David Caldicott | ACT drug law changes won't be easy, but it's right

If the experience from other jurisdictions is anything to go by, it's all probably going to be OK.

One might be excused for thinking otherwise. Some of the commentary on what, globally, could now be considered a rather mundane proposition, is bordering on the unhinged.

The idea of a drug-free Australia is the magical thinking of a fading demographic, no more possible than my gifting my youngest daughter a real unicorn for Christmas.

In contrast, a potentially attainable aspiration for Australia, worthy both of attention and investment, is a country where drug-related harm is a reduced to the smallest possible quantum.

Currently, we measure our successes in an unwinnable "war on drugs" in the number of metric tonnes seized by customs; weights which, having zero impact on either availability or street prices, are in reality, no more than a reflection of the relentless appetite for drugs in Australia.

That drugs can cause harm to individuals and society is not a matter of contention - witness the impact on Australia of merely legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

Concerning illicit drugs we have now arrived at a point where our traditional prohibitionist approaches to drugs have become more harmful than the very drugs themselves. Our policies are more akin to an autoimmune response - hyperactive, overzealous, and damaging to all that they encounter.

The former US president Jimmy Carter saw this coming decades ago, stating: "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed."

And that is what the ACT is doing with these proposed changes.

Drugs policy is a wicked problem - one that morphs quickly over time, and requires the intervention of multiple parties, often with conflicting agendas, to solve. As such, it is not one much-loved by any but the most conscientious of elected representatives.

That the ACT is leading the charge on this is hardly surprising and that the predominant opposition comes from outside our own jurisdiction is nothing new.

This has been a pattern for the ACT for quite some time. In the late '90s, the Howard government, and a concerted media campaign by conservative news outlets, quashed an innovative proposal for a heroin trial in the ACT, despite strong local support.

Similarly, the first attempts to conduct pill testing in Australia were scuppered by a collaborative effort between territory and federal Liberal governments, on the curiously geographical premise that it was to occur on Crown land.

So, we're quite familiar with the idea of others having strong opinions about our being innovative and progressive. Howls of indignation are merely the raucous call of large flocks of sulphur-crested cockatoos that grace some of our neighbourhoods - sure, they're irritating, but we've grown accustomed to them in the ecosystem of this debate - and they are mostly ignored.

Early experiments in decriminalisation elsewhere include the much-cited case of Portugal, where a little-known prime minister took bold steps in the early 2000s, similar to those that the ACT is taking now. It obviously did his political career no harm, as he's now the Secretary-General of the UN.

And critics of such approaches are quite correct in saying that the implementation of policy in that country has not been not perfect - it's just better than what they had before.

Given the enormous sums that that we spend on law enforcement pertaining to drugs in Australia, (with no measurable KPI for success) it is possible that decriminalisation might save us some money, but it cannot work unless the appropriate health support mechanisms accompany the process.

If it remains cost-neutral, as is more likely, the infrastructure created to support the process will benefit the whole of society - even the people who disapprove of drug use - and not just the people who use drugs or those that chase them for a living for doing so.

All this, without destroying the lives of a single young person with an unnecessary criminal record.

There are some that believe that changes that we have introduced in the ACT don't go far enough, and that for example drugs, should be legalised. What has been introduced has been what is possible, within the Overton window for drugs policy in the ACT.

Law enforcement will still be pursuing the vectors of large-scale distribution, free from the burden and expense persecuting and prosecuting consumers. For many of their tribe, that will be a relief.

The ACT is not perfect. There is still much for it consider in drugs policy, in both implementation, and in the review of that which has already been implemented.

Our successes to date in the ACT, without the sky falling in, show a way forward for other states and territories in Australia - each must choose their path.

At some stage, federal politicians will need to take a position on the issue that dare not be mentioned, but drugs policy has been the place where ideas have gone to die, in Australian politics, over the last quarter century.

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The fact that so many other jurisdictions are emulating our success with pill testing, and even keen to call the innovation their own, is more than merely flattering - it suggests that decriminalisation might also be a policy for which some appetite exists interstate.

The national population is moving faster on these issues than their elected representatives, and political parties unable to embrace these changes may find themselves usurped by those that can.

The issue of drug policy is one inextricably tied in with cultural cognition. The public position that politicians take on drugs serves as a signifier to a base that on this issue, too, I walk with you.

Much of the work on cultural cognition, by Dan Kahan at Yale, has been regarding gun ownership in the USA - but it crosses many tropes pertaining to race, religion, gender, and even climate change.

Here in Australia, in the course of campaigning for effective, rational drugs policy, I have lost track of the number of state and federal politicians, of every shade, who have agreed with our proposals behind closed doors, while claiming an inability to take a public position that matched their private beliefs.

In the ACT, we've chosen a route of compassion over that of stigma - not because it is the easy thing to do, but because it's the right thing to do. The strip-searching of children as young as 12 or 13, (not based on evidence, but on the beliefs of an individual canine), can be decried entirely on the grounds of ethics and morality - but also on the grounds of pragmatism.

Such escalating and draconian policies, at fantastic expense, have no effect on the desired outcomes for most parents - fewer young Australians being harmed by drugs.

Rather than ratcheting down on that which we know does not work, the ACT has made a conscious decision to implement that which does.

Critics should wait to see what happens as a consequence - and be prepared to eat crow - if this turns out as well as many expect that it might.