This article originally appeared in The Australian on 9 November 2010. It can be viewed in its original context here.
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
November 18, 2010
The NSW Government will remove the “trial status” of the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre and formalise the facility.
As a trial, it has been subject to extensive evaluations and over the last nine years, it has been the subject of a number of independent evaluations, including by BOCSAR, KPMG, UNSW and SAHA International.
To read the media release, click here.
October 7, 2010
This article was originally published in The Age on June 17, 2010. It was written by Hal Sperling & Dr Alex Wodak (President, ADLRF) (click to access)
It isn’t smart to hold election auctions on tougher penalties.
IN THE run-up to the next state election, Victoria has started a law-and-order auction. Until now, unlike New South Wales, Victoria has avoided such things.
Law and order has been an election issue since the 1980s in NSW, yet for the 2008-09 financial year, the state had an imprisonment rate of 184.8 per 100,000 adults, nearly double that of Victoria at 103.6 per 100,000.
Crime rates are lower in Victoria across nearly all categories. And, worldwide, there is no clear positive relationship between the severity of prison sentences and the crime rate.
The law-and-order auction assumes that people want tougher sentences. Some do. For victims of crime and their families, no sentence is heavy enough. They want revenge. That is understandable, but it is not an objective response.
Retribution is a different sentiment. It is a response to wrongdoing shared by the community at large. It explains why people used to take their children and a picnic lunch to public hangings.
We have gone past that now, but retribution is still there. It is the chord that politicians strike when they call for tougher penalties.
It cannot be assumed, however, that retribution is now the prevailing attitude in the community. Recent studies in Britain indicate that a lot of people are more interested in offenders making recompense than in punishment for the sake of punishment. That would suggest that the community would be just as satisfied – perhaps more satisfied – with visible and useful community service as the penalty for much of the crime that currently attracts a prison sentence.
Retribution and making recompense are emotional responses. There is another side to the coin – commonsense.
Locking up prisoners is expensive, costing more than $70,000 per inmate per year. If Victoria had the incarceration rate of NSW, the cost of its penal system would be increased by close to half a billion dollars every year.
The state would have to raise taxes, borrow, or cut health and education or other services. Is this what Victorians really want?
A lot of people have to be locked up to reduce the crime rate even slightly – and benefits are only short term. In the long term, prison may have a negative effect by actually increasing crime. About half the prisoners released from jail are back again within two years. As Douglas Hurd, a retired senior British conservative politician, said in the 1990s, ”Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.”
If we wanted to be smart about crime, rather than just tough on crime, we would take a very different approach.
First, we would invest a lot more resources on early intervention with problem families. ”Early intervention” refers to regular home visits by specially trained healthcare workers to infants born to high-risk families.
Remarkably impressive benefits have been reported from modest interventions. There is evidence of improved attendance at school, reduced alcohol and drug use in teenagers and young adults, and reduced crime. But early intervention is not readily available in Australia.
Second, we should increase funding for community mental health and alcohol and drug treatment programs that are based on evidence. For every 100 heroin users on methadone treatment for a year in NSW, a study conducted by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research showed that there were 12 fewer robberies, 57 fewer break and enters and 56 fewer motor vehicle thefts.
The global financial crisis is going to force governments to make some savage cuts. Better to cut expensive and low-impact services, such as prisons, than inexpensive and high-impact services, such as early intervention with problem families and evidence-based community services.
Most judges and magistrates hate having to send the less serious offenders to prison. But they are forced to do so because there are so few options in the community. We should be debating the role of imprisonment for these groups. A distinction is to be made in relation to offenders who have committed seriously violent crimes. No one would doubt that heavy sentences are required in such cases. But they represent a minority of offenders.
The United States locks up four times as many people per capita as NSW – that is why the US accounts for 25 per cent of the world’s prison inmates despite having 5 per cent of the world’s population. And, despite this, the US has much higher crime rates than Australia. With an incarceration rate of 754 per 100,000 resident population, a debate about the size of the prison population has at last begun in that country. Let’s hope our prison population does not have to get to that size before we start thinking about other options.
Australia began as a British penal colony in the 18th century, when Britain considered that prisons might be a way of solving its then severe social problems. Of all people, Australians should not make the same mistake.
Hal Sperling is a retired NSW Supreme Court judge and convener of the Crime and Justice Reform Committee. Dr Alex Wodak is director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.
September 13, 2010
This story originally appeared in SX News on 18 June 2010, and was written by Brendan Bolger (click to access).
Several key LGBT community figures have become members of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s birthday honours list.
Two pioneers in HIV transmission prevention, a champion squash player who came out at 14 and a former Jesuit priest who could no longer live “a lie” have become members of the Order of Australia in the annual Queen’s birthday honours list.
Dr Alex Wodak from the St Vincent’s Hospital Alcohol and Drug Service was recognised for “service to medicine and public health”, most notably through his work in raising the profile of HIV transmission among injecting drug users.
He said he was “delighted” to receive the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) but “also conscious as anyone in public health … all my work is a member of another team”.
“The crux of the problem is the drug laws. It’s the drug laws that forced me to break the law to try and protect the health of all Australians,” he told SX.
Wodak began issuing syringes to injecting drug users when it was becoming evident there were large numbers of people at risk of HIV infection in the inner city, which until a needle exchange program was approved by the government was still illegal
His groundbreaking work has ensured that HIV infection through shared syringes remains very low in Australia when compared to other “rich” countries.
Kirketon Road Centre director Ingrid Van Beek was honoured for her service to “public health and community medicine through the promotion and provision of primary care for people affected by mental health issues, substance and physical abuse, and HIV/AIDS”.
Former Jesuit priest Phil Grano who became depressed about “living a lie” by hiding his sexuality but then leaving the priesthood was honoured for his work with people with disabilities and the law.
And former coordinator of Gsquash and Squash Manager of the 2002 Gay Games in Sydney, Carin Clonda, was honoured for her “service to the sport of Squash through administrative roles and to the community”.
September 13, 2010
BY HIS own admission, Alex Wodak’s stellar career has been little more than a series of accidents, most serendipitous.
But now 64 and being appointed a member of the Order of Australia for services to medicine and public health, he clearly remembers the day it almost slipped through his fingers.
”The 12th of November, 1986,” he says.
Wodak had been the director of drug and alcohol services at St Vincent’s Hospital, in Darlinghurst, for four years. The AIDS epidemic had cut a swath through Sydney, making its presence felt in the streets around the hospital where thousands of young gay men and injecting drug users lived.
(Continues)
Continue September 13, 2010
This article was originally published by The Guardian on 28 May, 2010 (click here for original context).
Mephedrone was banned on the basis of limited evidence and media hysteria. We need a new approach to drug classification, writes David Nutt.
On 17 March I was giving a lecture in Barcelona when I received a call from CNN. They wanted my reactions to the international press conference that the Lincolnshire police were holding on the deaths of two young men that they claimed had taken mephedrone (the new synthetic drug also known as “meow meow” or “M-cat”). At that point I realised that all sense had left the ongoing debate on the question of the harms and control of this drug.
Why were the police holding a press conference when they had no idea if the men had taken any drugs? Why implicate mephedrone when the only established facts were that deaths occurred in the context of a heavy alcohol binge that went on into the early hours of the morning? As a stimulant, mephedrone is likely to reduce not increase the risk of alcohol-related respiratory depression (suppression of breathing). There was little evidence at the time of serious harms from mephedrone use, despite it having become almost as widely used as MDMA (ecstasy). Moreover, the earlier epidemic overdose use in Israel had not revealed significant harms and few if any mortalities.
The “media madness” that followed the Scunthorpe event probably tipped the balance in the decision to ban mephedrone which was enacted by a depleted ACMD in an intemperate and rushed manner, and which lead to the resignation of several more members and a coruscating editorial in the Lancet.
It has been revealed today that my suspicions were correct – there was no evidence that either of the two had taken mephedrone. It appears they took some other sedative drug – probably methadone – which is highly dangerous in combination with high levels of alcohol.
It is probably too late now to reverse the government decision to make mephedrone Class B but we do need to learn the lessons from the debacle of its being banned on limited evidence and media hysteria. The first lesson is that the police and other public bodies should not make pronouncements and certainly not hold press conferences on mere conjecture or hearsay; the public interest is not served by inciting media attention in this way. In addition the media should apply some traditional journalistic principles such as evidence collecting and testing and allow the scientific process to take place before claiming harms of drugs, especially new legal highs.
There are lessons for government and their advisers too. They should have the courage to resist media hysteria and let the truth drive decision-making. Moreover there should be proper research investment in the science of new drugs. Quite frankly, it is an insult to the country that the ACMD report on mephedrone didn’t have some basic pharmacological facts about the drug, even though it had been under review since last summer and the data could have been obtained within a few days or weeks at little expense.
What we now require is a guaranteed minimum set of core pharmacological and behavioural data to be acquired for any new drug that is being considered for classification and control in the UK, before a decision to ban it is made. The new Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) is currently developing a set of guidelines for this that we hope the government will endorse.
The whole mephedrone debacle illustrates what has been known for many years – there is a real need for a new approach to the drug laws. The 1971 MD Act is 40 years old, and in its current classification system is fatally flawed and not fit for purpose. In this new world where drugs may be invented one day and sold over the internet the next, there needs to be a fundamental revision or better still a completely new approach to drug classification.
Finally there is a personal lesson from the Scunthorpe deaths to young people who drink and take drugs. Alcohol itself is very toxic (killing by acute poisoning, hundreds of young people each year through respiratory failure) and these actions are magnified when in combination with other drugs that suppress breathing such as opiates (heroin, morphine, methadone) and GHB/GBL. If in doubt, don’t drink and drug.
September 13, 2010
This text was originally published on Crikey.com in an article compiled by Melissa Sweet on May 3, 2010.
Dr Alex Wodak, President of the ADLRF, writes:
“Critics lost no time pointing out that the brand new hospital reform package includes only a derisory and last minute new funding component for improving mental health services. But at least there is some new mental health funding.
In contrast, the notion of increasing funding for alcohol and drug services has not even been considered. Yet patients with severe alcohol and drug problems, like patients with severe mental health problems, contribute to a great deal of the workload of general practice, community services and hospitals.
At present, only about half the heroin users in Australia who want methadone or buprenorphine treatment and meet the approved criteria are able to enter treatment. Once in this treatment, they will have to front up with about 30% of the costs.
This is the highest co-payment for any chronic health condition in Australia. The people required to pay this co-payment almost invariably have low incomes. So, with a heroin shortage and a treatment drought, our would-be heroin users turn to prescription opiates.
Australia’s consumption of prescription opiates is increasing rapidly and has now reached the equivalent of 60 kg of morphine per million per year. The USA reached a consumption of 60 kg of morphine per million per year in 2000 and that was when the proverbial starting hitting the fan.
Since 2000 in the USA, overdose deaths from prescription opiates have outnumbered heroin overdose deaths and cocaine overdose deaths. And the gap continues to widen. Also, requests for help in the USA from people struggling with prescription opiate dependence are climbing much faster than requests from heroin users. Opium production is increasing again in Burma, source of Australia’s heroin.
That suggests that heroin availability in Australia is going to start increasing again. The only reasons to increase funding for drug treatment in Australia * to reduce deaths, disease, crime, and save resources * are logical and rational. And logical and rational reasons have never been enough.
Of course, alcohol is, and always has been, a much bigger problem than illicit drugs in Australia. And the same justifications apply in spades for increasing treatment for people struggling with alcohol problems. Ever tried getting a loved one into simple detoxification?
One of the staple drugs used in treating alcohol dependence, disulfiram (Antabuse), is still not on the Pharmaceutical Services Branch although it’s an amazingly effective treatment if the disulfiram is supervised.
Alcohol and tobacco featured strongly, and rightly so, in the Preventative Health Task Force report. The Henry Tax Review has recommended alcohol and tobacco tax reform.
Tax reform is the most important prevention strategy for alcohol and tobacco and a milligram of prevention is still worth a kilogram of cure.
Victoria has now witnessed almost 30 gangland murders in recent years. At least three of these murders seem to have required some degree of police complicity.
Four Royal Commissions in Australia in the last 25 years have documented extensive police corruption linked to unsuccessful attempts to enforce our drug laws (Costigan 1985; Fitzgerald 1987; Wood 1997; Kennedy 2004). NSW now has three external bodies looking for police corruption.
Surely it would be more effective and much cheaper to not just be tough on police corruption, but also get tough on the causes of police corruption.
But it won’t be possible to be tough on the causes of police corruption unless governments start funding alcohol and drug treatment seriously.”
September 13, 2010
Legislative Assembly of Queensland Social Development Committee Issues Paper
Inquiry into addressing cannabis-related harm in Queensland
General Comments:
Alcohol and tobacco are responsible for 97% of drug-related deaths in Australia and are legal drugs. The fact that they are legal has enabled commonwealth and state governments to reduce the harms resulting from these drugs. Alcohol consumption in Australia per head of population is now about 25% less than it was 30 years ago. The prevalence of tobacco smoking in Australia has fallen dramatically in men and women over the last 40 years. In contrast, cannabis consumption in Australia increased from the 1960s until the 1990s but has since declined slightly.
Concerns about health and other complications from cannabis should be matched by concerns about the harms from and costs of cannabis prohibition. As President Jimmy Carter said ‘Penalties against the use of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of a drug itself; and where they are they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against the possession of marijuana …’.
The total costs of cannabis law enforcement in Australia are unknown. They are likely to be considerable. While identifying benefits from cannabis law enforcement is difficult, significant unintended negative consequences are all too obvious. The adverse consequences of unsuccessful attempts to enforce drug prohibition include significant police corruption documented in several Royal Commissions (e.g. Costigan 1985; Fitzgerald 1995; Wood 1997; Kennedy 2004).
There is growing support for the view that the least-worst option is the taxation and regulation of cannabis.
The following comments are responses to the questions posed by the inquiry.
Click here to view the entire paper.
September 13, 2010
New documents have been added to our resources section (click to access)
September 13, 2010
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