Alex Wodak

Police, prison officers and politicians are standing side-by-side with drug users to call for law reform. They say the current practice of jailing people for personal use and possession instead of focusing on their health and safety leads to unacceptable outcomes: lives lost and lives ruined. But it’s hard to get your head around the idea that making drugs more easily available could actually reduce the risks. Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about drug law reform.    (more…)

Buddhists say that everything has a cause and everything has an effect. Violence, oppressed minorities, rampant corruption and failed states are both causes and effects of global drug prohibition. Serious threats to national security are an important but rarely discussed cost of drug prohibition. (more…)

The long running debate about illicit drugs policy has moved a great deal in the last five years. But social policy reform is a different matter from a debate. Actual reform usually takes many decades.

The recent growing consensus regarding the abject failure of a criminal justice dominated approach to drugs is very encouraging. Retired and even serving police commissioners have been lining up before the microphones to acknowledge the comprehensive failure of efforts to date. The seizure announced 16 February of 720 litres liquid methamphetamine, said to be worth $1.2 billion, represents the largest drug bust in Australia’s history. But there was little optimism that even a seizure of this size would make a difference to the market. In 2014, 91% of Australian drug users surveyed reported that ice was ‘easy’ or ‘very easy’ to obtain.

In 1994, I went with Ms Ann Symonds, a (then) member of the NSW parliament, to see the (then) Minister for Health, Senator Graham Richardson. My message was that the drug policy he was responsible for could never be effective. I showed him a report written by a US coast guard operator who had estimated the numbers of pedestrians, cars, trucks, buses, containers, ships and planes entering the USA every year. The official had also estimated the volume of cannabis, heroin and cocaine entering the US every year. He showed that US authorities had a better chance of finding a needle in a haystack than finding most, let alone all, of the drugs entering his country.

Seventeen million passengers and several million containers arrive in Australia every year. Only three in every 1,000 containers are searched. Containers carrying frozen food have to be thawed out before they can be searched and this involves potentially considerable financial loss and inconvenience as the once frozen food has to then be discarded. Somehow Australia’s 27 thousand km coast line has to be watched 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Senator Richardson seemed to accept the logic of the presentation. As he showed us out, he suggested that Australia could not move faster than the international community would allow us to do, that the attitude of leaders of the medical profession to any change in drug policy would be critical and that change would also not be possible without widespread community support.

Twenty-two years later, the shape of future global drug policy is becoming clearer. The international drug policy consensus is now irrevocably broken. Consequently, countries now have much more freedom to design a drug policy that the community and its politicians believe is appropriate for its circumstances rather than accept the one size fits all approach required till now.

The threshold step required is to redefine drugs as primarily a health and social issue. Several steps then follow. First, criminal sanctions for the production, sale and use of drugs will have to be reduced and, where possible, eliminated. Second, drug treatment will have to be expanded and improved to reach the same level as other health services. Third, as much of the drug market as possible will have to be regulated. Parts of the drug market are already regulated including methadone treatment for heroin users, the needle and syringe program and Sydney’s Medically Supervised Injecting Centre. Fourth, the community will have to ensure that life for young people should not require intoxication to be bearable. This means reducing poverty and improving the housing, education and employment conditions for our young people, especially our disadvantaged youth. When life is bleak and without hope, a few hours of chemical vacation becomes quite attractive. Policy change should occur in small increments with rigorous evaluation of policy effectiveness and adverse effects.

It is easy to dismiss the complexities of a political resolution of our current drug policy mess. But our politicians have at times achieved wonders. In the 1980s, politicians from all the major parties put aside their differences and worked together to prevent Australia being over run by HIV. Australian politicians also excelled themselves in tobacco control. These were world-class achievements against huge obstacles. Australians owe our politicians a debt of gratitude. The introduction of heroin-assisted treatment in Denmark was brought about by all the country’s political parties agreeing privately to jointly support the decision. The political gridlock of recent years in Australia is not encouraging but that will eventually pass.

The costs of political action on drug policy are falling while the costs of inaction are rising. The time for ever-more gesture politics on drug policy is slowly coming to an end. When dealing with communities locked into dysfunctional policies, just as when dealing with alcohol or drug dependent patients or loved ones, it is critical to retain a sense of hope.

It is important to remember our history. Australia permitted medicinal use of heroin until importation and production was banned in 1953. Edible opium was taxed and regulated in Australia until 1906. Medicinal cannabis was used lawfully in Australia until the 1970s. In the US, Coca Cola contained cocaine until 1903.

The required changes in drug policy are substantial. But we and other countries have made equally substantial changes before. Faced with such momentous change it is easy to convince ourselves prospectively that the reforms required are unachievable but we may end up reflecting in retrospect that change was inevitable.

In a recent Essential poll (16 February), 68% thought the ‘Federal Government should do more’ about illicit drugs followed by obesity (57%), food safety (50%), smoking (46%), Zika virus (36%), HIV (34%) and Ebola (27%).

Respondents also rated illicit drugs (44%) as their most serious concern followed by food safety (26%), obesity (25%), smoking (23%), Zika virus (16%), HIV (14%) and Ebola (12%). This suggests that voters expect Australian governments to act effectively on illicit drugs sooner rather than later.

Dr Alex Wodak AM is President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation

The fall out from Indonesia’s execution of Chan and Sukumaran for drug trafficking continues. In their unprecedented press conference on 3 May, the leaders of the Australian Federal Police argued that under existing laws and guidelines, they were obliged to share intelligence with their Indonesian counterparts. Moreover, under similar conditions in future, the AFP expects that similar decisions will be made. The basic problems are that many young Australians travel to countries that still retain the death penalty for drug trafficking (and some other offences) and prohibition is still the global drug policy. So the execution of Australians and citizens of other nationalities for drug trafficking in future are inevitable.

As so often happens with tragedies, the search is now on for someone or some organization to blame. The problem is that everyone is responsible while no one is also responsible: this is in reality a system problem.

The members of the firing squad weren’t really responsible as they were just carrying out orders. The Indonesian police and court officials weren’t really responsible as they were merely implementing laws that their parliament had passed. President Widodo wasn’t really responsible as he was, like any good democratic leader, merely responding to overwhelming popular opinion in his country. Howard and Rudd weren’t responsible either because in their earlier support for the execution of the Bali bombers they reflected overwhelming popular opinion in their country at the time. Abbott and Bishop weren’t responsible as they inherited this mess from their predecessors. And Chan and Sukumaran weren’t really responsible because they were merely pawns of higher-level criminals who managed to evade detection. The seven mules weren’t responsible either because Chan and Sukumaran had coerced them. As is so often the case in drug trafficking cases, the fall guys who got caught and paid the ultimate price came from poor minority families.

Compounding the tragedy is the ineffectiveness of drug prohibition, now acknowledged with increasing frequency. More than half a dozen retired and now even serving Australian Police Commissioners have conceded that drug law enforcement has minimal impact on the drug market. A year ago, Prime Minister Tony Abbott admitted that the war on drugs is a war we cannot win but nevertheless argued that it is a war we should keep fighting. In June 2011 the Global Commission on Drug Policy, consisting of more than twenty retired world leaders, released a report documenting the failure of drug prohibition and called for a consideration of options. In the last four years, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has recruited more world leaders and issued more reports. Some countries are now starting to reform their drug policy. In April 2016 in New York, a United Nations General Assembly Special Session will consider the growing crisis in global drug policy.

The seizure of 390 kg of heroin off the coast of Part Macquarie in 1998 did not affect the price or purity of heroin in Australia. Chan and Sukumaran were executed for their role in the attempted trafficking of 8 kg of heroin. What these executions may have done for a time is increase the perception of risk for drug traffickers. That might then get translated into higher prices and greater profits which might in turn convince some wavering wannabe drug trafficker to try their luck. Whatever else drugs might be, they are also a market with buyers and sellers agreeing on a price for a quantity of a commodity. But unlike most markets, drugs are bought and sold in a pyramid market where buyers are also sellers.

If drug prohibition was to ever be effective anywhere it should be in prisons. Yet drugs are available in most prisons. A few years ago on an international assignment I asked a prisoner in an Indonesian drug prison near Jakarta whether inmates could still obtain drugs. ‘Yes’ he replied, ‘but they are usually more expensive than in the community though sometimes drugs are less expensive inside than outside prisons’.

So why do we keep fighting a war on drugs when an increasing number of prominent members of the community accept that this is futile?

Professor Craig Reinarman, a US academic concluded that ‘drugs are richly functional scapegoats. They provide elites with fig leaves to place over unsightly social ills that are endemic to the social system over which they preside. And they provide the public with a restricted aperture of attribution in which only a chemical bogeyman or the lone deviants who ingest it are seen as the cause of a cornucopia of complex problems.’

We continue to fight a war on drugs for several reasons. Drug wars are still useful politically. Many politicians still think the transitional costs of changing drug policy are too high. But there are now supporters of drug law reform among politicians of virtually all parties. Law enforcement aimed to reduce the supply of drugs employs many people. The costs of continuing the current failed policy are increasing while the costs of changing policy are declining as more countries move out from the crumbling straightjacket of international drug control.

Australians who wish to avoid more tragedies like Chan and Sukumaran should support drug law reform and the universal abolition of the death penalty.

Dr. Alex Wodak AM, President, Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, Director, Australia21

John Ehrlichman, the Watergate conspirator, claimed to have come up with the idea of waging a war on drugs while he was a member of President Nixon’s ‘Committee for the Re-Election of the President’, wonderfully referred to as ‘CREEP’. The aim, Ehrlichman told Nixon, was to ensure that the elderly wealthy white voters who turned out in such large numbers to vote for Nixon in 1968 would turn out again in 1972 on polling day. The plan was to appeal to their contempt for the young, poor and black using illicit drugs as the perfect ‘dog whistle’. Despite the albatross of the Vietnam War hanging around his neck in 1972, Nixon won 49 of the 50 states in a landslide victory. Politicians around the world took note. An electoral magic pudding had just been discovered.

In the early 1970s, US Congress established a National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse but President Nixon got to appoint most of the members. Nixon stacked the Commission with people he thought would support the sorts of recommendations he wanted. When Nixon heard that the Commission was leaning to recommend ending cannabis prohibition he called in the chair, Raymond Shafer. The Watergate tapes recorded the conversation: Nixon: “You’re enough of a pro to know that for you to come out with something that would run counter to what the Congress feels and what the country feels and what we’re planning to do, would make your Commission just look bad as hell….Keep your Commission in line.” Towards the end of the meeting Nixon advised Shafer that he had not heard yet from the committee that was considering Shafer’s application to become a Federal judge. In the end Nixon rejected the Commission’s recommendations and Shafer did not get the judicial position he had applied for.

Fast forward to 5 September 1989 when US President George HW Bush addressed his nation on television and held up a bag of crack cocaine from a recent arrest close to the White House. President Bush used the address to announce a major ramping up of the war on drugs but he did not tell his fellow Americans that, on instructions, law enforcement officials had lured the reluctant black crack seller to Lafayette Park, near the White House. President Bush was under considerable pressure at the time as opposition rose to his economic restructuring.

On 8 April, 2015, Prime Minister Abbott, also under considerable political pressure, announced a new Ice Task Force. Yet not so long ago, in December 2014 the Abbott government had established a new drug advisory body, theAustralian National Advisory Council on Alcohol and Drugs (ANACAD) whose top priority was to come up with effective responses to ice. ANACAD had earlier taken over from the Australian National Council on Drugs.

For decades drug policy has been a very useful prop for those seeking election or re-election or a boost to sagging opinion polls. But communities around the world are starting to be a lot more discerning about fear-based political machinations involving drugs. In the USA, several different polling organisations  have found that a growing majority now supports regulating ‘marijuana’ (i.e. cannabis). In Australia, support for once controversial but pragmatic interventions like needle syringe programs and supervised injecting facilities continues to slowly climb.

A few years ago, some retired Australian Police Commissioners started commenting that our drug law enforcement was more effective than previously and about as effective as it ever could be but still the impact on the drug trade was negligible. Now even some serving Police Commissioners have made similar comments.

The community’s favourite drug intervention is education. But the results of mass and school based education campaigns are pretty modest. The expectations of the community and politicians about the impact of drug education are unrealistic.

Drug treatment has worthwhile benefits but improvements are usually much slower than the dramatic progress the community wants. But drug treatment in Australia, as in most countries, has a limited capacity, range of options and flexibility. During alcohol prohibition in the USA (1920-33), treatment for people with alcohol problems disappeared. Similarly, drug treatment struggles in countries where drugs are defined primarily as a criminal justice issue. Australia will make very little progress with ice while most people badly wanting help have to wait in a queue for six months as they mostly do now.

Although drug problems are found across the economic and social spectrum, they are more common in severely disadvantaged populations. Also, countries with greater inequality, like Australia, seem to have worse illicit drug problems. Support for reducing inequality in Australia and other countries is growing with the case so far made largely on the grounds of improving the economy. But a fair case can also be made that less inequality would reduce some of our social problems including illicit drug use.

The $64 million question that has not been asked about ice is why the drug market started providing this drug in the first place. For me the answer seems clear. Drug prohibition encourages more dangerous drugs to replace less dangerous drugs just as bush cannabis morphed into skunk and then Spice, powder amphetamine morphed into ice and ecstasy morphed into related but much more dangerous compounds.

We haven’t got there yet but Australia is slowly moving to acknowledge that it’s not so much illicit drugs that are dangerous as having a drug market that is completely unregulated. Economic forces ensure a vibrant drug black market while political forces till now have precluded a pragmatic arrangement. In the short term, political forces usually dominate but in the long term, economic forces prevail.

Dr Alex Wodak AM, President, Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, Board Member, Australia21