As Biden pardons pot possession, what does it mean to Australia’s War on Drugs?

Dr Alex Wodak, AM, is a former director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. He is now chair of Australia21, an independent think tank. I spoke to him on Thursday.

Fitz: Dr Wodak, can we agree that if various premiers and prime ministers over the years in Australia have been the generals of the so-called War on Drugs – pushing prohibition and punishment as the answer – the person doing the most damage on the other side, urging legalisation, is General Dr A. Wodak?

AW: I wasn’t alone. But it was very lonely when I started, with few other people advocating drug law reform as actively as I was. But now there’s a lot of people who are arguing vigorously on my side. And that argument really has been won, even if the politics hasn’t caught up yet.

Alex Wodak: A vocation that has saved many lives.Credit:

Fitz: Before we get to the big breakthrough this week of President Biden himself advocating the obvious – to decriminalise the mere possession of cannabis – let’s look at some of your battles over the years in this city, starting with free needle exchange for drug users.

AW: I started work at St Vincent’s Hospital in the middle of 1982, and we already knew about this epidemic that we now call HIV and AIDS. It was clear that the national epicentre was the area around Kings Cross to Taylor Square, and that a lot of men who had sex with men had this infection. And we knew that some of them would share needles and syringes with men and women who would then go on to have unprotected sex with other men and women who had no other risk factors for HIV. And so I was terrified, unable to sleep, that this was the very way in which HIV infection would switch from a concentrated epidemic to a generalised epidemic. HIV wasn’t treatable in those days, and people died horrible deaths quite quickly.

Fitz: And the way forward was?

AW: I was the director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent’s, in the middle of this epicentre, and a colleague and I called a meeting of concerned people. It very quickly became apparent that the most important thing we had to do was to exchange used needles and syringes for clean ones. I wrote many submissions to the NSW government for no result, then I finally realised in November 1986, I was never going to be given official permission.

Fitz: And then?

AW: My colleagues and I agreed that we had no choice but to resort to what amounted to civil disobedience. A colleague went out, bought 1000 needles and syringes, and we started the exchange in Victoria Street, Darlinghurst. The Department of Health called me in and ordered me to stop. And I said to them that if I was going to get into trouble, I would go on television to explain why I was doing this – and I was certain that the community would back me and wouldn’t support the Department of Health. Police interviewed me, and at the end of the meeting, the lead detective said they had decided they would not press charges.

Fitz: A decade later, against similar resistance, you started the supervised injecting room.

AW: That was in the late ’90s and the pastor of the Wayside Chapel, Reverend Ray Richmond, came to see me and described his own experience of the appalling epidemic of drug overdose deaths, particularly concentrated in the area around Kings Cross. The answer was obviously a medically supervised injecting centre as recommended by the 1997 Wood Royal Commission into Police Corruption. Again, there was heavy resistance, and again, I and some friends and colleagues agreed we had to resort to civil disobedience, and so we started operating a primitive medically supervised injecting centre in the basement of the Wayside Chapel – which got it back onto the political agenda. It ended up with a conscience vote at the 1999 NSW Drug Summit, and the motion was carried. That centre operated by the Uniting Church has been open for just over 20 years and there hasn’t been a single death from drug overdose in the facility, and the number of deaths and the number of ambulance call-outs for fatal and non-fatal drug overdoses in the area has substantially subsided.

Fitz: In the course of putting forward these two counterintuitive proposals – giving out clean needles and supervising injections to lawbreakers – you must have been vilified on talkback, by letters to the editor and in personal confrontations?

AW: Yes, but that’s changed over time. Often, now, people are very generous to me.

Fitz: These days you are still taking a little heat because of your advocacy of vaping.

AW: It’s all about harm reduction. Two-thirds of long-term smokers will die from smoking-related conditions, and each person who dies loses an average of 10 years of their lives. Smoking is the most important cause of preventable death and disease in Australia and worldwide. The 21,000 deaths from smoking in Australia every year are more than the combined deaths from alcohol, prescription and illicit drugs, road crashes, HIV and suicide. And along comes this invention by a Chinese pharmacist in 2003 that says right here, you can have all the nicotine you crave without the tar and carbon monoxide and other highly dangerous toxins. And though it is not without harm, it minimises over time the cancer, heart and lung deaths from smoking.

President Biden will pardon those who, in the federal domain, have ever been convicted of possessing cannabis.Credit: AP

Fitz: Which brings us to your long-time campaign to end the War on Drugs because it simply can’t be won. You had a great breakthrough this week, with US President Joe Biden himself issuing a pardon for those who, in the federal domain, have ever been convicted of possessing cannabis.

AW: It’s very, very significant. Joe Biden, in the Senate for over 40 years, wrote more War on Drugs legislation than anyone else. He was a drug war warrior. So for him to be saying this is an acknowledgment that prohibition of drugs doesn’t work; he’s started a process which is irreversible. And for him to be saying this just before the midterm congressional elections also means he realises the politics of this is powerful – the people agree with him – and that will follow in Australia.

Fitz: If I, however, may take on the persona of a rambunctious late-night talkback caller ... How dare Wodak be soft on drugs? He’s leading our kids to soft drugs and then they’ll get to harder drugs!

AW: Well, that argument has been made for over half a century and now people realise it’s fallacious. We’ve been searching for evidence for that for 40 years, and it’s clearly not true. These are standard arguments that transcend from one area of harm-reduction controversy to the next. So “just think of the children” is the other thing that people like me always have to face and ...

Fitz: ... And won’t you just think of the children, you bastard?! Seriously, what’s your answer?

AW: The answer is that we are much better off protecting young people if the government actually controls and regulates the whole drugs market.

Fitz: I’m mostly with you, but I have struggled in the past with your line that even things like ice and heroin should be legalised and regulated.

AW: Yes, but it’s a drug-by-drug argument. And the arrangements that you’d make for heroin would be different from the arrangements that you make for, say, MDMA or mushrooms. Legalising heroin doesn’t mean that you or I could go to the checkout counter in the supermarket and buy a kilogram of 100 per cent pure heroin or cocaine. Nobody’s in favour of that. But users of drugs like heroin and ice would be identified, and they would be treated as having a health problem, not a criminal problem. It’s coming up with an arrangement that is as safe as it can be, because there are very powerful market forces at work, and if you deny legal supply, then other sources of much more dangerous supply inevitably emerge. But the arrangements also have to be realistic and accepted by the community.

Fitz: So, if you had your way, you would put the government in the ice business, manufacturing ice and selling ice to registered users?

AW: Well, we started a program at St Vincent’s Hospital in 2006, lawfully prescribing a form of amphetamine, not ice itself but something similar. It wasn’t easy to meet the criteria at all, but we did it very carefully, and each dose was supervised. We didn’t hand it out in big boxes of amphetamine, but that careful program continues and has been improved.

Fitz: Do you feel like you’ve lived long enough and worked long enough to see your life’s work being vindicated before your eyes?

AW: Yes. Seven countries have now started regulating recreational cannabis, including a G7 country – Canada – as have 19 of the 50 states in the United States. The number of countries regulating cannabis is increasing all the time. In the Gallup poll in the United States conducted every year, they ask people if they support the legalisation of marijuana. In 1968, 12 per cent of people said yes. And in 2021 that number was up to 68 per cent. Yes, it is counterintuitive, but like all of these harm-minimisation programs, it is the best way, or really the least-worst way. The other ways demonstrably don’t work.

Fitz: Dr Wodak, on behalf of a mostly grateful population, if few others will say it, let me: thank you. You’re a national treasure and there must be tens of thousands of your fellow Australians walking around now who are either alive or with less damaged lives than they otherwise would have had, if not for the fearless and tireless work of you and your colleagues.

AW: I really appreciate that. You’ve no idea how difficult it has been to get our arguments out through mainstream media or, for that matter, through medical media. We have been completely blocked time and time again. And it’s monstrous. In public health, as in other areas, you have to be able to have polite, respectful debates between people with different views. And we’ve often not had that in the field of harm reduction. I’ve had a privileged life and I believe if you accept the privileges you must accept the responsibilities. I think what I’ve been doing is what most people would do if they’ve seen what I’ve seen.

Joke of the week

A philosopher and a theologian, both blind, are challenged to go into a pitch-black room and find a black cat that isn’t there. The theologian finds him.

Quote of the week

“Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants to take away the backyard BBQ. We know Australians love their sausages, steaks, rissoles and lamb meals – all of that will become out of reach for many. We do not want to see the Aussie BBQ available to only the rich – we urge Labor to reject the methane madness idea and embrace the Aussie BBQ spirit instead of destroy it.” - Nationals leader David Littleproud. First they came for our utes, and I said nothing. Then they came for our BBQs …

Tweet of the week

Elon et al: “We must give Putin an off-ramp”. Ukrainians: Hold my beer.

What they said

“‘Soften the blow.’ Joe Biden is too timid. It’s time to legalise cocaine. The cost of prohibition outweighs the benefits.” - The Economist on Thursday.

“The BBC has not come to me and said, ‘Would you like to have some one-hour shows?’ And if they did, I would say, ‘Not on your nelly’ because I wouldn’t get five minutes into the first show before I’d been cancelled or censored.” - John Cleese, on joining GB News, Britain’s new right-wing TV network.

“I think the word should be ‘accountability’. John Cleese has been very public recently about complaining about what you can’t say. It must be very hard to be a man of a certain age who’s been able to say whatever he likes for years, and now suddenly there’s some accountability. It’s free speech, but not consequence-free.” - Graham Norton in reply.

“Contrary to false and misleading reports, this meeting was not solely between myself and Warren Mundine, but with Senate crossbenchers and staff. The meeting was taken at the request of Mundine. We did not discuss support for a No campaign on Voice and I will not be campaigning No.” - Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe.

“The unity that this community has shown, and the strength that it’s shown, is quite extraordinary. I pay tribute to you. Twenty years ago, the shockwaves from Bali reached our shores. Twenty years ago, an act of malice and calculated depravity robbed the world of 202 lives, including 88 Australians. Twenty years on, the ache does not dim.” - Anthony Albanese in Coogee commemorating the Bali bombings.

“Registering a positive RAT through Service NSW allows us to connect people to medical care, particularly older people and the immunocompromised, and it also helps inform our ongoing public health response.” - NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant, asking people to continue to report COVID positive results, despite the fact that the NSW government has scrapped mandatory reporting of positive rapid antigen tests (RATs).

“This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us.” - NASA administrator Bill Nelson with the good news that a spacecraft which ploughed into a small, harmless asteroid millions of kilometres away succeeded in shifting its orbit. The space agency attempted the first test of its kind two weeks ago to see if in the future a killer rock could be nudged out of Earth’s way.

“My main piece of advice is to practise – practice makes perfect. In the lead-up to the HSC exams, just do those past papers. Do one – either Paper 1 or Paper 2 – every two days. They are all available on the NESA website. Make sure you read your texts at least twice and try to identify any techniques or quotes in them.” - How to come top in HSC English, by Michelle Ung, who took equal first in English Advanced in the 2021 HSC.

“It’s a lumpy, pragmatic solution which does not consider its iconic location. What is offensive is that they don’t think about this. Nobody is saying, ‘Hey guys, this is a major gateway to the city.’ It is all business as usual without any thought of impact on the design of the bridge.” - Stephen Pearse, an architect who has designed infrastructure for Sydney’s Roads and Maritime Services, saying that five giant gantries and speed signs spanning all eight lanes proposed for the Anzac Bridge would “ruin the simple elegance of the gateway structure” which now allows for largely unimpeded views of the CBD and Harbour Bridge.

“The way that our gas industry regulation is set up has not been delivering the kinds of outcomes that we want to see. If you recognise that, and I do, then you recognise that if more can be done, it should be done.” - Treasurer Jim Chalmers on the price of power.

“He is known as a pretty ruthless commander who is short with subordinates and is known for his temper.” - Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, a defence research institute based in Virginia, about General Sergei Surovikin, 55, the Russian commanding officer of Southern Military District, whose troops have been facing a fierce Ukrainian counteroffensive.

“It’s pretty cool ’cause every other school doesn’t get to see fire trucks with their teachers in them.” - Noah Brown, of Bedgerabong, near Forbes, where the roads have been flooded for two months and the teachers are being taken to work by fire truck.

“George Street’s transformation from a traffic-clogged arterial route to a destination in its own right is nothing short of remarkable. In a post-COVID world, the role of public space in the heart of our city is vital as we strive to ensure a thriving, liveable and accessible city for all.” - Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore about plans to shut George Street to cars north of Wynyard.

“Our government have failed us.” - The cry of two Extinction Rebellion protesters who were arrested after gluing themselves to a Picasso painting at the National Gallery of Victoria. They glued their hands to the protective covering of the artwork Massacre in Korea, which is part of the Picasso Century exhibit.

@Peter_Fitz