Pill testing advocates are on another planet
PILL testing places police in an untenable position: get involved in a heavy-handed confrontation or turn a blind eye and break the law themselves.
DRUG use in Australia is at an all-time high, and not in a good way. The number of methamphetamine users has tripled over the past five years to 268,000, the Medical Journal of Australia has just revealed, with 15- to 24-year-olds the fastest growing demographic
We’re the biggest ecstasy users in the world, third in methamphetamine (including ice) use and fourth in cocaine use, according to the UN. One in 10 drivers stopped by police tests positive for illegal drugs.
We are in the grips of a crisis. In a sane world, we would return to the “tough on drugs” regime of the Howard era, which launched the heroin drought, slashed drug use and dramatically slowed the rate of experimentation by young people.
We would give up the creeping drug liberalisation/harm minimisation regimen that has taken root under the malign influence of the Greens and Alex Wodak, president of the Australian Drug Reform Foundation.
After all, they are what has brought us to this parlous state.
But no, having laid the foundations for the crisis, now they want more, laughably blaming “prohibition” for the increase in addicts and overdose, when they’ve ensured drug enforcement is slacker than ever.
Greens leader Richard Di Natale and Senator Larissa Waters want ice decriminalised so the streets can be overrun even more by violent addicts.
Wodak has launched a campaign for “party pill” testing at music festivals. He plans to force confrontations with police, sending a green light to young people that taking illegal drugs and defying police is noble.
Official pill testing is just decriminalisation in disguise. It places police in an untenable position: get involved in a heavy-handed confrontation or turn a blind eye and break the law themselves.
“It’s a situation fraught with danger and heightened emotional responses,” Police Association President, Scott Weber said yesterday. “The testing regimes … will not tell a potential drug user whether a substance is ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’.”
To his credit Police Minister Troy Grant has stood his ground, upholding the law and reflecting the values of most Australians.
But he was pilloried as a “hardline” dinosaur and misrepresented by the national broadcaster in its recent Four Corners program Dying to Dance. Grant’s was the only voice against pill-testing in the program, even though Dr Adrian Dunlop, Chief Addictions Medicine Specialist at NSW Health, had told Four Corners there was not enough evidence that pill testing would save lives. The ABC, as ever, just ran the Wodak line.
As Grant’s office points out, most of the program was dedicated to providing information on procuring drugs, smuggling drugs into festivals, showing users discussing “drug salad, yummy yummy”, retrieving drugs from inside orifices, and promoting drug use as “so much f ... ing fun”.
As a former frontline police officer, Grant understands only too well the scourge of illicit drugs and the suffering it inflicts on families. We are lucky he is holding the line.
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