Page 2043 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
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MS MacDONALD: Yes, like politicians, in some ways, Ms Porter, but then again we have other compensating factors, I would suggest, and it is certainly not the same as doing those low-paid, demeaning jobs. Sometimes it can be quite stressful doing jobs like that. Even if it does not require a great deal of intellectual rigour within the job itself, it can be incredibly stressful to be in a low-paid, dead-end job, I am sure.
In spite of my intellectual capacity to understand that people might actually take it up for those reasons, to keep them going—and I heard stories of parents taking up and using drugs and coming to the needle and syringe exchange program in Woden to get their Fitpacks; and these are stay-at-home mothers of young children; obviously there are pressures in being a stay-at-home parent and looking after your children—you do worry and I still do have a great deal of concern and dismay that people get themselves into this trap. That is what it ends up being: a trap.
Mrs Burke made a comment about illicit drugs and their being a problem and maybe not so much of a problem as legally prescribed drugs or drugs that are legal, but we did actually find in this report that alcohol, which is a legal drug, is still the biggest problem drug within our society, especially when it is combined with illegal drugs as well. Ms Porter and Dr Foskey touched on the issue of poly drug use. We do have major problems with poly drug use but I just wanted to make the point that alcohol, a legal drug, is still of great concern and there are, of course, we know, many instances where people are prescribed legal drugs, morphine-type drugs, and then end up going on to abuse it. It is not necessarily that it has been deemed to be legal—you have been prescribed it—and it is necessarily alright, because there can be abuse of that situation, I would suggest.
Dr Foskey made the point as well about dual diagnosis. Yes, the committee did well and truly focus on this as being a major issue. I know that this issue—and I am sure Mr Corbell, as a former Minister for Health, will attest to this—has been an ongoing issue for the health and alcohol and other drugs sectors, the two sectors trying to come to terms with dealing with it.
What I would suggest is that it is the exception that people use only one drug; it is more common, it is the general rule, that people, if they are taking one drug, will take whatever they can get their hands on. That is unfortunate but it is something that we need to face up to. There is also the fact that people who are taking drugs very often have mental health problems and of course, with drugs like ice and other methamphetamines, there are the associated mental health risks which cause major problems.
What I would like to say with regard to this report and what we did find—and Dr Foskey touched on it as well—is that, in spite of all the media attention on this drug, it has been the drug of focus in the last couple of years, the one that is reported on in the papers. I do not know that we actually found it in the end, but I think there have been references that things are starting to turn back towards heroin. There is not a reason for the community to panic as such. Yes, it is a drug of concern; yes, it is a particularly nasty drug—ice, that is, and other methamphetamines—because of the concentration of the drug and the long-term effects of the drug. That is not to say that children are going to walk out on the streets and some will become addicted to ice. Let us not get carried away.
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