We’re Losing the ‘War on Drugs’
By: Jamie Bean
Tags: Drugs, Politics, Society, Criminal Justice, Crime

The criminalisation of drugs doesn’t prevent use.

Unsplash | Wyron A

In Australia, the concept of the ‘war on drugs’ kicked off during the 1970s and became popularised through the Howard era. The ‘get tough on crime’ approach seemed to appeal en masse. It catered to the public’s fear of the faceless criminal, whilst simultaneously promising protection through a punitive approach to dealing with addicts. Won’t somebody think of the children?

The ‘war on drugs’ slogan is an alarmist approach that feeds into fears. It incites outrage in those easily provoked, which unfortunately is a great deal of the general public. It isn’t based on evidence, and it isn’t based on results.

It is also a sweeping statement unspecified about which drugs we are waging war upon. Anything resulting in chemical dependency could be classified as a drug, including prescription medications, alcohol, and coffee.

Let’s assume for argument’s sake that the ‘drugs’ in this statement are referring to Class A and B illicit substances. Alongside the war on drugs, despite it, and even because of it, the global market supply and demand for these drugs has exploded.

If the goal was anything other than creating a resilient and ever-expanding multi-billion dollar black market, then the war on drugs has failed massively. Harsher punitive responses to drug use have coincided with the uprise of organised crime and bikie gangs, corrupt policing, and potent and readily available substances. Online black marketplaces like Silk Road allow anonymous trade to occur under the cloak of cryptocurrencies.

It is clear that Australia’s approach to dealing with drugs, one reliant upon the criminal justice system, has failed. It has failed to prevent drug shipments arriving into the country. It has failed to prevent traffickers and dealers from making massive amounts of money out of the drug trade. It has also failed to assist those struggling with addiction.

Australia 21 Report

A report conducted by Australia 21 in 2017, Can Australia respond to drugs more effectively and safely, took the stance that Australia’s crime-based solution to drugs is ineffective.

The report highlights the life-changing consequences of a prison sentence for drug users, which does little except exacerbate the problem. High rates of reoffending and the regular occurrence of post-prison hospitalisations and deaths paint a clear picture. Prison doesn’t treat drug addiction, it makes it worse.

Aside from the impacts on the individual, the crime-based approach to drug control has a detrimental effect on the economy and taxpayers. The annual costs of the criminal justice system, from policing to courts to prisons, are massive.

Some of the major recommendations following the report include:

· The focal point of Australia’s national drug policies should be harm reduction, for both users and those around them

· KPIs of the criminal justice system focusing upon numbers of arrests and drug seizures should be considered only a partial success, unless they are also accompanied by harm reduction measures

· Policies should reduce the criminal supply of illicit substances by taking psychoactive substances off the black market

· It should be recognised that anti-social and criminal behaviours associated with drug use are often a result of the high cost of illegal substances, not necessarily caused by drug use itself

· Government funding should be funnelled into harm minimisation — not further criminalisation, policing, and sentencing

· Drug users should be able to legally submit substances for controlled testing, to prevent needless deaths

· Opioid Substitution Treatment (OST) should be made available for all heroin-dependent prisoners, whilst held on remand, incarcerated, and post-release

· Following the success of Sydney’s medically supervised safe injecting facilities, other states and territories should follow suit in providing these centres — once again, to prevent preventable deaths

· Community-based trials should be conducted to test and demonstrate the efficacy of these recommended new practises

What’s behind the war on drugs? Deterrence theory

The theoretical underpinnings of ‘tough on crime’ approaches are traceable to deterrence theory, which is one of the purposes of punishment within the criminal justice system. There are two broad categories of deterrence under this theory — specific deterrence and general deterrence.

Specific deterrence focuses upon the individual committing a given crime. When an individual is punished by the state for committing a crime, he or she should be, in theory, deterred from doing so again. The fear of facing another punishment should be enough to prevent the offender from re-offending.

General deterrence focuses upon the general public’s perception of punishment. The public should be deterred from committing a crime when they learn of the punishment given to an individual offender.

The war on drugs attempts to incorporate both types of deterrence into its approach, by apprehending individual offenders and publicising punishments that await potential offenders.

There are several flaws evident in deterrence theory, the most obvious one being recidivism rates. In Australia, roughly half of all prisoners return to prison within two years of their release. Keep in mind this figure is only representative of the ones that were caught — the dark figure of reoffending is likely much higher.

Another fault in deterrence theory regarding the war on drugs is that it requires rational decision making by the offender. Deterrence theory emerges from the utilitarian philosophical concept that man is a rational actor, and will make decisions based on a pleasure-pain comparison that works in his favour to maximise benefits and reduce harms. Rational choice theory states that if the punishment is harsh and certain enough, he’ll choose not to break the law because the risk of punishment is too great. The problem here is obvious to anyone who’s ever met a drug user; in the midst of addiction, they are rarely acting in their own best interests.

Our response to the drug problem needs to be health-based, not criminogenic

Another major argument against criminalising drug use? Personal autonomy. The war on drugs might be better phrased as the war on choice. For a country which generally favours personal liberty, there is something contradictory about disallowing autonomous adults from making their own decisions about recreational drug use. The follow-up argument to this is usually yes, but what about the dire health consequences? The solution to that lies in harm reduction approaches, not punitive ones. A health-based approach to drugs is the only way forward.

Such a health-based approach could be modelled upon Portugal, which passed a bill of decriminalisation in 2001 as a response to an increasing heroin problem. A harm-reduction approach, the bill stated that previous offences of use and possession for personal use of illicit substances were to be reduced to administrative offences, meaning breaches would be dealt with in civil courts, not criminal. No distinction was made between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ drugs.

This change in legislation did not legalise drugs, but it decriminalised them. In Portugal, it remains a criminal offence to produce, distribute, and sell drugs. This means that users are still only able to purchase drugs from illicit marketplaces. However, these changes decriminalise users and reserve punitive response for producers, distributors, and traffickers of drugs. This shift in mindset means addicts are treated as patients in need of care, rather than criminals.

This seems to have worked for Portugal; heroin use has decreased dramatically following decriminalisation, as have overdoses. By using funding previously spent on policing and imprisonment, Portugal has been able to provide better healthcare to those addicted to drugs. The approach to the problem has shifted to a community-based response that looks at the whole picture, not just the individual user.

A harm reduction approach allows better access to healthcare for addicts in several ways. Safe injecting facilities provide a medically supervised environment for injecting drug users, reducing instances of fatal overdose and the contraction of diseases such as HIV/AIDS from sharing needles. Opponents of injecting facilities should consider this reason enough to change their mindset. A HIV outbreak can and will affect entire communities, and is not restricted to certain groups.

It also allows users to legally submit substances for medical testing to ensure they aren’t lethal to use. As drug production is criminalised and thus unregulated, using is like playing a game of Russian Roulette. Synthetic drugs can be cut with other agents, or produced in backyard cement mixers. Even without decriminalisation, legal regulation is a necessary step towards preventing drug-related deaths.

Yet another major benefit of decriminalising drug use is reducing the burden upon the criminal justice system. Significant costs accompany the policing of drug use and subsequent criminal trials. The expense of incarcerating a group of offenders, who are likely to reoffend upon release and begin the whole process over again, is extravagant.

The war on drugs is the war we never needed to have

One of the clearest demonstrators of the ineffectiveness of Australia’s war on drugs is the growing addiction rate to crystal methamphetamines, colloquially known as ice. After a dramatic uptick in use during the early 2000s, Australia has one of the highest addiction rates to ice amongst developed nations. Mainly exported out of China, ice has spread to even the most remote parts of the country, creating what some have labelled as an ‘ice epidemic.’ Australia’s response has been to focus almost entirely upon trying to (unsuccessfully) fight supply; it has done little to attempt to understand or reduce demand.

Another indicator is the record number of opium overdoses that have continued to grow alongside the war on drugs. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the number of deaths caused by opium overdose has doubled since 2005.

It should now be evident to policymakers, after decades of trying, that attacking supply and increasing arrests is not the way out. Waging war on drugs is nothing more than an emotive statement to sway pliable voters; it doesn’t deliver results, it doesn’t stop the market, and it doesn’t cure addiction.

If Australia wants to get serious about the problem we need to implement substantial changes at a societal level. Moving out of criminalisation and towards harm reduction is the only way forward. As for the war on drugs, it’s pretty clear we’ve already lost.