Page 455 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 2019
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being arrested for possession of cannabis. This is not a great use of police resources and it is a poor way to deal with Australians who are using cannabis.
It is time to acknowledge that the problems associated with illicit drugs in our community are complex, they are multifactorial, they are interrelated, and a number of the problems we see are more the result of our drug policy than of the drugs themselves. The prohibitionist approach to drugs perversely promotes criminal markets, encourages the growth of prison populations and damages the lives of many Australian families.
From a purely health perspective we know that illicit drug use contributed to 1.8 per cent of the total burden of disease and injury in Australia in 2011, with cannabis making up a small proportion of this. In comparison, alcohol use was responsible for 5.1 per cent of the total burden of disease and injury over the same period. In 2011, 18,762 deaths were attributable to tobacco, 6,570 were attributable to alcohol and 1,926 were attributable to illicit drugs.
I have heard some people suggest that this shows the harm that can come from legalisation and use this as an argument against this approach. There are a couple of points I would like to make in response to this. Firstly, history has shown us that, while alcohol continues to cause significant harm today, prohibition was tried in the 1920s and was not found to be an effective strategy. I do not think anyone in this place is proposing a return to a prohibitionist approach to alcohol or tobacco, although it would be interesting to have that debate.
From a public health perspective, whether it is alcohol, tobacco, cannabis or other illicit substances, prohibition curtails the capacity of governments to control and regulate harms from these substances. All of these substances cause harm, to varying degrees and in different ways, and the notion that the harms of illicit substances are greater is simply not reflected in the data. In fact, often no consistent rational basis exists for declaring some drugs legal and others illegal. That is why this debate is so important. It lets us review our current approach and determine whether we could actually reduce harm through decriminalisation or legalisation—an approach that may seem counterintuitive to some.
For years the general public have been told that the way to avoid problems with the use of psychoactive drugs is to ban them and criminalise those who use them. While there is strong support in the community for people with problematic drug use to be able to readily access treatment, we know that demonising and criminalising people creates an enormous barrier to engaging in treatment and support.
The Greens acknowledge the potential risks associated with cannabis use, particularly for young people and for people with a predisposition to mental health issues. We offer our support for this bill not because we think cannabis use is harmless but because we think the best way to reduce harm is to deal with this issue through a health lens, not a criminal lens.
Cannabis use is not without risk, and we must continue to invest in high quality drug and harm reduction education to alert people to the risks and help them to make
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