Australia: Top Cops Propose "Heroin Bank,"
Political
Firestorm Ensues as Prime Minister Nixes
Idea
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/199.html#australiancaAustralia's
top national crime-fighting body, the National Crime
Authority (NCA), last
week issued a report saying it could not
win the war on drugs and calling for
a trial program in which
heroin users could obtain their drug from a
government-owned
"heroin bank." Prime Minister John Howard, who has
blocked
previous heroin maintenance efforts, immediately denounced
the
idea, but has since been besieged by an army of the
plan's
proponents.
In its "Commentary on Organized Crime 2000," the
NCA said the
government must consider options "previously deemed
unpalatable,"
such as treating heroin addiction through a medicalized
supply,
"subject to the supervision of a treating doctor and supplied
from
a repository that is government controlled."
The NCA vowed to wage
unrelenting war on drug traffickers, but
admitted that drug trafficking,
money laundering, and related
organized crime were beyond its capacity to
prevent using current
measures. NCA chairman Gary Crooke conceded that
the heroin bank
approach was "pretty radical", but argued that trafficking
had
"grown exponentially" and the profits had "almost grown
beyond
comprehension."
"Everything should be considered, nothing
should be rejected,
we've got a terrible problem here on our hands and the
essence of
that approach is to attack the profit motive," Crooke
told
reporters. "If something can be done to combat this
enormous
opportunity to make profit and to control a price perhaps that
is
one of the many matters worthy of consideration."
Prime Minister
Howard needed little time to consider. The same
day the NCA released
its report, Howard told parliament that
"while ever this government is in
office and while ever I am
prime minister of this country, there will be no
heroin trial."
He also accused Cooke of sending "a surrender signal" in
the
fight against drugs.
Howard deputy Peter Costello also took a
swipe at the NCA,
basically telling it to butt out. "My view is that
the National
Crime Authority should be fighting crime and it ought to
be
leaving policy matters to the elected representatives," Costello
told
the Herald Sun. But the national government's strong
negative response
has stirred up a potent reaction. Leading
Australian drug experts, the
Australian Medical Association,
newspaper editorial boards, and political
figures and prosecutors
across the land have rushed to support the NCA's
recommendation.
Melbourne's The Age newspaper lambasted the prime
minister's
"opportunism and straight-out denial" in an August
10th
editorial. "Hard drugs are bad," the editorial read. "The
law
says so. Society agrees. But lives are being lost and
even
greater numbers of lives are being damaged or ruined under
the
current legal regime. This is not the best we can do.
This
newspaper does not argue for liberalization as a blanket policy,"
the
editorialists made clear. "It should be applied only as a
way of
lessening the effects of drugs on individuals and the
wider community.
That is why the NCA's proposals deserve to be
heard, debated, and considered
in a genuine fashion."
The Australian Medical Association also backed the
proposal. "If
the crime authority is saying this is something we should
try, if
the medical profession and the experts involved in drug
dependence
are saying this is something we should try, then I
believe it is the
responsibility of the government to give it a
go," association president
Kerryn Phelps told the Australian
Broadcasting
Corporation.
Australia's grand old man of drug policy, David Penington,
who
formerly headed the Drug Advisory Council in Victoria, accused
Prime
Minister Howard of being held captive by yes-men for
refusing to consider a
heroin trial. Howard is getting his
information "from people who want
to please his own ears, people
who have no experience in the material they're
advising on,"
Penington told The Australian. "He only looks at the
facts which
support that view and he's not in a position to evaluate
the
details of trials."
Dr. Gabrielle Bammer, who designed a heroin
trial in the
Australia Capital Territories four years ago, only to see
it
blocked by Howard, was cheered by the NCA's proposal. "Since
the
mid-1990s, a number of reputable groups across the medical,
criminal
and social spectrum have looked at this issue
seriously," she told The
Age. "People aren't necessarily
convinced that it will work, but I
think they are convinced there
is sufficient evidence it should be
tried."
The opening of the heroin injection room in Sydney's Kings
Cross
may have undermined people's fears, she suggested. "We
won't
know what the impact of that will be until the trial is
finished,"
she said, "but we do know that the sky didn't fall in
when it opened, and
some of the more dramatic consequences people
feared didn't pan
out."
Even prosecutors were getting behind the proposal.
Prosecutors
from both New South Wales and South Australia told the Herald
Sun
they thought heroin trials might work. "I'm rather dismayed
at
the petulant and dismissive response from the PM," said NSW
prosecutor
Nicholas Cowdery. "This shows he is not prepared to
apply his mind in a
rational way."
The main opposition, the Labor Party, said only that it
would
consider heroin trials, but party leader Kim Beazley told The
Age
that Howard should listen to the NCA.
The Australian Greens and
the Democratic party are calling for
the trials to take place, with
Democratic leader Natasha Stott
Despoja telling the Australian Associated
Press that heroin abuse
is a health issue, not a criminal one.
"My
plea to the prime minister is wake up, get real. Just say no
to zero
tolerance," Stott Despoja snapped. "The Australian
Democrats recognize
that the issue of drug use and abuse in our
community is not a criminal
issue. It's a health issue for those
people who are addicted and those
people who are dying,
particularly our young people. We believe we
should investigate
a range of options, especially those where we have good
overseas
examples to show they work. The notion of zero tolerance is
a
joke," she concluded.
Prime Minister Howard has zero tolerance even
for experiments in
the states. Australian Capital Territories Chief
Minister Gary
Humphries last week introduced a bill calling for a referendum
on
the heroin trial and injecting rooms in the state legislature.
Not if
Howard can help it. He told the Herald Sun that he would
vigorously
oppose any state effort to institute heroin trials.
"We would not give any
aid or comfort to any state that
considered conducting free heroin trials,"
he said. "The idea
that we should give in is not one I can
accept."
(Visit
http://www.nca.gov.au/html/medpub.htm
and click on
publications and NCA Commentary 2001 to read the
report.)