Common Sense on Drugs 2

I notice from the Australian Heroin Diaries blog that the Victoria Branch of the Australian Democratic party has published a bold plan to 'halve crime'. They propose that this could be achieved by a radical overhaul of the law relating to illegal drugs in that country. In essence they are basically suggesting that prohibition should be ended as it has done nothing to reduce useage and associated criminal activity. Instead they would allow registered known users to obtain regulated supplies through official clinics.

Now this sounds eminently sensible to me and similar to the practice in Switzerland. Unfortunately a bit of research shows that the electoral fortunes of the Democrats in Australia have been on the wane for some time and they are not going to be influencing government policy any time soon. Although I think they are talking sense on drugs, will it perversely further harm their electoral aspirations?

The sad reality is that no mainstream political party or politician in the developed world seems willing to take the risk and talk sense about failing drugs policies. Back home you will recall that the exception was the former Labour defence minister Bob Ainsworth who spoke out quite unexpectedly just before Christmas. Although he might have expressed a view that I would have sympathy with, his grasp of the subject and lack of detail about the consequences of any change means that his contribution to the discussion and debate are going to be somewhat limited I suspect. Sadly the coalition government seem set on shifting from a policy of harm reduction to straight forward enforcement of prohibition. So absolutely no outward sign of any common sense there.

But suddenly, out of the blue came endorsement for a radical change in direction and from a most surprising source, a former police officer. All the recent media excitement about an undercover police officer having been found to have infiltrated the climate change protesters, flushed out a former undercover cop for his views on the whole thing. In a radio interview he was basically scathing about the waste and expense of valuable undercover officers being used on such low level criminal activity. In contrast he had infiltrated big criminal gangs and drug cartels resulting in the imprisonment of 'hundreds of serious criminals for thousands of years'.

Mind you the stress nearly broke him and he ended up hitting the bottle and requiring counselling. As a way of winding up his contribution, the interviewer said 'well at least you've got the satisfaction of knowing you did a useful and valuable job.'  Imagine his surprise when the guy replied, 'on the contrary, it's all been a waste of time.' He said 'the supply of drugs hasn't altered one jot and there's just as many criminal gangs as when I started.'  It's true of course. No matter how much effort is put into the 'war on drugs' it has absolutely no effect beyond slight variations in the price of street drugs. Just what does it take for society to wake up to the fact that another approach to the problem might be a good idea?