New Qld drug laws allow people to be caught three times carrying heroin, cocaine or ice before facing charge

Queenslanders will be given three chances to be caught carrying heroin, cocaine or ice before facing a criminal charge, under new laws passed in Parliament.

Queenslanders will be given three chances for carrying heroin, cocaine or ice before facing a criminal charge, under new laws passed in Parliament.

The new legislation will focus on delivering a health-based response for those caught carrying a minor supply of illicit drugs.

Those caught carrying cannabis under the previous program were diverted from the criminal justice system, but this will now also apply to ice, cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, ketamine and steroids.

The laws were strongly supported by senior cops, health experts, and Queenslanders more broadly, according to a recent poll – although Courier-Mail readers voted two-to-one against it – while the Greens also voted in favour of the Palaszczuk government’s progressive measure.

Police Minister Mark Ryan. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Glenn Campbell

Member for Maiwar Michael Berkman said “these changes are a long time coming”.

“When we imported the so-called war on drugs from the US, it was already a failure,” he told Parliament.

“It was never genuinely designed to reduce drug use or its associated harms, and it never did.”

But a number of Liberal-National MPs blasted the new laws as “soft on crime”, with Deputy Opposition Leader Jarrod Bleijie saying the government had “put the white flag up for drugs in our community”.

When introducing the bill earlier this year, Police Minister Mark Ryan said the expansion of the program was not a relaxation of the “tough enforcement action in taking dangerous drugs off the streets”, but more served as an opportunity to enable officers to target drug manufacturers and traffickers.

“We know that one in six Australians have used an illicit drug in the last 12 months and that a small proportion will develop a substance abuse disorder,” he said.