I'm going to talk to you about the negative impact
on the health of prohibition law enforcement drug policies.
I think to explain this topic fully,
we need to go back in history
and time and look at the way in which drug laws were developed.
If we look at for example,
drug laws that were developed about 100 years ago,
we know that drug laws were developed because of concerns about drug use,
but mostly for specific reasons about who used the drug and why they use the drug.
Drug laws were developed,
I guess with a major goal to try to eradicate or try to stop
people using drugs for non-medical or non-scientific purposes.
At the forefront of that approach towards eradicating drug use, were the police.
The police were assigned the task of stopping people using drugs,
and also eliminating the supply of drugs.
There was a belief that if you had a strong law enforcement approach,
then that would deter others from using drugs.
However, we recognize deeply through
prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s in United States,
that instead of eradicating alcohol use,
it drived it underground and it made it even more harmful.
We also know that a black market developed
with criminal elements who ran the alcohol trade.
There was illicit drug policy developed and laws got tougher,
and I guess sentences got longer,
and police powers increased.
We also recognize that what happened with alcohol or so happened with illicit drugs.
We found that because illicit drugs became part of the criminal networks,
they were produced by criminal networks and the demand was still there,
we found that there were many negative health outcomes from illicit drug use.
Most of these were not necessarily because of the riskiness of the drug itself,
and we know that there are risks in all drug use,
but most of the risks were coming from the fact that these drugs have
been made illicit and were being manufactured and produced.
Drugs were being grown and distributed by
criminal elements where there were no safety precautions,
no standards of production and no monitoring of their safety.
So, a number of health responses came about because of that.
One of the major issues that we found,
particularly in terms of the way in which people use drugs through injecting drug use,
was the fact that many blood-borne viruses such as HIV and
hepatitis C were spread through injecting drug use.
We've known that because of the policing of illicit drugs,
particularly drugs such as heroin, methamphetamine,
these drugs which can be injected into place target,
the production use of those drugs,
many people who inject those drugs find that policing drives them underground.
They inject unsafely by sharing injecting equipment
and consequently HIV and other blood-borne viruses are easily spread to communities.
So we know that there are policing policies and policing
practices such as strong law enforcement around needle and syringe programs,
which can be counterproductive to health outcomes.
So what we need to do is,
we need to look at some strategies whereby we
acknowledge that policing will not eradicate drug use,
and that by having a prohibition approach,
illicit drugs are becoming more risky and
more concerning in terms of the impact on drug users.
We need to look at some health strategies that not only can reduce those risks,
but that can also be supported by police.
I think the first thing that we need to do is acknowledge that both police
and health have a key role in reducing drug related harms in the community.
I think it's really important to have a strategic alignment
or a common goal between law enforcement and health.
I don't think there's
much potential positive outcomes
from having a health system and health agencies working in one direction,
and law enforcement working in another.
The law enforcement approach can be very counterproductive to healthy outcomes,
particularly to people who use illicit drugs such as injecting drug users.
So we need to look at a common goal,
we need to look at a strategic alignment and
acknowledge that we should be working in the same direction.