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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 6 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1584 ..

MRS CROSS (continuing):

Tragically, a small minority submit to the bondage of drugs and, because of this, live lives of absolute ruin and misery. A few do not escape for many years, and some never escape.

At 5.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion that the Assembly do now adjourn having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed

MRS CROSS: One aspect of this survey that I wish to, briefly and carefully, comment on is the link between illicit drug use and suicide. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for both young men and young women in Australia. While the ACT fares well when compared to other Australian jurisdictions, this problem has grown steadily over the past 25 years, both nationally and here in the ACT. There are a number of identified designated risk factors, the largest of which is mental illness.

Recent studies in Adelaide and New Zealand indicate that young men and women with a mental illness are more than 10 times more likely to attempt suicide. This statistic is heightened by research in Queensland and by ABS statistics, which show that more than half of the young people who die by suicide were clinically depressed at the time. The two remaining high-risk factors for youth are unemployment, and alcohol and/or drug dependency. Alcohol and drugs-especially cannabis, amphetamines and heroin-are involved in over 30 per cent of youth suicide incidents.

Mr Speaker, I wanted to mention the strong link that drug abuse has with suicide for our young people, because suicide is a horrendous problem right across Australia, yet is so seldom spoken of publicly. For young people, especially, there is a problem with contagion-that is, "copycat" suicides or suicide "clustering". While researchers have differences of opinion on contagion, and studies are very limited, it is right to be cautious.

Unfortunately, this raises a paradox. How do we raise public awareness of this problem and keep pressure on the government to fund appropriate responses, whilst being socially responsible by not making suicide appear an option for those in high-risk categories? The economic cost of drug use in Australia almost beggars belief. For all ages, the big three-tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs-cost Australia in the order of $18 billion a year. Tobacco costs $11 billion, alcohol accounts for $5 billion and illicit drug use for a further $2 billion of taxpayers' money each year.

These figures include both tangible and intangible costs. While the cost of directly providing treatment to a drug dependent person is expensive, the cost of not providing treatment is even worse. It costs about $5,000 per year to provide a heroin user with methadone, compared to $25,000 a year to keep them in prison.

Mr Speaker, the topic of drug dependence is not new to me. I have learned enough to know some of the keys to addressing this problem. These are: broad community education, providing a wide range of well funded treatment options, and strict law enforcement for those in the distribution chain.

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