Page 2117 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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The ACT government invested in both the non-government and government treatment sectors to support these individuals on a path to treatment rather than incarceration. This highlights the government’s commitment to rehabilitation and recognises the health impacts that illicit drugs and alcohol can have on people’s lives. Indeed, the impacts go well beyond health in a physical sense.
In September 2019 the ACT became the first Australian jurisdiction to remove criminal penalties for adults who possess a small amount of cannabis. This decision, taken by the Assembly after the successful advocacy of Mr Pettersson, is a further demonstration of the government’s commitment to treating illicit drug use as a health issue rather than a law enforcement one. This is also why I support Mr Pettersson’s motion to seek an investigation into the effectiveness and implementation of a simple drug offence notice for some illicit drugs in the ACT.
I was really heartened by Mr Hanson’s comments in this debate. I think Mr Rattenbury is right that the Assembly has moved. Even in the four years that I have been here, I think we can see a shift in tripartisan support for evidence-based measures that shift the treatment of illicit drug use from a criminal to a health issue. That is where we want to go: harm minimisation as the priority. I recognise that this consideration of the simple drug offence notice will need to balance the social, health and legal consequences of any change. That is why it is proper to do the work to consider the impact of any such change.
The ACT also became the first Australian jurisdiction to trial pill-testing services at music festivals, in 2018 and 2019. These were successful programs, demonstrated by an independent evaluation of the second pill-testing pilot, which showed the value of the service in reducing harm, particularly to young people. The evaluation found that young people were shown to discard drugs when they were known to have been associated with fatalities overseas, and to take on board harm reduction messages such as increasing water intake, reducing the number of pills taken, increasing the time between pills, increasing their comfort level in terms of seeking help if something went wrong for them or their peers, and seeking professional advice into the future about the potential impact of drug-taking and what they could do if they felt that they were at risk of harm from their drug-taking.
The ACT government has also developed an Australian-first festival pill-testing policy, which is soon to be published on the ACT Health website and will be tested once the live event sector reopens. following the COVID-19 pandemic. We do recognise that that is quite likely to be quite some time away.
Labor members will be supporting Mr Rattenbury’s amendment. I would like to thank him and his office for their close engagement on developing this approach. We recognise that there are differences between festivals and any static testing. We also recognise that the target cohort may be different and that the static pill-testing pilot would present its own legal and health challenges that we would need to work through. However, we know that if we are committed to harm minimisation and treating illicit drug use as a health problem then this is a worthy proposal to explore.
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