The new approach has not opened the floodgates to cannabis use: consumption trends in South Australia are much the same as elsewhere in the country. And having initially been wary about the procedures, police acknowledge that they improve the way the justice system deals with minor cannabis offenders. But research did reveal one problem. Police were aware of a loophole in the cultivation provisions. Under South Australian law, anyone found with "up to 10 plants" had to be issued with a notice. Ten plants can produce a lot of cannabis. A proportion of the "grass" from these small plots was finding its way into commercial markets. Soon after the research program was completed, South Australia reduced to three the number of plants for which a notice could be issued. Undoubtedly this was consistent with the legislators' intentions. But was it good policy? South Australia might have been better served if police and policy makers had seen the emergence of "cottage industry" production as an opportunity to loosen the grip of organised crime, and if they had begun to scrutinise and regulate cannabis markets with this in mind. But abhorrence for the very idea of trafficking made this impossible. Much the same has been happening with debate about "safer injecting facilities". Their purpose is to arrest the rising rate of drug overdose deaths and to address other health problems affecting intravenous drug users. Such facilities also can alleviate public disruption and other problems (e.g. discarded syringes) that street injecting causes for local communities. But opponents do not want to hear about these benefits. Their concern is that injecting rooms signal that we are "giving in" to the heroin trade. Clearly, injecting facilities should be established only where street trafficking and use are well established (and this is the case with the Bracks Government proposals). Critics interpret the introduction of such facilities as a concession that it is impossible to eliminate illicit drugs from some locations. But surely good policy consists of working towards the achievable. Evidence is overwhelming that, in a consumer society such as Australia's, elimination of illicit drugs is impossible. Saturation policing in locations already characterised by high levels of trafficking and use at best simply shifts the problem to other parts of a city, and at worst exacerbates robberies, breaking and entering and other predatory crimes by users unable to find alternative ways to finance their habit. However, much can be done if we set the more realistic goal of minimising the harm illicit drugs cause to users and communities. These safer injecting facilities will be a significant step in this direction. They may signal some relenting in policies of "zero tolerance" - but many participants in street markets themselves are victims. Communities will benefit because this policy will "take the heat" out of local drug scenes and help reduce visible symptoms of drug use. Phobias about illicit drugs and trafficking are deeply entrenched, but should not be allowed forever to impede sensible policy. At last some politicians are beginning to face down their fears. They should be commended, not criticised, for this initiative.
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