Flexistentialist
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2002
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Faulty thinking clouds the drugs debate
November 24, 2005
Heroin users need guidance from professionals, not reformed addicts, writes Miranda Devine.
It is desperately sad for Nguyen Tuong Van's family that he is to be hanged in Singapore for heroin trafficking next Friday. You can only hope that last-ditch appeals for clemency are successful.
However, we should not allow our sorrow for Nguyen's imminent death to cloud our hatred of his criminal act.
In much of the public outrage over Singapore's death sentence for the 25-year-old Australian there has been a morally repugnant subtext: that he doesn't deserve to die because he did nothing wrong, or, indeed, that he is a victim of the Federal Government's tough on drugs policy.
One writer of a letter to the Melbourne Age this week claimed Nguyen had committed a "selfless act born of a desperate situation".
In this newspaper's letters page, Al Svirskis of Mount Druitt claimed: "Those more responsible than Nguyen Tuong Van for the wasted lives of heroin users … are the zero-tolerance anti-drug warriors." Legalised prescribed heroin would "save the lives of many users as well as 'mules' like Nguyen".
The reason Nguyen doesn't deserve to die is because we don't believe in judicial killing. But he does deserve severe punishment because what he did was very wrong, regardless of whether he agreed to import heroin to enrich himself or to pay his twin brother's debts. A lot of people have debts and don't stoop to heroin trafficking.
As Singapore's Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, said last week, the 396 grams of heroin found strapped to Nguyen's body and in his backpack at Changi Airport in 2002 were the equivalent of 26,000 doses on the street.
It is not "zero-tolerance anti-drug warriors" who are responsible for lives wasted on heroin. Legalising heroin, which is the ultimate goal of harm-minimisation advocates, might reduce overdose deaths but the normalisation of drug use would only expand the number of addicts.
There is an unfortunate tension between the Federal Government's successful crackdown on drug importation and distribution, which has led to a heroin drought and reduced deaths in recent years, and the implied acceptance of drug use by state-funded harm-minimisation industries.
If, for instance, needle exchange programs are supposed to provide a first point of contact with drug rehabilitation opportunities, what was a health worker at a needle van in Redfern doing facilitating a heroin sale?
This extraordinary story, uncovered by Sun-Herald police reporter John Kidman last weekend, is contained in police statements in a recent murder trial.
The death by heroin overdose of 40-year-old father of four Edward Carr in Redfern in 2004 led to the revenge killing by Carr's best friend, Phillip Harrison, of one of three men who helped buy the heroin. Harrison was found guilty of murder by a Supreme Court jury last week.
But buried in the police brief of evidence is the damning claim that the fatal heroin deal was organised by a man who worked for the needle exchange program.
In a sworn statement dated August 6, 2004, Surry Hills Constable Heath Clark says: "Darrell Martin told us that [he and] Edward Carr approached a male whom Martin knows to be employed by the needle exchange program.
"This male was standing next to the needle exchange bus and [Martin and Carr] inquired about scoring heroin. The needle exchange worker used a mobile phone on their behalf to arrange the purchase of some heroin."
Martin and Carr went to a children's swing in a park near The Block and bought heroin from the dealer, which Carr later injected with fatal consequences.
The claims have never been investigated. A spokesman for the Sydney South West Area Health Service, which runs the Redfern needle exchange bus, said yesterday no action had been taken because "we haven't been given any evidence".
There is no suggestion of any wider involvement by the needle exchange bus or any of its employees. But there is a general perception that workers involved in harm-minimisation programs hold ambiguous moral attitudes towards illicit drug use, perhaps because some themselves use drugs.
It is a curious observation that people who are dependent on drugs or alcohol are often drawn to welfare work aimed at alleviating the misery caused by just such addictions. They are thus incapable of providing clear moral persuasion to steer addicts away from the alcohol or drug abuse. Unwilling or unable to practise abstinence themselves, they cannot advocate it for others.
This is the perception of Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson, who maintains a strict no-alcohol rule for all those who work with his Cape York partnerships. They advocate abstinence in Aboriginal communities, and therefore believe they should walk the walk.
Nothing could be further from Pearson's clear-eyed reality than the notorious case of Marion Watson, the ACT community health worker awarded the Order of Australia medal for her work helping drug addicts. The problem was that Watson's idea of helping was to sell them heroin - about $10,000 worth a week. She was arrested and jailed in 1998.
Watson was the poster girl for the harm-minimisation lobby in the ACT. Her downfall was proof of the folly of non-judgemental programs which advocate "responsible" drug use rather than prevention and treatment.
Attempts to minimise Nguyen's crime do not alleviate his plight. They simply reinforce an attitude in Singapore that Australians are moral relativists, unable to recognise wrongdoing and ever ready to excuse it.
We should be grateful to Singapore for apprehending him, and make the point that he is a criminal, but he is our criminal and we would like to punish him in our own way.
[email protected]
November 24, 2005
Heroin users need guidance from professionals, not reformed addicts, writes Miranda Devine.
It is desperately sad for Nguyen Tuong Van's family that he is to be hanged in Singapore for heroin trafficking next Friday. You can only hope that last-ditch appeals for clemency are successful.
However, we should not allow our sorrow for Nguyen's imminent death to cloud our hatred of his criminal act.
In much of the public outrage over Singapore's death sentence for the 25-year-old Australian there has been a morally repugnant subtext: that he doesn't deserve to die because he did nothing wrong, or, indeed, that he is a victim of the Federal Government's tough on drugs policy.
One writer of a letter to the Melbourne Age this week claimed Nguyen had committed a "selfless act born of a desperate situation".
In this newspaper's letters page, Al Svirskis of Mount Druitt claimed: "Those more responsible than Nguyen Tuong Van for the wasted lives of heroin users … are the zero-tolerance anti-drug warriors." Legalised prescribed heroin would "save the lives of many users as well as 'mules' like Nguyen".
The reason Nguyen doesn't deserve to die is because we don't believe in judicial killing. But he does deserve severe punishment because what he did was very wrong, regardless of whether he agreed to import heroin to enrich himself or to pay his twin brother's debts. A lot of people have debts and don't stoop to heroin trafficking.
As Singapore's Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, said last week, the 396 grams of heroin found strapped to Nguyen's body and in his backpack at Changi Airport in 2002 were the equivalent of 26,000 doses on the street.
It is not "zero-tolerance anti-drug warriors" who are responsible for lives wasted on heroin. Legalising heroin, which is the ultimate goal of harm-minimisation advocates, might reduce overdose deaths but the normalisation of drug use would only expand the number of addicts.
There is an unfortunate tension between the Federal Government's successful crackdown on drug importation and distribution, which has led to a heroin drought and reduced deaths in recent years, and the implied acceptance of drug use by state-funded harm-minimisation industries.
If, for instance, needle exchange programs are supposed to provide a first point of contact with drug rehabilitation opportunities, what was a health worker at a needle van in Redfern doing facilitating a heroin sale?
This extraordinary story, uncovered by Sun-Herald police reporter John Kidman last weekend, is contained in police statements in a recent murder trial.
The death by heroin overdose of 40-year-old father of four Edward Carr in Redfern in 2004 led to the revenge killing by Carr's best friend, Phillip Harrison, of one of three men who helped buy the heroin. Harrison was found guilty of murder by a Supreme Court jury last week.
But buried in the police brief of evidence is the damning claim that the fatal heroin deal was organised by a man who worked for the needle exchange program.
In a sworn statement dated August 6, 2004, Surry Hills Constable Heath Clark says: "Darrell Martin told us that [he and] Edward Carr approached a male whom Martin knows to be employed by the needle exchange program.
"This male was standing next to the needle exchange bus and [Martin and Carr] inquired about scoring heroin. The needle exchange worker used a mobile phone on their behalf to arrange the purchase of some heroin."
Martin and Carr went to a children's swing in a park near The Block and bought heroin from the dealer, which Carr later injected with fatal consequences.
The claims have never been investigated. A spokesman for the Sydney South West Area Health Service, which runs the Redfern needle exchange bus, said yesterday no action had been taken because "we haven't been given any evidence".
There is no suggestion of any wider involvement by the needle exchange bus or any of its employees. But there is a general perception that workers involved in harm-minimisation programs hold ambiguous moral attitudes towards illicit drug use, perhaps because some themselves use drugs.
It is a curious observation that people who are dependent on drugs or alcohol are often drawn to welfare work aimed at alleviating the misery caused by just such addictions. They are thus incapable of providing clear moral persuasion to steer addicts away from the alcohol or drug abuse. Unwilling or unable to practise abstinence themselves, they cannot advocate it for others.
This is the perception of Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson, who maintains a strict no-alcohol rule for all those who work with his Cape York partnerships. They advocate abstinence in Aboriginal communities, and therefore believe they should walk the walk.
Nothing could be further from Pearson's clear-eyed reality than the notorious case of Marion Watson, the ACT community health worker awarded the Order of Australia medal for her work helping drug addicts. The problem was that Watson's idea of helping was to sell them heroin - about $10,000 worth a week. She was arrested and jailed in 1998.
Watson was the poster girl for the harm-minimisation lobby in the ACT. Her downfall was proof of the folly of non-judgemental programs which advocate "responsible" drug use rather than prevention and treatment.
Attempts to minimise Nguyen's crime do not alleviate his plight. They simply reinforce an attitude in Singapore that Australians are moral relativists, unable to recognise wrongdoing and ever ready to excuse it.
We should be grateful to Singapore for apprehending him, and make the point that he is a criminal, but he is our criminal and we would like to punish him in our own way.
[email protected]
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
