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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (27 February) . . Page.. 357 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

The Assembly Select Committee had the benefit of following a series of parliamentary and judicial reports from the early 1970s. These included Marriott (1971), Baume (1977), Sackville (1979), Williams (1979), Rankin and Kerr (1981) and Cleeland (1989). All deplored the lack of hard data upon which to base policy decisions.

Indeed, a similar comment was made by Fitzgerald. It will be very surprising if we do not get a similar comment from Commissioner Wood. In fact, Commissioner Wood has already come out and said that we need to look at alternatives to our drug policy and to look for lateral solutions - I think that was the term he used.

There are no other lateral solutions to the drug problem on offer. In the early 1950s, heroin was available in linctus form. The member for Eden-Monaro, Mr Jim Snow, as a pharmacist, tells the story of filling prescriptions for linctus heroin for people who were addicted to heroin. So it is only for a relatively short time that heroin has been prohibited in Australia, and throughout that period we have seen a massive escalation of the amount of heroin that is used. I do not know that it is rational to put that all down to prohibition; other factors come into it. However, we should keep in mind that prohibition does force a pyramid sale system and, as such, in the same way as we see networks of kitchen goods and so forth expanding their access to the market, we would expect that under prohibition we would also see a network system.

I do note that the Leader of the Opposition queried whether prohibition might work with more vigour. The Williams royal commission in 1979 suggested that that was the best approach, and that was the approach that was adopted by governments throughout Australia. Williams also suggested that better coordination between our police forces as well as our Federal police and international police forces would assist. All that was done, more money was added, and the problem grew further and further. It has been done, and the question remains: Should we seek to do more of the same? Should we put more money into prohibition in the hope that that may improve the situation? It seems to me that that is effectively the only alternative.

There are, of course, situations where prohibition has been quite successful. We should keep in mind that prohibition has been successful where we have been able to make available to people an alternative that is acceptable to them. For example, the barbiturates were prohibited at a time when benzodiazepines were available and provided a sensible alternative that was acceptable to people. What we have not found is alternatives for this particular substance, heroin, that are acceptable to heroin users. The strongest argument that needs to be dealt with on the possibility of prohibition working in terms of vigour is that we have the most restrictive of all circumstances in our gaols. Those of us who have visited one, two or three gaols, as I have, have seen the barbed wire, the walls, the guards with guns, the full range of deprivation of civil liberties in a gaol, in a society we would never want here. Even under those circumstances, we know that prohibition does not work, that there is bribery, that there is corruption, and that drugs are used.

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