Page 3696 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 October 1991
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incredibly large problem of illegal drugs. In doing so, we have said in this Assembly and publicly that we are intent on taking a small step at a time; so, in presenting this particular report we have chosen to go in two directions.
For those who are profiteers from illegal drugs, we are recommending a tightening of the approach we take. That tightening involves falling into line with other States, in particular Victoria, and proceeding with the power of asset stripping. People who have profited from a market in illegal drugs should not be able to get away with having huge profits as part of their assets and then be left, after perhaps a short or long term in prison, with their assets. It is this asset stripping that has proved successful in reducing the supply of drugs.
We would hope to increase the powers of the courts to provide for asset stripping and to ensure that profiteers in illegal drugs are shown no softness in that respect. This is, as I am sure Mr Humphries would suggest - I can tell by the smirk on his face - a hard line on those who profit in illegal drugs. There is no room for any sympathy in that area. I imagine that all of us would agree on that.
In the other direction, we have advocated decriminalisation of the personal use of marijuana. The main rationale behind that is that we intend to separate the markets as far as illegal drugs go. There has been unusual success in reducing the supply of the illegal drug marijuana, thanks to the good work of police, customs and other forces. The difficulty is that, with the increased success in supply reduction, the demand has remained the same. In fact, because people buy their drugs from the same dealers, there has been an increase in the move away from smoking marijuana to injecting amphetamines. We know that there is a major increase in the problem of amphetamines in Australia. The difficulty with amphetamines is that the method of use is usually intravenous and when we get an increase in intravenous use we get an increase in risk of HIV.
Australia is leading the world in fighting the spread of HIV. In almost every other country in the world there has been a phenomenal exponential increase. In New York 85 per cent of intravenous drug users are HIV positive. We understand that in Africa the population will go into a decline at the beginning of the next century thanks to the spread of AIDS. Amongst homosexual men in San Francisco, 90 per cent are HIV positive. The statistics that come to us are absolutely horrifying.
But Australia, thanks to its harm minimisation approaches, has been particularly successful in combating the spread of AIDS. It is appropriate that Australian authorities should pat themselves on the back. As a result of far-sighted harm minimisation policies we have avoided the exponential
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