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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 5 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1362 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

those services. Fiona MacGregor, from the Australian Education Union, talked about the issue of substance abuse in schools-not just in terms of students who are abusing substances, but also in terms of students whose carers abuse substances.

When talking about substance abuse and the impact it has on people, we do not talk merely about the person who is, unfortunately, abusing a substance-and also we should not talk just about the crime associated with it. We need to know that every person who is abusing a substance probably has people caring for them and loving them-or they, themselves, are caring for and loving other people. There is a circle of people around every person who has these kinds of issues.

In some ways, it seems to be stating the obvious, but I think we need to remind ourselves that people do not take on this kind of self-destructive behaviour when they are feeling okay about themselves. These people are in despair of some kind. I guess that is why the community was interested in having a taskforce approach. Unfortunately, a polarised debate occurs often in this society, especially around controversial issues.

The idea of a substance abuse task force was supported by the inquiry I chaired into adolescents and young adults at risk of not achieving satisfactory educational and training outcomes. From memory, it was also a recommendation of another committee-at the moment, I cannot remember exactly which one it was-but there has been a lot of discussion about this over the last year or so.

We are well aware of media reports, just this week, on young people and drugs. Statistics are emerging on the disturbing use of a range of substances, from tobacco and alcohol consumption to use of injecting drugs.

Ironically, on the same day the article about use of substances by students was published, there was an article drawing attention to the medication of preschoolers. That is a reminder that there is a whole range of drugs and other substances which can and do cause problems, depending on their use.

The link should be made between those two phenomena. If we are seeing a growing number of preschool children being medicated, we need to be asking the question: what does it mean for children and their capacity to gain resilience and become people who can cope with life issues, if, even at preschool age, they are being medicated in some way for behaviour that is probably just childhood behaviour?

I want to make the point that we are not talking only about the use of illicit drugs. There have been, and will be again, many opportunities to specifically debate illicit drugs, law and policy-the sharps end of the issue, if you like. Whilst the task group we are proposing would consider illicit drug use, we need to see the problem more broadly. The enormous personal, family and social cost of drug law has been fairly well documented. That relates to the life of crime, driven by demand for money to feed the habit, the harm inflicted on others in the community, the corruption that comes, as a matter of course, with illicit substances, the lives wasted by imprisonment, and the tragedy for so many

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