investigation
Should WA surrender in war on drugs and decriminalise cocaine for personal use?

If you think the rising cost of your weekly shop is bad, consider the inflationary nature of the cocaine business. Pick up a kilogram of cocaine in Colombia for $3000 and by the time it reaches Australia — the biggest per capita user of cocaine in the world — that same kilogram is worth as much as $300,000-$400,000. That hefty mark-up reflects the insatiable demand for a product that the globe’s narco-traffickers produces 2000 tonnes of a year. Some of the cocaine that flows to Australia, mostly from South and Central America, is intercepted by law enforcement before it hits the street, like the $120 million seizure from a campervan in Port Hedland earlier this year, thought, unsurpisingly to be linked to a South American drug cartel. The rest makes its way into the bloodstreams of drug users, whose habit puts them at risk of overdose, addiction and jail — at least in most of the country. The Australian Capital Territory this week became the first place in Australia to decriminalise illicit drugs, including cocaine and heroin, for personal use. That means being caught with a small amount of cocaine from October 2023 will be similar to a speeding ticket: you could be cautioned, fined or referred to a drug program. ACT health minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said the Australian-first was about harm minimisation, reducing the stigma around drug use and boosting access to treatment. “This sensible reform is based on the expert advice that a health-focused, harm-reduction approach delivers the best outcome for people using drugs,” she said. Cannabis is already decriminalised to varying degrees in parts of the country, including the ACT, South Australia and the Northern Territory. WA Premier Mark McGowan rejected a push by Legalise Cannabis WA earlier this year to go down a similar road, which is a reasonable indication that the State Government will not be rushing to follow the ACT’s lead on cocaine. National surveys suggest a majority of Australians support decriminalising or legalising cannabis. The same cannot be said of cocaine. But Australians raised on a diet of anti-drug messaging from governments and health professionals might be surprised by the number of experts who think the country would be better off at least decriminalising — and potentially even legalising — drugs like cocaine. The argument goes like this: prohibition has failed so why not make it legal, safer and taxable? Losing the war Since US President Richard Nixon launched the “war on drugs” in 1971 the western world has been on the losing side. Drug use has soared, while thousands are killed every year by ruthless cartels intent on reaping the rewards of a $2 billion global industry. Campaigning on a pro-drugs platform in the western world tends to be a vote killer. But in the countries that bear the brunt of the drug wars, that is changing. Colombian president Gustavo Petro and Peru president Pedro Castillo have both publicly supported some level of decriminalisation of cocaine. Earlier this month respected UK magazine, The Economist, argued in favour of legalising cocaine in part to “defang” the drug gangs. “Prohibition is not working — and that can be seen most strikingly with cocaine, not cannabis,” it argued. “Legal cocaine would be less dangerous, since legitimate producers would not adulterate it with other white powders and dosage would be clearly labelled, as it is on whisky bottles. . . Legalisation would defang the gangs. Obviously, some would find other revenues but the loss of cocaine profits would help curb their power to recruit, buy top-end weapons and corrupt officials. This would reduce drug-related violence everywhere, but most of all in the worst-affected region, Latin America.” Australian academic Nicole Lee, an adjunct professor at the National Drug Research Institute with three decades of experience in the sector says cocaine should be legal but highly regulated, the way alcohol and tobacco already are. “It’s been clear for some time that this war on drugs idea and the prohibition of drugs is just not working,” she told The Sunday Times. “Whether you agree with drug use or not the approach we’ve been taking for 30, 40, 50 years hasn’t reduced use, it hasn’t reduced harms and it’s actually increased the number of problems so clearly we need to do something else. “The talk in Australia is mostly about decriminalisation at the moment and we’ve had experience with that — South Australia, the Northern Territory and the ACT all decriminalised cannabis years ago and nothing happened. “The next iteration of that is to essentially do the same with other drugs as well. The war on drugs and the prohibitionists approach has actually made drugs more dangerous. By regulating them they will actually get safer. “It seems paradoxical to someone who believes drugs are dangerous and the idea that drugs are banned because they’re dangerous is actually the other way around: they’re dangerous because they’re banned.” How did we get here? Cocaine was banned in Australia in the early 20th Century before its recreational use was particularly widespread, despite some high profile international fans like Sigmund Freud and Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. That decision had its roots in something called the International Opium Convention and arguably had as much to do with international relations as harm minimisation. A century on it’s hard to see prohibition as a raging success, given the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime put global production at a record 1982t in 2020, nearly double 2014’s figure. Our country’s top cop, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw, told a senate estimates hearing in February that organised crime saw Australia as a hugely profitable market with one gram of cocaine selling for as much as $400 a gram. “It’s all about the money. I think it’s the prices that drug syndicates can obtain in Australia compared with other countries,” he said. “Organised crime only exists for profit — personal gain and personal wealth. What we have seen up close in real time is that a lot of these organised crime groups are all collaborating together. “It’s something that we hadn’t seen before at scale and offshore. Archenemies would gather together if it’s about making profit from the misery off, unfortunately, the end user.” The hidden cost overseas With some notable exceptions popular culture depictions of cocaine tend towards the glamorous and show just how widespread its use is among the middle and upper classes: think Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface, Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street and even Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, mistaking heroin for cocaine. But the reality of the cocaine business lacks the glossy veneer of Hollywood. One-third of the world’s murders take place in Latin America, despite it having less than one-tenth of the world’s population, largely because of fighting among gangs seeking to control the cocaine trade. The murder rate in Colombia and Mexico is three and four times respectively higher than in the US. In some parts of countries like Colombia, Uruguay and Ecuador the drug gangs are more powerful and better armed than the police and successfully infiltrate the government. Former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernandez is currently facing charges of conspiring to import cocaine into the US, which he denies. Drug gangs often recruit children to work for them because they are too young to be prosecuted, while villagers who live close to coca plantations have reported violence and intimidation. The cost at home Cocaine use in Australia is on the rise: 2019’s National Drug Strategy Household Survey found four per cent of the country’s adults had taken it in the past year, compared to 2.5 per cent in 2016. Alcohol and Drug Foundation chief executive Erin Lalor said that, as of 2019, 43 per cent of Australians over the age of 14 had tried illicit drugs at least once and 16 per cent had used them in the past year. “The criminalisation of drug use leads to stigma, which can stop people from reaching out for help and support when they need it,” she said. “Jail time or having a criminal record for drug possession can also have significant negative impacts on individuals, families, and communities, including reduced employment opportunities and earnings. Sadly, this can also have a flow on effect on other generations.” In Australia, law enforcement accounts for 61 to 69 per cent of the country’s drug budget, compared to 20 to 23 per cent for treatment, according to Monash University Professor of Addiction Studies Dan Lubman. As a result, he pointed out in a recent article in favour of decriminalising drugs for personal use, 80,000 Australians get arrested for drug use every year while up to half a million cannot access treatment. “Drug use is not a problem we can arrest our way out of. People continue to use drugs even when it is unlawful to do so,” he wrote for Monash Lens. “And criminalisation causes many people to delay seeking help when they have a problem with illegal drugs for fear of getting in trouble. Not only does criminalisation limit help-seeking, we punish and imprison people instead of giving them the treatment and support they need.” The global response The ACT may be an early mover in Australia but it is following in the footsteps of other countries, most notably Portugal, which decriminalised the personal possession and use of drugs 20 years ago. People caught with small amounts of illegal drugs, including cocaine face fines, community service or rehab, depending on the verdict of a panel of experts. Dr Lalor said the Portugal experiment, which was accompanied by “significant investment and reform in the health and social welfare system for people who use drugs” did not lead to an explosion in drug use or drug-related deaths. “Levels of drug use in Portugal have been below the European average for the 20 years since decriminalisation,” she said. “Further to that, Portugal has some of the lowest rates of drug use in Europe for young people aged between 15-34. “In 2001, Portugal had a drug death rate around the average level of that in the EU. As of 2021, the death rate in Portugal is around a quarter of the EU average. A decline in the number of people assessed as dependent on drugs. . . was also observed in the first fifteen years of the policy. “It does not appear that drug-related crime has increased in Portugal since drugs were decriminalised. Criminal drug offences in Portugal declined from around 14,000 in 2000 to between 5000–5500 per year after decriminalisation.” The Netherlands has a somewhat similar policy, which allows police to turn a blind eye, give a warning or a fine and, in the US, the state of Oregon recently embraced a policy broadly in the vein of the Portugal model. The dangers of decriminalisation Not everyone finds the argument for decriminalising or legalising drugs, even cannabis, convincing. Before the ACT signed off on its new laws Mr Kershaw had already suggested it could be setting itself up as a hub for “narcotourism”. “From personal experience, having lived in the Netherlands and having seen that Amsterdam experiment, they’re now revisiting that whole system there,” he told a Senate estimates hearing. “They had something called narcotourism, which involved a lot of organised crime set up and headquartered in Amsterdam because of what was considered over there to be the soft drug policy. We’ve seen it in other cities as well. So now the Netherlands are changing their policy settings on that front. “But we tend to not get involved in policy. It’s a matter for Home Affairs and other agencies to decide that, but, of course, as police, we’ve seen that that hasn’t worked as effectively. It can have unforeseen consequences.” AFP drug strategy commander Kate Ferry told The Sunday Times there was a “false perception” by some people that cocaine was a safe drug. On top of health conditions that can be caused by cocaine use, including psychosis and heart disease, Australia recorded 86 cocaine-induced deaths in 2019 and 2020. “Police see first-hand the consequences that substances such as cocaine, methamphetamine. . . and heroin have on cycles of crime, including violent and organised crime, placing the broader community’s safety at risk,” she said. “Whether possession of illicit drugs should be decriminalised or legalised is a matter for government,” she said. Decriminalisation v Legalisation There’s a big difference between decriminalising and legalising cocaine: the former means drugs are still illegal, it’s just that drug users don’t go to jail over it. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare research suggests growing support for decriminalisation of some drugs, particularly cannabis. A 2019 survey found 78 per cent supported cannabis decriminalisation, up from 66 per cent in 2010. But fewer than one in 10 (8 per cent) were onboard with legalising cocaine. Even the ADF does not support legalisation of cocaine, only decriminalisation. “The Alcohol and Drug Foundation continues to monitor outcomes in places where drugs are legalised, however, currently there’s not enough evidence for us to support the legalisation of drugs in Australia,” Dr Lalor said. Decriminalisation is an obvious first step, Professor Lee said, but it doesn’t go far enough. Individuals might suffer less and the criminal justice system will have resources freed up but the industry would still be built on organised crime. “I do believe that we need to move towards what I would call regulation, rather than legalisation — regulating drugs the way we do with legal drugs, like alcohol,” she said. “There are strict rules around how much alcohol can go into something, people can’t just sell 100 per cent proof alcohol, and there’s regulation around where it can be sold, who it can be sold to. “I do believe that decriminalisation is a really easy step that every state should do right now. All it does is remove the criminal penalties, it doesn’t require huge legislative change or huge cultural change. But I do think we should be moving towards regulation of all drugs. That’s going to be a much bigger step.” Long term, the ACT could provide the rest of the country with a home-grown test case for whether cocaine should be decriminalised. In the near term, don’t expect WA to follow ACT’s lead. Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said the State Government had “no plans to decriminalise cocaine”. “We are committed to improving mental health outcomes for West Australians and ensuring people receive the mental health care they need,” she said. “Through the 2022-23 State Budget, we invested a record $1.3 billion in mental health and alcohol and other drug services, an almost 13 per cent increase on the previous Budget.” Alcohol and Drug Support Line: 9442 5000 or 1800 198 024

investigationShould WA surrender in war on drugs and decriminalise cocaine for personal use?

investigation
Should WA surrender in war on drugs and decriminalise cocaine for personal use?