Stats, drugs and rock'n'roll - another storm in the same old teacup

Last week's ''national conversation'' on drug laws lasted about as long as it takes to smoke a joint - and by the end of it, proponents made less sense than if they had. I am still wondering how the release of their wafer-thin report got the whole country talking about surrendering to illicit drugs. I'm left to conclude that the one-day wonder - for it flamed, burned and went out in less than 24 hours - spoke more to the state of media malleability than it did to our drug laws. The product of a think tank called Australia21, the basis for its call seemed to be little more than a round table at which a bunch of retirees talked about what they should have done about the drug problem when they had jobs that empowered them to do it - people such as former West Australian premier Geoff Gallop and former federal police commissioner Mick Palmer.
Both men were quoted in the 26-page report that was released in support of the think tank's call to review drug laws. This review was necessary, the report said, because, ''the harms resulting from prohibition substantially outweigh the gains from efforts by police to suppress the criminal drug industry''. Really? I must have missed that. Because I thought current strategies, while not perfect, were actually limiting the damage. Palmer rued young people convicted of cannabis possession losing ''rights to be employed in the public service and in the defence forces and in the police services''. Hellish consequences. Gallop, meanwhile, is quoted wondering how Australians can get governments to buy into the issue: ''I think they need to see that what they are doing and not doing is causing a lot of the harms.'' It feels almost churlish to point out that he ran a government from 2001 to 2006. The report was more emotion than fact. Indeed, if you took out references to last year's report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, the recapping of a background paper prepared ahead of the round table, and various design tricks, the ''new'' information would probably have fitted into half-a-dozen pages. It's probably worth noting at this point that former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein, QC, recently produced a 468-page report on the need for a new media regulator, and we are still arguing about that. Fat chance of overturning current drug laws based on an afternoon's chat and a ''report'' that's little more than a brochure. And a highly manipulative brochure, at that. The cover features a couple who look haggard and defeated, presumably by drugs in some way, and a title that goes straight for the heart in capital letters: THE PROHIBITION OF ILLICIT DRUGS IS KILLING AND CRIMINALISING OUR CHILDREN, AND WE ARE ALL LETTING IT HAPPEN. Then, on page two of the report, we hear from Marion and Brian McConnell, founding members of Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform, whose son died from a heroin overdose. ''When we lost our son, we did not seek sympathy, we saw the injustice and craziness of our drug laws,'' the McConnells are quoted as saying. It's heart-wrenching stuff, straight out of the tabloid playbook. But surely this debate needs less emotion, not more? Certainly, it needs more hard evidence than is offered up here. At one point the report notes that the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says that, in 2010, most Australians aged 14 years and over (60 per cent) had never used an illicit drug. Clearly this did not fit with the consensus view, because the report then offers up this observation: ''Our student participants found these official low prevalence figures hard to believe, arguing that drug use and experimentation are very widespread in the networks they inhabit, and especially at music festivals.'' Are they serious? There were two students in the 24-member round table. The think tank's big coup was to get former NSW premier Bob Carr along to their talkfest in late January, early February. Back then he was just another superannuated politician, but by the time the report was made public he was our Foreign Minister. ''An issue that worried me while I was in NSW politics was the police hitting railway stations with sniffer dogs,'' Carr says. ''It was marijuana that was the focus. I did not think it was the best use of police time.'' Was he advocating a liberalisation of marijuana laws? I think he was. Either that, or for police to go easier on sniffer dogs. Here was a potential story then: new minister at odds with the government's tough-on-drugs stance. I suspect it was this potential flashpoint that attracted the media glare, but it proved illusory. Carr quickly pulled his head in, Gillard restated her opposition to any watering down of drug laws, and there it died. Until next time. Hopefully, when it does come up again, it will be more considered.
Bruce Guthrie @'The Age' 

Australia21 Illicit Drug Policy Report

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