there is a group of people that will grow old over the course of time in this treatment.

That’s a good thing. Drug dependence is a medical issue. Prolonging and improving quality of life is a central tenet of good medical treatment.

For more information on heroin assisted treatment in Switzerland (and inside its prisons) click here.

The Cochrane Library have recently published a review of the evidence on prescribing heroin (diamorphine). What did they find?

According with the current evidence, heroin prescription should be indicated to people who is currently or have previously failed maintenance treatment, and it should be provided in clinical settings where proper follow-up is ensured.

Treatment practices should always be updated to reflect the evidence. Policy that gets in the way of making these changes is bad policy.

IOT [Injectable Opioid Treatment] involves the prescription and supervised self-administration of injectable diamorphine (pharmaceutical heroin) or injectable methadone in a supervised clinical setting for opiate misusers

Some patients don’t respond to our current treatments. This makes the availability of other types of treatment (second line therapy) a good idea. Unfortunately, Australians have no access to injectable opioid treatment. It wasn’t always so:

Heroin was legally available on prescription in Australia until 1953. It was so widely used as a painkiller and in cough mixtures that Australia was the world’s largest per capita user of heroin. The 1953 prohibition of heroin was the result of international pressure on Australia to conform to the prohibition of heroin adopted by other countries, with some opposition from the AMA. Ironically, heroin, cannabis, and other drugs were prohibited in Australia well before their use became a major social issue.

Perhaps the biggest problem we had with heroin at this time was doping in horse racing.

Follow this link for a historical account of heroin prohibition in Australia.

See also: The Sydney Morning Herald – Feb 3, 1949

A full version of the article can be found here: PDF.

It’s a good article, but there’s a point about Portugal that a lot of people seem to miss. Cue the Victoria Police:

If you’re caught by police with drugs, you may end up with a criminal record. A drug conviction may also stop you getting a job, and you may not be able to travel to some overseas countries like the USA.

In other words, if the drugs don’t hurt you a conviction will. The Victoria Police point out (quite rightly) that having criminal record is a harm in itself.

This is where the Portuguese have it right, there is no sense in the use of criminal sanction to ruin someone’s career prospects or magnify the risks of using drugs.

This is just one reason the ADLRF advocates for the urgent abolition of criminal sanctions for possession and other types of personal drug use. Please join or support our foundation today.

They argue that the Single Convention has remained intact because individual states continue to adhere to it rather than having the confidence to chart their own path.

Read the full article here.

Watch the lecture here.

David Nutt DM, FRCP, FRCPsych, FMedSci is Chair of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, a Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and Head of the Department of Neuropsychopharmacology and Molecular Imaging at Imperial College London.

The online polling shows overwhelming support for the decriminalisation of drugs.

The post debate results are as follows:

ADLRF President Dr Alex Wodak will be speaking

for the affirmative in a Sydney debate put on by

IQ2 (St James Ethics Centre: Intelligence Squared)

Topic for discussion:

“All drugs should be legalised”

Tuesday 10 May 2011; 1845 – 2030 hrs;

at the City Recital Hall in Angel Place, Sydney City

Speakers FOR are:

Nicholas Cowdery QC, Wendy Harmer and Dr Alex Wodak AM;

Speakers AGAINST are:

Jade Lewis, Dr Greg Pike and Paul Sheehan;

…with ample opportunity for questions and comments from the audience.

Tickets $32/$22, details on www.iq2oz.com.

It looks like being an important and entertaining evening.

The ADLRF hopes very much to see you there.

NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nick Cowdery QC has released his own legislative agenda.

It includes legalising drugs and abandoning the war on terror.

Mr Cowdery would also free more people on bail, enact a charter of rights and give judges more discretion over sentencing by abolishing standard non-parole periods.

The DPP’s policy “wish list”, which clashes with the government’s approach on key issues, was unveiled at a weekend conference hosted by the Rule of Law Institute. His criticism follows a series of clashes between the DPP and Attorney-General John Hatzistergos over management and resourcing of the Office of the DPP.

Mr Hatzistergos was last night considering Mr Cowdery’s remarks.

Mr Cowdery said the current approach to illicit drugs was “ineffective, wasteful and inconsiderate of the human rights of those concerned”.

“I would decriminalise drug possession and use and small-scale trafficking,” he said.

Mr Cowdery believes the only area of drug use that should remain a crime should be large-scale commercial enterprises.

On terrorism, Mr Cowdery said he would stop waging a war on what he described as “abstract nouns such as terror or even terrorism”. Instead, he would rely on traditional laws to deal with terrorism crimes.

He would divert resources into addressing the “underlying social and political conditions that give rise to threats of terrorism, rather than into combative means of addressing the symptoms”.

Mr Cowdery, who retires in March, criticised the effectiveness of the state government’s changes to the criminal justice system and accused it of being too responsive to what he described as the “ranting” of the tabloid media.

“Much of this legislation, at least so far as the criminal law is concerned, has been to tinker at the margins of substance and procedure in an ad hoc fashion,” he said.

Author: Chris Merritt