In Australia our policy on illicit, addictive drugs has been framed by a paradigm of 'tough on drugs'. This is a narrow minded, right wing, harmful perspective which is not fair to addicts and families of addicted people, whilst being entirely useless as a strategy to eliminate drugs from society.
When you criminalise highly addictive drugs three things happen.
1. People don't stop doing the drugs, the structural issues driving drug abuse still exist, the pain and suffering driving addicts have not been identified and healed.
2. Dealers and distribution networks are pushed further into the criminal underground, making it near impossible to regain control.
3. Crime goes up, because we end up arresting drug users for drug related offences. We treat addicts like criminals, not as people with a health problem, an addiction that needs to be cured by way of compassion in the treatment for those that are ill.
What about compassion for addicts and a hard line response for dealers of hard drugs? surely this would be fair?
Although it is fair, it still doesn't change those three points, so a 'hard line' approach on dealers is ineffectual. This policy is already in effect in many countries, with very little success. The drug crisis continues, to the point where around eight hundred people die each year from illicit drug use, however the number of lives that are completely destroyed by hard drugs is much higher than the number of deaths.
A solution
Any solution to the problem must tackle the basic economics of the drug market. If there is a market for drugs, producers and dealers will always find a way to profit from this demand. Criminal markets are quite free as they evade regulation, supply and demand works quite efficiently within this dynamic.
Hence any real solution to the crisis must involve destroying market demand for the product completely, thus absolutely destroying all private incentive to produce the drugs.
A radical approach to solving the drug crisis this would be for the government to create a network of drug rehabilitation services, with the legal right to provide addictive, illicit drugs such as heroin or methamphetamine to registered addicts. Addicts would be required to provide some basic health details and could initially choose to remain anonymous and they would be administered a fixed quantity of addictive drugs at each visit. This would achieve the following:
1. Word would spread of free drugs and users would rapidly start to use the free drugs provided by the health clinics
2. Drug dealers and producers would rapidly lose their customer bases and their incomes
3. Drug dealers and producers would be forced to pack up, distribution networks become unnecessarily and dealers must find real jobs.
4. Addicts have access to safe treatment, safe drugs and clean needles. Patients seeking treatment could be registered on a central database within an overaching organisational body. The process would need to be one that is easy to use and more preferable for users than paying a dealer who would not ask questions or demand identification.
5. Crime will go down, as addicts are not having to break in to houses to find heroin, or sell their bodies on the street.
6. The combination of addicts not having to do demoralising acts and the counselling/rehabilitation services combined, can increase the self confidence of addicts seeking to change, further promoting the confidence to conquer addiction.
7. Once the private drug market is completely destroyed, the government can order a two month long detoxification campaigns, where all access to drugs is stopped except treatment substitutes such as methadone and all addicts are offered intense treatment programs.
8. The regular detoxification periods are not long enough for the private drug market to re-emerge and re-establish, however long enough to dramatically cut the number of people on addictive drugs
This approach is radical, however the problem is radical by nature. Half hearted, ill thought and expensive criminalisation plans have not yet been able to deliver society from its addiction to drugs. The market for drugs must be destroyed as soon as possible, as problems such as methamphetamine, a drug which cannot be controlled using heavy handed policing approaches, are spiralling out of control. Remove the profit margin, remove the problem.
Disclaimer - * i'm not suggesting that this policy would:
gain enough public support to become viable
avoid the powerful vested interests involved in the drug trade
solve the problems surrounding the imperial nature of policies which perpetualte drug production and trafficking
solve the emotional root causes of hard drug abuse, however it does provide a better mechanism by which counselling can be delivered.
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