Drug haze needs straight talking
By. DUNCAN FINE
Charlie, my 10-year-old son, has a drug problem. Since he started drug education classes at school a few weeks ago, he keeps peppering me with questions about marijuana, cocaine and ice. What does each one do to you? Have I ever tried them?
In 2009, these are tough questions for a parent to answer, because Sydney seems saturated with illicit drugs. For example, this week has seen Home and Away star Todd Lasance charged with possessing cocaine in a nightclub.
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But that is just the sensational tip of a very large iceberg. Richard Buttrose, who will be sentenced this month on charges of being a coke dealer, had a book thick with the names of his famous clients. In 2007, the country’s best rugby league player, Andrew Johns, admitted to having a recreational drug problem. The country’s best AFL player, Ben Cousins, did the same. One of the greatest players to pick up a tennis racquet, Andre Agassi, has recently admitted taking crystal methamphetamine. In February, Michael Phelps, perhaps the greatest Olympic athlete of all time, was caught smoking a bong.
Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull have both said they smoked pot – as of course did Bill Clinton. Barack Obama has written of experimenting with marijuana and coke.
In June this year the Australian Crime Commission released a report stating that the amount of cocaine coming into the country was at record highs. Recently, Andrew Hornery reported in the Herald that, “From VIP parties at glamorous bars in the city to homes in the suburbs, men and women from all backgrounds and occupations are fuelling Sydney’s seemingly insatiable cocaine binge.”
This is backed up by government research in the 2007 National Drug Strategy Household Survey which found that 1.6 per cent of all Australians over 14 – that’s 280,000 of us – had used coke in the past 12 months. Over 1 million had used coke at least once in their lives. (About 1.5 million Australians have tried ecstasy.)
Whether you are shocked or rather blase about this, there’s one undeniable conclusion: that the jury is now in – the so-called war on drugs has manifestly failed. And yet, despite this, the media and politicians continue to be in full-blown moral panic about the issue of drug use in Australia.
Based on the cold, hard evidence, I think it’s time that we finally woke up and, if you will, smelled the coffee.
It is almost inconceivable in the climate of hysteria surrounding drugs to conceive of a time when they were sold legally. Take heroin, which was synthesised in 1898 by Bayer Pharmaceuticals and subsequently marketed as a wonder drug – a sedative for coughs. The name comes from a worker at the Bayer factory who was used as a guinea pig and said the drug made him feel ”heroic”.
In 19th-century Australia a wide range of drugs, including opiates, were available to the public and were extremely popular particularly among women (suffering from neurasthenia and other ”female problems”) and a wide variety of tonics and elixirs containing opium were readily available. Cocaine was widely used in patent medicines, alcohol and soft drinks. Until 1909 it was an ingredient of Coca-Cola. It was also prescribed by Sigmund Freud as a cure for alcohol and opium dependence.
Marijuana was legal in the United States until 1937. Meanwhile from 1920 to 1933 the sale of alcohol was banned under the US constitution.
Many people seem to take a good versus evil approach to illicit drugs. But then based on this quick history of drug use, how can they answer the question that I just know my son will ask me one day soon – how can a drug be evil one year and good the next?
And here’s another question I’m sure he’s going to ask me – if illicit drugs are such a scourge on society then why do so many seemingly respectable, intelligent people take them?
While you’re mulling over a response to that one, here’s another. Isn’t it hopelessly hypocritical to continue with the simplistic dichotomy of legal drugs good, illicit drugs bad, when out of the $40 billion economic costs of drug use, tobacco accounts for 60 per cent, alcohol 22 per cent, and illicit drugs merely 17 per cent?
The failure to come up with intelligent persuasive answers to these questions is the key reason the war on drugs has failed – because a smart 10-year-old boy can see it is totally disconnected with the reality of modern life.
This weekend, famous actors, writers, lawyers and journalists will use illicit drugs. They’ll do so in spite of well-known and longstanding official attitudes against drugs. More campaigns, more warnings and more panicked hand-wringing won’t make any difference.
I’m not sure that the decriminalisation or legalisation of drugs is the answer. But I am sure that what we are doing now just isn’t working.
You may not like it, but my children – and your children – are going to come into contact with drugs, a joint at school; a line of cocaine at a party; an ecstasy tablet in a nightclub at 3am.
When that happens, I want my kids to be able to make an informed decision and not have their heads clouded by the fog of hypocritical nonsense that goes for debate whenever the word ”drugs” comes up in the media.
My 10-year old wants answers. Have we got the guts to talk straight to him?
