The Listener - We’ve seen enough: Why NZ experts are calling time on the “war on drugs”

We’ve seen enough: Why NZ experts are calling time on the “war on drugs” (Paywalled)

Extracts:

Drugs carry risk, but it is important we separate harms caused by prohibition, from harms caused by drugs. Too often we conflate them. For example, if a person dies of an overdose, we fail to acknowledge overdose is almost always fuelled by prohibition. Prohibition denies quality controls, so the customer has no idea what the drug is, what it’s mixed with, or what the purity or strength is, increasing the risk of overdose. Due to the risk of arrest the customer must use secretly, often alone putting themselves more at risk. If complications arise people are reluctant to call an ambulance for fear of arrest; when they do it’s often too late. Whereas a harm reduction initiative, the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Sydney, where people can go to use their drugs,has supervised 1.28 million injections without a single fatal overdose. Context is everything.

Our current drug law protects the market dominance of state approved drugs and hands over the market for unapproved drugs to gangs. People who use unapproved drugs are forced to engage with criminals. With huge profits at stake, disputes in these criminal businesses are managed by guns, knives, threats and violence - there is no consumer protection, legal recourse or complaints procedure. 

A new Psychoactive Drugs Act should be introduced to regulate the commercial supply of all psychoactive substances, alongside legalising all adult personal possession. Legalisation doesn’t introduce drugs - they are already here, so we have to decide whether we want to continue having an underground supply controlled by gangs, or whether we prefer a quality controlled, regulated and taxed supply, managed by the government.

It’s irresponsible to keep burying our heads in the sand, we must learn to manage all drugs responsibly - something we have failed to do so far.