COVER STORY How decriminalising drug use could save money – and lives
Breaking the habit Calls to overhaul our drug laws are growing louder as evidence mounts that decriminalising drug use could lead to a brighter future for addicts – and save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars
He did not recognise the person he had become. The occasional petty thefts had become daily shoplifting escapades. Brazen outings in which Daniel* would walk out of the supermarket with a trolley full of food, toiletries, clothing, washing powder – whatever the dealers wanted, he would get. He never stole anything for himself. It was just to get morphine for his back pain from a motorcycle injury, now that his legal supply had been cut off. He was on the blacklist at pharmacies after confiding in his GP that he was taking more and more painkillers to get through the agony of each day.
Daniel had no need for the stolen items. Certainly no need for the washing powder. He had no home, let alone a washing machine. He had his sleeping spots, under the YMCA building at Glenorchy, or in winter next to the generators outside the Royal Hobart Hospital, where he could keep warm.
There was no need to steal food for himself: he just took what he needed from the skip bins outside Coles and Woolworths. He could not believe what they threw away. Barely day-old bread, vegetables, vacuum-packed meat, tinned food.
Whenever the cops bailed him up he confessed everything. He admitted going into the shops to steal for his dealers. It was his way of asking for help, but it meant the stealing charge was upgraded to burglary with intent.
“I was reaching out for help in a way,” Daniel says. “I was basically saying, ‘Come on, mate, I’m homeless, I’ve lost my wife and kids, I’m sleeping out in the freezing cold and eating out of a garbage bin’.”
Some of the cops were OK, said they would try to help. Others treated him as just another no-hoper, indistinguishable from the next petty criminal.
What if, Daniel thinks, someone had really been willing to help? What if the police were bound by law to send him off for treatment and counselling? According to a new report, such an approach would save Tasmania close to $30 million a year. The report, from Community Legal Centres Tasmania (CLCT), argues drug use should be treated as a health issue rather than a criminal justice issue. In other words, drug use should be decriminalised.
Daniel did eventually get the intervention he needed, after a year-and-a-half in prison, and only then because he jumped up and down, demanding to be put on a treatment program. Seeking help was something he had been unable to do when his life started slipping out of control, partly because of the stoicism he had learnt to emulate from his father and partly from shame. “I had no [clear] idea about services, I was too ashamed to seek them out, that stigma,” he says.
It takes a couple of hours for Daniel, 37, to tell his story, and even then it is the abridged version. It would take days to describe all the twists and turns, downward spirals and strokes of bad luck that landed him in jail in 2010. His coffee goes cold as the tale unfolds and the cigarette he rolls – his one remaining vice – stays unlit. He hopes that by sharing his story he will help persuade the community and policy-makers that existing drug laws, including deterrent-based penalties, do not work.
“The most important thing I want to get across is that with appropriate health care, whether physical or mental or both, and accommodation, support and education and the reduction of stigma, those like myself in out-of-control circumstances may not have offended in the first place,” Daniel says.
“The war on drugs has failed,” concludes the Drug Law Reform Paper, which will be released publicly by Community Legal Centres Tasmania on Monday. CLCT represents nine centres statewide, which provide free legal services to the public, including specialist services for women, refugees and low-income Tasmanians.
“Despite the considerable resources that have been directed towards the criminalisation of drug use, there has been no curtailment of either the supply or the consumption of illicit drugs,” the report states.
The report recommends the decriminalisation of personal illicit drug use in Tasmania, thereby doing away with penalties such as jail time and fines. Tasmanians caught with personal amounts of drugs would instead be cautioned, if a first offence, or directed to a drug treatment or counselling facility.
Such a move has support from the heavyweights of Tasmania’s law and order sector, including former chief magistrate Michael Hill and former police commissioner Jack Johnston, a member of the recent Australia 21 think-tank calling for a total overhaul of drug laws, which also included former head of the Australian Federal Police Mick Palmer.
“One of the things we stress in the report is it’s not just decriminalisation,” says lead author, Hobart lawyer Benedict Bartl. “It needs to be decriminalisation as well as significant investment in rehabilitation and programs, including things like education.”
The CLCT report includes financial modelling by University of Tasmania business and economics lecturer Dr Paul Blacklow, who finds the decriminalisation of illicit drug use in Tasmania would save taxpayers about $28 million a year.
Blacklow finds the cost of illicit drug use in Tasmania in the 2015-16 financial year was $301.7 million, including costs arising from drug-related crime, policing and court work, imprisonment, premature deaths and diseases (including ambulance calls-out and hospitalisation), and drug-related mental health problems.
While a decriminalisation model would require greater investment in treatment and education, the pay-off would be a rise in the number of users seeking treatment and contributing to society. That would lead to healthier communities, more workforce participation, happier families and less crime.
In a cafe near his modest Macquarie St office, where he works part-time as a policy officer for CLCT, Bartl patiently explains the difference between drug decriminalisation and legalisation. While he supports the former, Bartl wants to distance himself from the notion of legalising illicit drugs. Hence the focus on Portugal, which decriminalised the possession of small amounts of drugs in 2001, rather than the Netherlands, where a famously relaxed approach to drug laws means authorities turn a blind eye to marijuana use and the drug can even be bought in coffee shops.
“What the Portugal model shows is that when you remove the stigma, more people will come forward for treatment. They know they’re not going to be reported to police,” Bartl says. “In Portugal, if you’re caught with personal amounts of drugs – for example, a joint – you’ll be directed to a government-sanctioned body, which is able to assess if you actually have a problem.”
At first glance, Bartl’s push does not fit easily with the toughon-crime mantra favoured by governments around Australia, including Tasmania, where the Hodgman Government is intent on phasing out suspended sentences.
“What the evidence from Portugal shows is that by decriminalising drug use and pumping significant amounts into treatment, crime has decreased, particularly violent offences such as robbery and assault,” Bartl says.
He also argues that Tasmania is already heading down the decriminalisation path. In the May State Budget, the Government announced $1.3 million to extend the Court Mandated Drug Diversion (CMD) program from 80 to 120 participants. Under the CMD, offenders whose drug use was an obvious contributing factor in their crimes can be sentenced to an 18-month to twoyear drug treatment order. Recipients must abstain from all drug use, attend regular counselling sessions and court appointments and submit to regular, random urine tests.
“There is already a tacit recognition that criminalising drug use is not the answer. It’s recognised as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue,” Bartl says. “But there are restrictions in who can access the treatment orders.
“If police catch you with a joint they already have the power to just say, ‘Don’t do it again’. Or they can refer you to a program such as Holyoake [a local non-profit addiction counselling service].
“The problem with existing laws is that it’s discretionary. Police can say, ‘Don’t do it again’, but with someone who looks dishevelled, for example, they’re more likely to take a harder line and say, ‘We’re charging you’. We can’t leave it to the police or judiciary to decide who should receive treatment. There’s no reason it can’t be broadened to include the whole population.” Michael Hill is considered the father of the therapeutic approach to justice in Tasmania. During his 30 years on the bench, including six as chief magistrate, he fought back against the prevailing sentiment among judicial officers that success can be measured by case closure rates.
“In the old days it was always about disposal rates and in certain parts of the country it still is like that. It becomes a real conveyor belt – what the Americans call McJustice,” says Hill, who will launch the CLCT report. “Speed is not the correct measure of a successful court.”
Hill says he can “understand a decriminalisation of small amounts of personal [drug] use”, saying there is a huge percentage of crime that is drug or habit-problem related.
“It was pretty obvious to me over the years that the same people were coming along before the courts. If we’re going to try to stop the revolving door we have to do something about the conditions that are the motivating force behind their offending.
“Dispositions [case resolutions] based on drug and mental health treatment are far more effective than dispositions that are based on deterrents such as prison. Once they come out of jail they are likely to recommence their habit at some point because you haven’t addressed their addiction. And if they can’t pick locks when they go into prison, they certainly can when they come out.”
Hill initiated the Court Mandated Drug Diversion program in 2007. An evaluation report of the first 12 months found that, for more than half of offenders referred to the program, it was their first opportunity to “confront their need for treatment and gain support to deal with their addiction”.
“If prison worked you wouldn’t have a recidivism [repeat offending] rate,” Hill says. “It costs, what, $350 a day to house someone in jail? I’m told the drug program costs $100 a day. If you want to be pragmatically economic about it, it’s smarter.”