Page 991 - Week 03 - Thursday, 10 March 2016
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One of the expert presenters at the parliamentary drug summit, Dr Caitlyn Hughes from the University of New South Wales National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, spoke about the issue of evidence. She looked in a clinical and academic fashion at the evidence of what works in drug policy. It is very clear that the policies that work and which get the best outcomes are those that focus on treatment and on harm reduction. An example of a treatment approach occurs in Portugal. Instead of prosecuting individual drug users, the money that would be spent on law enforcement is being redirected into treatment. If the police catch a person using drugs, rather than send someone to court, they issue that person with a treatment order. The individual appears before a panel that recommends a course of treatment, and access to treatment is guaranteed for the next day. This treatment panel also supports the person with a range of other needs they may have arising from and contributing to their drug use, such as securing housing and employment.
Example of harm minimisation initiatives include needle and syringe programs, Naloxone programs, pill testing at events and drug consumption rooms such as the very successful supervised injecting centre located in Kings Cross in Sydney. These are all examples of the sort of approach I am talking about. These are the policy approaches that work. And when I say they work, not only do they result in better health outcomes, but they also reduce the prevalence of use and reduce harm in other areas such as drug-related crime. Presumably that is something that every member of this place would agree with.
It can seem counterintuitive, but the fact is that tough enforcement response does not result in reduced use or reduced drug-related crime. Australia provides an example: Australian governments spent approximately $1.6 billion in 2009-10 on illicit drugs. Of this spending, $1 billion, or 64 per cent, went on law enforcement, 22 per cent on treatment, 10 per cent on prevention, and two per cent on harm reduction. Despite this overwhelming bias in funding towards law enforcement, we continue to see deaths, overdoses, accidents, illness and addiction in our communities.
Australia has one of the highest rates of drug use per capita in the world. Extensive evidence shows that not only is an approach focused on enforcement and supply reduction ineffective and expensive but that it has a high risk of counterproductive impacts. These include drug-related crime, increased violence and displacement of problems, for example, into areas that are hidden where it is more difficult to address and where people are less likely to seek treatment.
In discussing these various approaches and their effectiveness, Dr Hughes referred to the evidence policy paradox. This refers to the fact that current drug policy in most societies takes little or limited account of the scientific research. In fact, unfortunately, policies that have shown little or no evidence of effectiveness continue to be preferred options of many governments and international organisations, and this is a critical point. No matter how much opponents might claim it is crazy to focus on treatment and harm reduction as opposed to enforcement or to explore decriminalisation options for drugs, the evidence clearly shows that these are the approaches that get the best results. The fact is that the lion’s share of investment is directed into areas that have the least amount of evidence—that is, law enforcement. That is the evidence policy paradox when it comes to drug policy.
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