The heroin debate So often, according to youth worker Peter Wearne, drug dealing is a matter of simple economics. You don't have to be a genius to sell drugs. These are not 'Mr Bigs'.
Drugs are an economy that is accessible to people who have no other opportunities.
A fortnight ago Mr Wearne, of the statewide Youth Substance Abuse Service, cut a refreshingly unfashionable figure in the Victorian Parliament - a fresh voice telling politicians that their policies were excluding young people from education and work and, in some cases, leading them to drugs. He believes that while most young people have thrived over the past two decades, the seriously disadvantaged minority are worse off now than they were then. We need to understand that drug use in the community is not about the drug. Often there is a lack of a culture of work in families that is being handed from generation to generation. There is a whole part of that generation that, just because of their background, don't have any options.