FDS Insight Newsletter Jul-Sep 2020

12 The Victorian Department of Human Services information booklet for users makes it clear that you are still addicted to opiates while on methadone. Indeed, the information pamphlets warn those on the program that methadone withdrawals are particularly severe (which is why some addicts reject it). How then can this opiate save the lives that its evil cousin heroin destroys? It must surely be different in some significant way. It is. It is legally available to addicts on prescription and that means that it is clean, cheap and safe in the right dose. Addicts can stop worrying where their next dose is coming from and get on with their lives. As they could if their preferred opiate, heroin, was available on prescription also. Now if that is the only significant difference between the two, and no-one claims that there is any other difference, our policy-makers are engaged in a serious and culpable piece of doublethink. We were supposed to be worried about the bad and corrupting consequences of heroin use; those consequences are what justify its prohibition. A moment’s rational thought, however, reveals that there is no internal connection between the two. All the evil consequences are the consequences not of heroin dependence but of the externally imposed conditions in which the use takes place, in this case, conditions of prohibition rather than regulation. It is public policy that ensures that addicts cannot get a pharmaceutically clean, secure and affordable supply of heroin. It is public policy, not heroin dependence, therefore, that pushes them into crime, poverty and homelessness, and even death. These are evils that we as a society visit upon users for no better reason that we disapprove of their drug use. This is true moral evil and policy-makers are knowingly or recklessly implicated in it. If opiates were intrinsically corrupting and damaging to one’s health, the methadone program could not have the benefits claimed for it. But it does have these benefits. I have seen them for myself. It is just that it is not for everyone. Some people would be better on, and be more willing to enter, a heroin program. The Australian Drug Foundation’s booklet states: ‘As with all opiates, methadone alone in its pure form will not cause any damage to the major organs of the body. Prolonged use will not cause any physical damage apart from tooth decay’ (my emphasis). Have we been fighting the war on heroin only to protect our children from tooth decay? Is there anything else that could possibly justify this piece of public policy? You might argue that drug addiction is intrinsically bad, not necessarily for bodies but for souls. It undermines the person’s autonomy and reveals a certain weakness of character. I’m not so sure of the character implications but I am prepared to agree that I’d much rather my children didn’t become heroin addicts even under more benign social conditions. I’d also much rather they didn’t become diabetic or paraplegic or develop a heart condition or Parkinson’s disease. These conditions, too, would restrict their autonomy in certain ways. And on the character front, I’d rather they didn’t