Page 1804 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 19 August 1992
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The first area I have identified is the abysmal failure of the criminal justice system. In spite of a constant increase over the last 30 years in fighting the so-called war on drugs, in spite of the increase in the number of warriors, in spite of the increase in the number of offences, we have had an increase in drug usage that parallels the increase in the amount of money we have spent. In other words, for every dollar we spend on fighting this so-called war there is a comparable or parallel increase in drug usage. Surely, for those who argue that we ought not to have people using drugs, that is one of the most powerful arguments that could be put forward for drug law reformation. The point made by Dr Bob Allen, ACT president of the AMA, in Canberra, on yesterday morning's ABC news, relied heavily on the argument that the criminal justice system has failed. Marijuana, according to the AMA, is a drug with considerable side effects, and I agree. Nevertheless, it is incumbent upon us to look for an alternative method. Perhaps, just perhaps, we might find a method that works.
The failure of the criminal justice system is clearly set out in a report by the Hon. Ann Symonds, MLC, released last week and called Marijuana Law in NSW - A New Direction. Ann Symonds is a Labor member of the Legislative Council in New South Wales and deputy chair of the New South Wales Social Policy Committee. In her frustration that the committee was prepared to bring down only half of its report, after public funding had been provided for her to travel to the USA, Europe, the Netherlands, Sweden and England, she brought down her own personal report. She identifies in that report a number of statistics indicating the failure of our criminal justice approach, and I am going to quote some of those. I am only too delighted to make copies of this report available to any member of the Assembly who has not yet seen it.
In 1988 over one in four, or 28 per cent, of Australians over the age of 14 used marijuana. For males in the age group 20 to 39, the rate was more than one in two, or 56 per cent. In contrast, only one per cent of Australians aged 14 and over tried heroin. Collins and Lapsley estimated that Australian law enforcement costs of illicit drug use in 1988 were $258m, and that figure I shall later debate from the book by Russell Fox and Ian Mathews. The overall cost, not just the costs associated with law enforcement, could be as high as $1.5 billion. In 1987 there were an estimated 61,440 recorded drug offences in Australia - an enormous use of police and court resources. At least 80 per cent of these offences related to cannabis. In New South Wales specifically, 79 per cent of drug offences described as "obtain unlawfully" related to cannabis. Most supply offences also involved cannabis - about 62 per cent. Among arrests for use, 66 per cent related to cannabis. The black market income for cannabis alone in 1988 was estimated at $475m.
The failure of that approach brings us to the economic argument. What is the cost of the war on drugs? The costs are set out by Robert Marks in the book edited by Russell Fox and Ian Mathews, Drugs Policy : Fact, Fiction and the Future. The true costs of illicit drug use, set out on page 131, appear to be about $1.5 billion and include drug law enforcement costs, which they have estimated at $320m; the present value of future production lost, $178m; methadone maintenance costs, $48m; value destroyed in property crime, $165m; defensive costs against theft, $230m; property crime losses, $466m; and social security payments, $190m; coming to about $1.5 billion in costs associated with the use of illegal drugs.
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