Overdose of failure
By Piers Akerman
May 03, 2007 12:00
TWO months ago, Britain's Independent newspaper published a front-page apology for campaigning for the decriminalisation of marijuana a decade ago.
It took some guts for the soft-Left newspaper to admit its error but the facts about the harm caused by marijuana use were too alarming for even The Independent's trendy inner-urban editors to live with.
Among the views that convinced the newspaper to execute its dramatic U-turn was that offered by Robin Murray, Professor of psychiatry at London's Institute of Psychiatry, who estimated that at least 25,000 of Britain's 250,000 schizophrenics could have avoided the illness if they had not used cannabis.
The newspaper finally realised that society had seriously underestimated how dangerous cannabis really is, and it took a courageous step to correct its public position.
In Australia, the state and territory governments have yet to come to their senses about marijuana, with various dopey lobby groups attempting to legalise weed by stealth.
In some states, possession of two marijuana plants or 300g of marijuana is dealt with by the equivalent of a traffic ticket or an on-the-spot fine, and the left-wing of the ALP and members of the Greens Party pleading for users of dope and drugs such as ecstasy to be placed beyond the reach of the police.
As surveys indicate there are twice as many marijuana users in Australia as in the UK, an extrapolation of the British figures could mean there are 50,000 Australians who are schizophrenic or at risk of schizophrenia.
But instead of responding to this threat, the states prefer to roll along with the libertarians, as The Independent and the British Government did until this year.
The most obscene evidence of the state's softly-softly approach to drugs remains the NSW Government's embrace of its Kings Cross shooting gallery despite the absence of any hard evidence that it serves any purpose other than to ensure that addicts will always have a place to legally shoot-up if they so choose when they happen to be in the area and in possession of illicit drugs.
Put simply, the reports produced by the heroically named Medically Supervised Injecting Centre fall apart when examined by competent and genuinely independent experts.
A review of the statistics by Dr Joe Santamaria (former head of community medicine, St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne); Dr Stuart Reece (addiction medicine specialist, Brisbane); Dr Lucy Sullivan (social researcher); Dr Greg Pike (director of Southern Cross Bio-Ethics Institute, Adelaide) and Gary Christian (senior manager, welfare industry) demonstrate that despite the claims of the shooting gallery's advocates, it is unlikely to have saved even one life.
That is based on the shooting gallery's estimate that it saved four lives a year, an estimate which didn't take into account the increase in the number of overdoses. When statistically adjusted, the shooting gallery staff saved 0.18 lives in its initial 18-month evaluation period, the experts claim.
Last week, The Daily Telegraph highlighted the evidence that the shooting gallery had abysmally failed to refer its junkie clients for treatment which might have led to them ending their addiction.
According to its figures, only 3.5 per cent of the users were referred to detoxification clinics and just 1 per cent were referred to rehabilitation.
The review compiled by the experts mentioned concludes that the shooting gallery has failed the three tests on which the NSW Government based its trial: that it reduce overdose deaths; provide a gateway to treatment; and reduce the problem of discarded needles and provide safety to injectors living with the threat of overdose.
The reviewers found that the shooting gallery had in fact increased drug taking, increased drug trafficking and created a honey-pot effect in its vicinity, just as objectors had originally warned.
According to the shooting gallery's own data, heroin constituted just 38 per cent of drugs injected on the premises in 2006. Cocaine and ice, which are highly destructive in the long term, were commonly injected.
On average, those who used the shooting gallery took advantage of the taxpayer-provided facility for just one out of every 35 injections they gave themselves, and, based on the overdose figures published by the shooting gallery, the overdose rate in the centre was a staggering 36 times higher than on the streets of Kings Cross.
The shooting gallery's own staff attributed the high overdose rate at the facility to junkies taking greater risks with higher dosages of heroin when they were there.
In effect, they were relying on the publicly funded staff to monitor their health and revive them if necessary, as they experimented to see how high they could get.
Further, the NSW Government's so-called independent evaluation, which was released in July 2003, was prepared by a team of five, three of whom were colleagues at the same university faculty as the director of the facility, and a fourth was among those who spoke for such a facility at the NSW Government's 1999 Drug Summit. Drug Free Australia has a copy of its report on its website at
http://www.drugfree.org.au.
The shooting gallery slipped through as a trial – it has now been on trial for six years with no rational reason for continuing operation.
The Federal Government has not independently evaluated its success. It is awaiting an assess- ment prepared by the NSW Government's team.
Little wonder that the average person might conclude that the drug-addled are now running governments, state and federal.
