NEWS: Australian - 18/03/09 'Labor softens heroin stance as it splits from US policy'

Labor softens heroin stance as it splits from US policy
Paul Maley and Adam Cresswell
March 18, 2009

THE Rudd Government has moved to reassert the role of controversial harm-reduction strategies in the fight against the illicit drug trade, splitting from the US at a major international drug forum on the issue.

As law enforcement and health workers report an increase in the amount of heroin on Australia's streets and the number of overdoses, Australian National Council on Drugs executive director Gino Vumbaca said the election of the Rudd Government had heralded a shift in rhetoric in the fight against the drug trade.

Mr Vumbaca said that under the Howard government, there was an "over-emphasis" on anti-drug strategies that focused on the supply and interdiction of illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine and ecstasy.

"Now what we're seeing is an emphasis on supply, demand and harm," Mr Vumbaca told The Australian.

By way of example, Mr Vumbaca cited Australia's position at the annual UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna.

During a ministerial session last week, Australia sided with a bloc of 26 mostly European nations, who protested that the term harm reduction had been pointedly excluded from a political declaration.

The bloc of nations resolved to interpret a key phrase in the communique that referred to "related support services" as including harm-reduction strategies.
"We hope that the unnecessarily controversial discussion about the term 'harm reduction' will be closed and that we will debate and find a consensus on the substance of this concept, its principles, its limitations and its place in a comprehensive anti-drugs strategy within the framework of the international drug control treaties," the statement said.

Australia's position put it at loggerheads with its usual diplomatic ally, the US, which joined six other nations, including Russia, Japan and Cuba, in signing a dissenting statement.

Mr Vumbaca said that, under the Howard government, Australia would probably have sided with the US or abstained.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon said yesterday there had been no change in Australia's "tough on drugs" stance.

Health and police workers said that, while there appeared to be a spike in heroin use, there was no evidence it was flooding the market in the record quantities witnessed a decade ago.

NSW police sergeant Scott Weber, based in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, said there had been a "a slight resurgence of heroin".

"We are seeing a little bit more but I wouldn't say it's an epidemic," he told The Australian.

But the head of the Kings Cross legalised injecting room, Marianne Jauncey, said yesterday her clinic had seen an increase in heroin use and overdoses in the closing months of last year.

Liberal Party backbencher Bronwyn Bishop, who in 2007 chaired a House of Representatives standing committee inquiry into the impact of illicit drugs, said yesterday harm minimisation had failed.

Ms Bishop's inquiry made a range of hard-hitting recommendations, including the permanent removal of children from drug-addicted parents, restrictions on methadone programs and the withdrawal of funding from programs promoting harm minimisation.

But it was shelved when the Coalition lost the 2007 election.

The latest figures from Victoria show that, while alcohol was in the bloodstream of 20 to 30 per cent of people who had a motor vehicle accident, the percentage of such people who had taken drugs was even higher, at 40 per cent.

Alex Wodak, director of the alcohol and drug service at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital and a leading proponent of harm minimisation, said heroin availability in Australia was directly correlated with production in Burma. He said to link it to harm minimisation was a nonsense.