FDS Insight Magazine Nov - Dec 2022

5 The rising appetite for powerful drugs like fentanyl is a direct result of Australia’s failing prohibition policies Greg Denham, The Guardian (31/8/22) The arrival of fentanyl, estimated to be 50 times more powerful than heroin, is particularly concerning. Federal police recently announced the largest seizure of the deadly opioid. Photograph: Australian federal police larm bells should ring when Australian police announce in quick succession record seizures of ice and fentanyl at our border. The arrival of fentanyl is particularly concerning – this powerful synthetic opioid has led to the deaths of thousands of people in Canada and the US over the past five years. A central nervous system depressant, fentanyl is estimated to be 50 times more powerful than heroin. The 11kg recently seized by Australian federal police is reported to be the equivalent of 5m ‘street hits’. Fentanyl is a game changer but also part of a wider trend. Just as ice, a purer form of methamphetamine, is taking over from speed, the growth in more powerful drugs should be seen as a direct result of our failed prohibition policies. We are repeating history. The US ended its prohibition on alcohol in 1933 after a decade of disaster. One problem was that during prohibition, in order to avoid detection, bootleggers moving alcohol across state lines used far more concentrated and purer forms which led to massive increased health harms. Sound familiar? As Mark Thornton has written for the Cato Institute: ‘Prohibition did not achieve its goals. Instead, it added to the problems it was intended to solve and supplanted other ways of addressing problems. The only beneficiaries of Prohibition were bootleggers, crime bosses, and the forces of big government.’ Given our failure to learn the lessons of the past, the policy response to the fentanyl crisis is predictable. We will no doubt hear from politicians and law enforcement demanding more police, more invasive powers, tougher laws and longer jail sentences. The problem is, we’ve been taking this approach for more than 50 years and yet we know that drug seizures have little impact on drug availability. Despite what police and politicians tell us, drug prohibition, like alcohol prohibition, has failed. We need to change our game plan to counteract the potential disaster that faces our community. A good start would be increased investment in prevention and harm reduction – eg injecting rooms. A