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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (11 May) . . Page.. 1475 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Kaine clarified later on that he was referring to the drug taking as the illegal activity rather than the actual study of the drug taking, and asked me did I have any feeling or obligation to bring the matter to the attention of the police.

I should make it clear that the study being conducted was not a study of people actually shooting up or taking drugs; that this was not a necessary part of the conduct of the study. It was not a study, for example, of how people put a needle in their arms, necessitating an observer having to be there to watch them and see what they were doing. Rather, I understand it was done on the basis of interviews of illicit drug users in the ACT. So, the illegal activity being referred to was in a sense a legal activity conducted before a particular episode of the study occurred, and therefore the degree of illegality in that part of the activity being undertaken is a bit questionable.

My advice is that there is no obligation on me to notify police of illicit drug use in such circumstances. The minister has no information that could assist the police and therefore notifying the police would be pointless. It is well known that illicit drug activity is occurring in society. A study of this type, like many other scientific studies, is in the broad community interest insofar as it determines strategies for drug use prevention management for the future and so on. It provides policy makers with information which assists them in determining directions in that area.

Recently, for example, a study was conducted in respect of drink driving habits of Australians. Of course, drink driving is also an illegal activity. That study yielded information of interest to policy makers as well as the general community. The New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research has conducted a number of important studies of illegal drug use which have included interviews with drug users. A recent widely reported study examined the extent to which drug users in jail committed property offences to finance their drug habits. It also looked at the number of offences committed by each, the nature and value of property taken and how it was disposed of and so on. Clearly, all those things are studies about the incidence of, and the effect of the incidence of, illicit drug activity in our community.

Research into illicit activities is common practice worldwide and is frequently undertaken by criminologists, by medical and other health professionals, by lawyers, and indeed by those in law enforcement themselves. It is reported in specialist journals as well as in the mass media. In this sense there is nothing exceptional about this particular study, which set out to examine the attitude and experience of a group of people who assumed that they were immune to the problem of addiction.

It is well known that a proportion of this injecting drug using community believes that it is able to use addictive drugs recreationally without becoming addicted. The attitudes and mindset of this group is a valid area of scientific research. Disclosure of information for research by offenders is usually undertaken in conditions of confidentiality. If confidentiality is not respected then such surveys could not be undertaken and the community would be deprived of information essential to policy making.

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