drplatypus
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Sep 9, 2003
- Messages
- 260
FYI...
ANALYSIS
Drugs policy should be based on science, not ideology, says Dr David Caldicott. So it’s time for researchers to stand up and be heard.
Old soldiers, faced with the past horrors of conflict, are often the last people to embrace war as a solution for society’s problems. It is instead those who have no real experience of the heat of battle who always seem so keen to commit other people’s children to an uncertain fate in the pursuit of questionable goals.
And so it is with Australia’s commitment to the so-called war on drugs.
In 2004, a federal government committee of enquiry released a report on illicit drugs, The Road to Recovery. In it, a group of politicians questioned the validity of the term of ‘harm minimisation’ in the Australian context. In response, the peak medical body in Australia, The Australian Medical Association, stated that any move away from harm minimisation and towards prohibition or ‘zero tolerance’ would have “catastrophic” consequences for Australia. In September 2007, the same committee, with the same chairperson, arrived at the same unsupported conclusions, in its predictably-titled sequel, The Winnable War on Drugs.
Readers of this column might be forgiven for assuming drugs policy in Australia is driven by impartial commitment to science and medicine. The reality is that although excellent research is produced in this country, it is filtered through a dark glass of religious morality, pseudoscience, political spin and electoral exploitation, creating a climate of fear and intimidation in the research community, and leaving world-class ideas on the cutting room floor. I greatly suspect the same is the case in other countries afflicted by drug problems.
If The Winnable War on Drugs shows us anything, it is this; it unmasks, with a clarity heretofore unrevealed, the shabby tactics used by politicians in Australia to attempt to pervert science for their own political gain.
Perhaps the least damning aspect of this report is its dishonesty. 188 expert opinions and submissions were made. 133 endorsed harm minimisation. And yet bizarrely, this taxpayer-funded government report arrived at the conclusion that harm minimisation should be abandoned. Go figure.
Further conclusions, seemingly conjured from thin air, or reflecting frank intellectual failure, abound. How is the injecting room in Syndey’s Kings Cross such a bad thing when the government’s own independent assessment found that it had saved over $2 billion in the treatment of blood-borne disease? Should intravenous drug users in Australia be forced to endure a slow and painful death sentence for the sake of a certain group of people’s sense of morality?
Much is made of the Swedish model of drugs prohibition in this report. Yet three separate submissions to the report pointed out significant flaws in the Swedish system – such as higher rates of hepatitis C and deaths caused by overdose – and yet were not included in the final report. It appears that failure to consider this opposing view was a deliberate omission, merely because it contradicted the government’s position on zero tolerance.
The use of a 1950’s morality approach to drug use by 21st century children is ill-informed. A recent article in The Medical Journal of Australia suggests that 85 per cent of young Australians between the age of 15 and 25 already know about the harmful effects of drugs. What can someone of the age and demographic background of the majority of the reports authors (conservative and on the wrong side of their prime) tell young Australians that they don’t already know? The youngest member on the committee was one of three signatories of a dissenting report, which found the whole report to be a ‘waste of tax-payers’ money’.
No evidence exists to support the suggestion that the use of the term “recreational drugs” has the slightest influence on either the patterns of uptake or the patterns continuing of drug use in young people. The reality is that it offends a middle-aged sensibility, and that young people actually do use drugs for recreational purposes, regardless of how unsavoury those of their grandparent’s generation find the concept.
It has been the tradition of the research community to not dignify inane and unfounded political statements on drugs policy with commentary, and consequently politicians and wowsers alike have had free-kicks in the debate on drugs in Australia. The solution to the hole that we find ourselves in is not to dig deeper and faster, as anyone advocating an escalation on the ‘war on drugs’ would suggest. It is neither cowardice nor capitulation to refuse to fight in a war that is unjust, a war that is doing more harm than the very drugs it purports to combat. We need a lot less martial rhetoric, and a lot more time and energy spent in understanding the motivation behind young Australian’s interest in drug use, rather than making them the whipping boys and girls for the larger ills of a bloated, selfish society. A rhetorical war may be easier to prosecute, but does nothing to a address the meat of the problem.
In summary, as a piece of scientific research, this report does not meet the standards of an undergraduate degree paper, never mind the rigid criteria for publication in any peer-reviewed body of literature. We are left with one of two unpalatable conclusions – either the authors truly don’t have the capacity to understand the intricacies of the debate, or they do, and are prepared to misrepresent the science for the purposes of their own tawdry political goals. Either of these should disqualify the authors from any role in policy-making.
Dr David Caldicott is an emergency doctor and research fellow at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/fca
www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/fhs
www.safety1st.org
Source: Cosmos Magazineine
ISSUE 18 • DEC 07/JAN 2008
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/
ANALYSIS
Drugs policy should be based on science, not ideology, says Dr David Caldicott. So it’s time for researchers to stand up and be heard.
Old soldiers, faced with the past horrors of conflict, are often the last people to embrace war as a solution for society’s problems. It is instead those who have no real experience of the heat of battle who always seem so keen to commit other people’s children to an uncertain fate in the pursuit of questionable goals.
And so it is with Australia’s commitment to the so-called war on drugs.
In 2004, a federal government committee of enquiry released a report on illicit drugs, The Road to Recovery. In it, a group of politicians questioned the validity of the term of ‘harm minimisation’ in the Australian context. In response, the peak medical body in Australia, The Australian Medical Association, stated that any move away from harm minimisation and towards prohibition or ‘zero tolerance’ would have “catastrophic” consequences for Australia. In September 2007, the same committee, with the same chairperson, arrived at the same unsupported conclusions, in its predictably-titled sequel, The Winnable War on Drugs.
Readers of this column might be forgiven for assuming drugs policy in Australia is driven by impartial commitment to science and medicine. The reality is that although excellent research is produced in this country, it is filtered through a dark glass of religious morality, pseudoscience, political spin and electoral exploitation, creating a climate of fear and intimidation in the research community, and leaving world-class ideas on the cutting room floor. I greatly suspect the same is the case in other countries afflicted by drug problems.
If The Winnable War on Drugs shows us anything, it is this; it unmasks, with a clarity heretofore unrevealed, the shabby tactics used by politicians in Australia to attempt to pervert science for their own political gain.
Perhaps the least damning aspect of this report is its dishonesty. 188 expert opinions and submissions were made. 133 endorsed harm minimisation. And yet bizarrely, this taxpayer-funded government report arrived at the conclusion that harm minimisation should be abandoned. Go figure.
Further conclusions, seemingly conjured from thin air, or reflecting frank intellectual failure, abound. How is the injecting room in Syndey’s Kings Cross such a bad thing when the government’s own independent assessment found that it had saved over $2 billion in the treatment of blood-borne disease? Should intravenous drug users in Australia be forced to endure a slow and painful death sentence for the sake of a certain group of people’s sense of morality?
Much is made of the Swedish model of drugs prohibition in this report. Yet three separate submissions to the report pointed out significant flaws in the Swedish system – such as higher rates of hepatitis C and deaths caused by overdose – and yet were not included in the final report. It appears that failure to consider this opposing view was a deliberate omission, merely because it contradicted the government’s position on zero tolerance.
The use of a 1950’s morality approach to drug use by 21st century children is ill-informed. A recent article in The Medical Journal of Australia suggests that 85 per cent of young Australians between the age of 15 and 25 already know about the harmful effects of drugs. What can someone of the age and demographic background of the majority of the reports authors (conservative and on the wrong side of their prime) tell young Australians that they don’t already know? The youngest member on the committee was one of three signatories of a dissenting report, which found the whole report to be a ‘waste of tax-payers’ money’.
No evidence exists to support the suggestion that the use of the term “recreational drugs” has the slightest influence on either the patterns of uptake or the patterns continuing of drug use in young people. The reality is that it offends a middle-aged sensibility, and that young people actually do use drugs for recreational purposes, regardless of how unsavoury those of their grandparent’s generation find the concept.
It has been the tradition of the research community to not dignify inane and unfounded political statements on drugs policy with commentary, and consequently politicians and wowsers alike have had free-kicks in the debate on drugs in Australia. The solution to the hole that we find ourselves in is not to dig deeper and faster, as anyone advocating an escalation on the ‘war on drugs’ would suggest. It is neither cowardice nor capitulation to refuse to fight in a war that is unjust, a war that is doing more harm than the very drugs it purports to combat. We need a lot less martial rhetoric, and a lot more time and energy spent in understanding the motivation behind young Australian’s interest in drug use, rather than making them the whipping boys and girls for the larger ills of a bloated, selfish society. A rhetorical war may be easier to prosecute, but does nothing to a address the meat of the problem.
In summary, as a piece of scientific research, this report does not meet the standards of an undergraduate degree paper, never mind the rigid criteria for publication in any peer-reviewed body of literature. We are left with one of two unpalatable conclusions – either the authors truly don’t have the capacity to understand the intricacies of the debate, or they do, and are prepared to misrepresent the science for the purposes of their own tawdry political goals. Either of these should disqualify the authors from any role in policy-making.
Dr David Caldicott is an emergency doctor and research fellow at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/fca
www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/fhs
www.safety1st.org
Source: Cosmos Magazineine
ISSUE 18 • DEC 07/JAN 2008
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/
