Fresh call for forced ice detox
A TASMANIAN health service has reiterated recent calls for laws to be introduced to give parents the right to force young people into treatment for ice addiction against their will.
In 2015, Tasmanian independent senator Jacqui Lambie, whose son was battling ice addiction at the time, called for legislative support for nonconsensual detox and rehabilitation for young people caught in the grip of drug abuse.
Rural Health Tasmania chief executive Robert Waterman — who stood as a Lambie Network candidate in the last Senate election — this week repeated that call on the back of the findings of the latest National Drug Strategy Household Survey which showed weekly ice use had almost tripled in Tasmania in the past six years. However, a Hobart drug and alcohol service has issued a note of warning, saying any move towards non-consensual rehab would be fraught with ethical and legal dilemmas.
Mr Waterman said: “We need to introduce legislation for secure non-consensual detox and treatment for young people using drugs so parents can save their kids from a lifetime of pain, suffering, poor health and poverty.
“Tasmania needs to stop just talking about prevention and roll out an evidence-based model in our schools that works before we lose a whole generation to drugs and mental illness.”
Mr Waterman wants Tasmania to follow the example of Finland and Sweden and teach emotional intelligence as a core subject in primary school, saying people with higher levels of emotional intelligence were less likely to use drugs in the first place.
Holyoake chief executive Sarah Charlton acknowledged it was heartbreaking for parents to watch a child, no matter what age, spiral into the grips of drug addiction.
“It is natural to want to rescue that child at all costs, however, the concept of nonconsensual drug treatment for people of any age is fraught with ethical and legal dilemmas,” she said.
“While Holyoake does acknowledge that legal coercion may expose a person to treat- ment opportunities they may not have otherwise chosen, involuntary drug treatment contradicts a basic principal of psychotherapy in that a person has to want to change their behaviour.”
Ms Charlton said a rehab system based on coercion was punitive and would not necessarily result in a successful longterm outcome.
She said Holyoake was struggling to deal with a 196 per cent increase in clients over the past decade but had not received any extra government funding.
Health Minister Michael Ferguson said: “This [ice addiction] is a complex issue and there are no quick fixes, but involuntary or mandated detoxification for alcohol and other drugs use is not a policy being considered by the Tasmanian Government at this time.”
We need to introduce legislation for secure non-consensual detox and treatment for young people using drugs so parents can save their kids from a lifetime of pain ROBERT WATERMAN