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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 3061 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Of course, drugs that are illicit-and so directly linked with crime-and have been linked in the popular imagination with subversion and the fairly common intersection of youth, risk taking and intoxication, imbue in people a kind of moral panic. But this debate is not about arguing for the legalisation of all drugs. I remind members that the division society has made between legal and illegal drugs reflects the relationship between business and governments, particularly the United States government, over the past 100 years. The division between legal and illegal drugs is in fact a choice or decision of convenience.

It is not a given that cannabis, or even heroin, is implicitly bad, or that tobacco and alcohol, while possibly unhealthy, are in essence okay. The drug laws, as they exist, are a product of political interests and expediency-national and international. So to argue for the prohibition of illicit drugs from a moral standpoint is facile, and to argue about the social costs of drug use, without including alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs and substance abuse more generally, is inept.

We do not need a yes/no referendum on two highly contentious initiatives. We need to draw on community expertise with a substance abuse task force-in the same way as the government and ACTCOSS poverty task force explored poverty last year-to develop a framework to address the underlying issues. We need to look at the problems that drug use and abuse reflect in their social and psychological context. It is stupid and unfair to assume that drug dependence is merely a weakness of character or that everyone who is dependent on drugs, in this case on illicit drugs, should simply learn to say no. Those of us responsible for law reform and for social policy need to understand the complexities of drug use in our society rather better than that.

The Attorney-General, in his presentation speech, spoke extensively about the criminal consequences of drug dependence and the health costs of injecting drug use and appeared to make a fairly persuasive case for the ACT to trial new strategies. He went on to say:

Whether you support these initiatives or oppose them ... our collective efforts to do something about the drug problem in Canberra have stalled.

He then said that "support for either measure will provide a blueprint for the way forward". So we imagine he will be supporting these initiatives in the referendum debate. More confusing, however, is the statement that "lack of support for either measure" in this referendum would send a clear signal that the community would not have the measures pursued.

The Attorney-General, in all his wisdom as the first law officer of the ACT, has only addressed the positive option. He has argued, it appears, that these two initiatives would be a positive step forward in the way we deal with drug problems in the ACT. But if the referendum, delivered to the Canberra people over the next few weeks, results in a no vote, he has no idea of what other options we might pursue. Yet I read in the Canberra Times today that he will campaign against the initiatives which his introductory speech commends.

I would have thought that Mr Stefaniak, at least, would feel some shame about this extraordinarily duplicitous approach. Part of the problem is that it suits people to address the crisis end of the drugs issue rather than look at substance abuse and social

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