Page 274 - Week 01 - Thursday, 14 February 2019
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encourage people to come forward. Removing the criminal offence for possession of cannabis is part of that process.
Of course, as we break down stigma and encourage people to seek help, we will need to make sure our health and drug treatment systems are able to cope with greater demand. This is not an either or question. Alongside drug law reform to keep people out of the criminal justice system, we must also continue to invest in high quality drug and alcohol education and treatment supports.
We also need to keep having conversations with our community about drug use to alert people to the risks, give them evidence-based advice and help them to make informed decisions. To date, across Australia our approach to drug policy has been to just say no, and it is simply not working. Making drug possession illegal and trying to arrest our way out of this problem has failed and it is time for a new approach.
This requires a shift away from the disproportionate focus on law enforcement. In 2009-10, the latest figures that I have been able to find, the drug policy modelling program estimated Australian government spending on illicit drug programs to be around $1.7 billion, with around 64 per cent spent on law enforcement, 22 per cent on treatment, 9.7 per cent on prevention and just 2.2 per cent on harm reduction.
Of course, we also need to recognise that much of the harm that comes from drug and alcohol use is a result of the misuse of legal substances. We know that tobacco continues to cause more ill health and premature death than any other drug. Alcohol-related hospital separations are higher than those related to illicit drugs.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimated that in 2011, 18,762 deaths were attributable to tobacco, 6,570 were attributable to alcohol and 1,926 were attributable to illicit drugs. Alcohol use was responsible for 5.1 per cent of the total burden of disease and injury in Australia in 2011. In comparison, illicit drug use contributed to 1.8 per cent of the total burden of disease and injury at that time.
It is important that we do not draw an arbitrary line between licit and illicit substances, because they all have the potential to cause harm. As these statistics show, often greater harm comes from those that are legally available. The concept of harm minimisation rests on the assumption that we cannot stop people from using illicit substances or from misusing licit substances. It recognises that while people continue to use drugs, some will continue to experience harm.
Our first priority should be to minimise that harm in any way we can. The Greens will always support an evidence-based approach to drug policy. We call on governments and political parties across Australia to listen to the experts and to move away from the dangerous rhetoric that is continuing to cause significant harm. It is time for a new way to think about these things in Australia. I think what we all agree on is that we want to minimise the harm that comes from drug use. The trick now is to try to have a more sensible discussion on how we make that happen.
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (3.38): I start where Mr Rattenbury left off. Yes, I think that minimising the harm to people through the effects of illicit drugs is the
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