Miranda Devine: What’s to blame for our drug epidemic? Lax policing

Drug use in Australia is out of control, yet there are calls for police to go even softer than they already do. This defeatist attitude can’t continue, writes Miranda Devine.

There are calls for police to go even softer on drugs than they already do. This defeatist attitude can’t continue. (pic: Spencer Platt/Getty)

No wonder drug use is out of control when the former head of the NSW Drug Squad has such a defeatist attitude.

Retired detective superintendent Nick Bingham’s call to go even softer than we already do on illicit drugs is straight from the disastrous playbook of Alex Wodak.

Following this kind of lax, politically correct approach to crime is one reason why Victoria Police are in such disarray.

People brazenly smoking bongs in Melbourne’s CBD, under the nose of police, without fear of consequences, is a symptom of a police force which has lost control of the streets and surrendered to lawlessness, as Victoria’s soaring crime rate shows.

According to the Broken Windows theory of policing so successful in Combatting New York’s crime, lax policing is like a broken window in a building left unrepaired, a sign that no one cares, and chaos is welcome.

Retired Commander of NSW Police Drug Squad Nick Bingham says drug users should get help, not punishment. (Pic: Justin Lloyd)

NSW learned this lesson almost two decades ago, thanks to the courage of whistleblower Tim Priest, a Detective Sergeant at Cabramatta, then the heroin capital of Australia. He refused to obey instructions of his bosses to turn a blind eye to drug crime all around him, and in the end, he prevailed.

The de facto decriminalisation of illicit drugs was reversed, the heroin drought began and Sydney’s crime rate plummeted.

John Howard’s Get Tough on Drugs campaign was launched in 1997, and drug use fell for the first time in three decades, and the age at which children experimented with drugs rose.

However, the pendulum has swung back, as the influence of harm minimisers and drug liberalisers grows.

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission ordered wastewater testing to understand the true enormity of Australia’s drug problem. (Pic: Supplied)

In any case, Bingham’s call to decriminalise first-time use and possession of all illicit drugs is redundant because our drug laws in NSW are already excessively lenient. Police simply hand out cannabis cautions and field notices for minor possession of drugs. “Everyone deserves a second chance,” a police officer told me. But “not 12”.

Sewage tests conducted for the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and published at the weekend show the catastrophic level of illicit drug use across the nation. By sampling wastewater at 51 sewage treatment plants, effectively drug-testing the urine of 14 million Australians, researchers have provided what they say is the first real-time national snapshot of drug use. They showed what any country person already knows, that ice is being used at epidemic levels, and as any nightclub denizen could tell you, that Sydney is the nation’s cocaine capital.

Amid soaring illicit drug use, the last thing we need is drug cops who describe illegal activity as a “couple of pills”.