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A case for safe drug-injecting rooms
The Age
(30/12/15)
he treatment of drug addiction is
not a law enforcement issue. It
is a health issue. The treatment
of drug addicts as criminals ill serves
them and the state. These should be
self-evident points, but we feel
compelled to make them to reinforce
the sensible and humane comments by
a former premier and now chairman of
beyondblue, Jeff Kennett, in relation to
the establishment of safe drug-injecting
rooms in Melbourne.
Mr Kennett was in turn supporting a
call by Robert Richter, QC, president
of the Victorian branch of the
Australian Drug Law Reform
Foundation, for the setting up of such a
centre in Melbourne, along the lines of
one that has been operating
successfully in Kings Cross, Sydney,
for more than a decade.
Mr Richter this month said: ‘It is now
widely acknowledged that our current
approach to drugs doesn’t work: we
need to reduce or eliminate most of the
criminal penalties for drugs and start
regulating as much of the drug market
as we can.’
When he was Victoria’s police chief,
Ken Lay also said that we ‘can’t arrest
our way out of our problems’.
It is a philosophy supported by Harold
Sperling, a retired judge of the NSW
Supreme Court, when questioned why,
if cigarettes, alcohol and gambling are
sanctioned by the state, are not drugs?
‘The distinction is irrational,’ he said.
As Mr Sperling wrote for Fairfax
Media, and with which we agree, ‘The
futile attempt to prevent drug use by
prohibition is hugely expensive. Worse,
it makes criminals out of ordinary
people.’ While it was time to set up a
regulatory framework for their sale, it
was also time to ‘give up the futile
attempt to prevent drug use by
prohibition and to concentrate on
rational and achievable measures to
minimise harm’.
These observations go directly to the
perception of safe drug-injecting
rooms. They are not dens of iniquity.
They are not centres for criminals.
They are there to help people with an
addiction. They save lives by offering a
clean, controlled environment for drug
users and hopefully, through the aid of
staff, wean people off their addiction.
Is this not better than leaving an addict
to inject in a back alley?
And yet progress is marred in Victoria
because we suspect both sides of
politics fear a voter backlash. The Age
believes the tide has turned. Earlier this
year, Mr Kennett admitted that he was
wrong when, as premier, he opposed
supervised injecting rooms. He has
seen the Kings Cross centre in
operation, spoken to staff and addicts.
It works. The staff ‘should be receiving
knighthoods’ for treating addicts as
‘human beings’. He reiterated the
praise this week.
Alex Wodak, the president of the
Australian Drug Law Reform
T