In 1999, Annie raised her voice at the landmark drug summit. This is what she has to say today

It was 25 years ago that Annie Madden stood up inside the NSW parliament and told the gathering of hundreds of MPs, police, reform advocates and academics at Bob Carr’s drug summit that “discrimination is killing us”.

Madden, at the time chief executive of the NSW Users and AIDS Association, was the only active drug user to speak at the summit in 1999. As another takes place in Sydney this week, Madden recalls feeling compelled to raise her voice by a sense things were not going as reform advocates had hoped.

“I was sitting there on the first day, and I actually became quite concerned about the narrative evolving … this kind of prohibition, just say no, abstinence approach that was starting to develop on that day,” she said. “I could see us sliding backwards.”

Annie Madden, the executive director of Harm Reduction Australia, proved a persuasive voice at the 1999 drug summit. Credit: Justin McManus

Her message – that stigma associated with the current drug laws – was persuasive. Her evidence was important in pushing the summit toward reforms such as the medically supervised injecting room in King’s Cross.

It took a personal toll. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, conservative columnist Piers Akerman called her an “unabashed junkie” and described her speech as “somewhere between repugnant and repulsive”.

In her own life, what had been an “unspoken secret” within her family was made very public.

“I ended up estranged from my family for many years after that,” she said.

More than two decades later, a new drug summit will begin in Sydney this week after regional hearings in Griffith and Lismore. While much has changed since the 1990s, many issues surrounding drug policy remain the same; debates over the benefits of decriminalisation, for example, or the funding allocated to health versus criminal justice measures in 1999, are eerily similar to those taking place today.

So, too, is the scourge of drug-related deaths. In 1999, the overdose rate peaked at 9.1 deaths per 100,000 people. After a sharp decline in the early 2000s, it has steadily risen to 8.6 deaths per 100,000.

New data from the Network of Alcohol and other Drug Agencies (NADA), the peak body representing drug and alcohol services, shows more than 1800 people are waiting for treatment from NGOs in NSW each week.

As the summit comes to Sydney, many reform advocates feel the same sense of foreboding Madden did in 1999. Despite first promising the drug summit from the opposition in 2015, there is growing concern Labor has lost its nerve for major reform in government.

That fear has been intensified in the lead-up by Premier Chris Minns, who ruled out decriminalisation before an election and questioned pill-testing’s effectiveness. Similarly, inviting Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who supported the decision in Oregon to re-criminalise possession of drugs such as fentanyl after that state saw a surge in homelessness and overdose deaths after it decriminalised possession, has raised eyebrows.

“Minns says there are no pre-determined outcomes of the summit, but the selection of the mayor of Portland as the international speaker is cause for concern,” Uniting’s general manager for advocacy, Emma Maiden, said.

For those in the drug and alcohol space, the stakes are incredibly high. NADA chief executive Dr Robert Stirling said,“lives depend” on the government taking the summit seriously.

“This cannot be a talkfest filled with platitudes for change. It must lead to real improvements,” he said.

Stirling said his chief concern was “we will see a repeat of the NSW ice inquiry, where a report is drafted, handed down, but reform does not eventuate”.

Dan Howard presided over the ice inquiry, which, among other things, called for wholesale decriminalisation of drug possession and the introduction of pill testing. He will speak at the summit, believing it presents “the last opportunity” for reform in NSW “for many years”.

In an opinion piece for The Sydney Morning Herald, he says current laws and policies in NSW “are inadequate to meet the complex challenges we now face”, pointing to a laundry list of issues such as the fact NSW has not had a dedicated alcohol and drugs policy since 2010.

“[The summit’s] outcomes will determine whether the Minns government is truly committed to modernising our drug laws and policies or is simply engaging in a box-ticking exercise,” he said.

Where the summit will land remains uncertain, partly because the government has handed responsibility for reaching conclusions to co-chairs Carmel Tebbutt and John Brogden. Health Minister Ryan Park has insisted he won’t “pre-empt outcomes”.

Park this week announced $235 million in funding for drug and alcohol treatment, though that money was first promised under the Coalition in its response to Howard’s inquiry.

“As we’ve said from day one, the drug summit provided a once-in-a-generation opportunity to listen to a diverse range of views and experiences,” Park said. “I’ve always said that we won’t pre-empt discussion because everyone deserves an opportunity to be heard.”

Despite the fears, as in 1999, those in favour of reform hope the summit will be a watershed moment after a long period of stagnation.

Maiden, the advocate from Uniting, which has pushed for reform including decriminalisation of possession of small amounts of illicit drugs, attended both regional summits in Griffith and Lismore and said she felt buoyed by the experience.

“I did feel that the group of people who came together have never been in the room together talking about these issues … there is a lot of power in that,” she said.

Madden is again among speakers in Sydney, this time as executive director of Harm Reduction Australia. She, too, is hopeful after Minns last month said he wanted to hear “evidence that will challenge government policy, things that I may not necessarily agree with”.

“There has been a lot of dampening of expectations, and I hadn’t heard that in quite such blunt terms. It gives me some hope the window is ajar,” she said.

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