Page 2120 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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The recent report into drug law reform from the parliamentary inquiry in Victoria warned that a key concern of the committee regarding drug checking is that it may lead to a perception among individuals who use drugs that once substances are tested they are safe to consume. That goes to the point of those young festival-goers I referred to before.
The report also found that drug-checking services might be misused by drug suppliers, by using information provided by drug-checking services to promote the safety of their product. Indeed, one can envisage a scenario where a pill tested, essentially with a stamp of approval from the ACT government, or whoever it is envisaged would conduct this testing, would make the marketing of those products a lot easier for the drug dealers.
We will not support this element of the debate—the amendment from Mr Rattenbury. It is not that I am against harm minimisation—I hope you have got the message today—nor are the Liberal Party or my colleagues. We have had significant debate within our party about this matter. There are mixed views about this in the community and I do not mind continuing to have the debate about it. But, based on the evidence that we have seen—and we are responding to the evidence in this case—this is not the right way to go. Certainly, establishing a permanent facility in Civic to roll out pill testing is likely, in my view, to create more harm than it will reduce. Therefore, I cannot support Mr Rattenbury’s amendment.
MR PETTERSSON (Yerrabi) (4.43): I listened with great interest to what Mr Hanson said. I did not want to delve into the pill testing side of this debate because it was not the essential reason I brought this motion forward. I brought this motion forward to talk about decriminalisation, which is a very important topic. But it is important to reflect that in a decriminalisation model there will always be questions about the substance. In a decriminalisation model we are inherently reliant on organised criminal gangs and their supply chains—bikies making terrible substances in bathtubs.
There will always be a question over the substance, which is where pill testing comes into it. We all know that people right now in our community are using these substances, these terrible pills and substances cooked up in the dingiest of circumstances. These are being consumed right now and they are being consumed with no questions asked.
Overwhelmingly, when people choose to consume these substances they are doing it off the recommendation of a friend saying, “Yeah, that guy seemed all right. Last time I got something off him nothing went wrong. So what could go wrong this time?” That is a terrible way for people to make decisions about their health. It is important that we give people, overwhelmingly young people, the ability to ascertain more information.
Let’s be very clear what that information is. That information is not a big green tick saying, “This pill’s good to go, mate. You’re going to have a cracking time.” It is information that says, “This is what this substance will do to you”. It outlines the risks and it talks about the deadly additive substances that are often laced into these
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