Bob Carr held a drug summit 25 years ago. NSW Labor is repeating history

The NSW Labor government will hold its long-awaited drug summit over four days starting in October, 25 years after former premier Bob Carr did the same amid Sydney’s heroin epidemic.

Premier Chris Minns confirmed on Friday that the summit, which was a key election promise, will be held over two days in regional NSW in October, and in Sydney on December 4 and 5.

Then-premier Bob Carr goes over his speech for the closing of the NSW Drug Summit 25 years ago.Credit: Robert Pearce

Minns would have faced significant backlash from ALP members had he not set a date for the summit before the party’s state conference later this month.

As well as the summit, the government will fund 12 new alcohol and drug hubs across the state, run by not-for-profit organisations that will share $33.9 million over four years.

This is part of the government’s response to the special commission of inquiry into the drug ice.

Six new hubs will be opened in regional NSW in Shellharbour, Bega and Eden, Orange, Singleton, Armidale and Wagga Wagga. Others will be expanded in Nimbin, Queanbeyan, Kempsey, south-western Sydney and Ashfield.

A banner demanding a drug summit is displayed at St Stephen’s Uniting Church, opposite the NSW Parliament.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Former Liberal premier Dominic Perrottet announced his government’s long-awaited response to the ice inquiry in September 2022. The Coalition’s response divided cabinet ministers.

Stopping short of decriminalising drugs, a “two strikes” policy for possession was implemented to help low-level drug offenders avoid courts for health intervention programs.

This front page on January 31, 1999 was instrumental in leading to the Drug Summit later that year.Credit: The Sun-Herald

Rather than responding to the Coalition’s lengthy $11 million inquiry into ice – which included recommendations to decriminalise drugs found in quantities for personal use, and the use of pill-testing sites at music festivals – Minns wanted Labor to hold its own summit.

As well as decriminalisation, the summit is likely to consider whether NSW should follow ACT and Queensland’s lead on pill-testing sites.

Key Labor ministers Rose Jackson and Jo Haylen have long been in favour of drug law reforms, and both were part of the parliamentary patrons of the NSW Labor for Drug Law Reform during the last term of parliament. Other Labor cabinet members share the views of Jackson and Haylen.

The NSW government will hold initial discussions with stakeholders to determine the terms of reference for its summit, but it intends to involve medical experts, police, people with lived and living experience, drug user organisations and families “to provide a range of perspectives and build consensus on the way NSW deals with drug use and harms”.

Minns said Labor was delivering on its election promise, which was to hold a summit in its first term.

“We know that drug use impacts individuals, families and communities in many different ways. The drug summit will bring people together to find new ways forward to tackle this incredibly complex and difficult problem,” he said.

Carr’s landmark five-day summit in 1999 followed an unprecedented number of heroin overdoses and led to the establishment of the Kings Cross medically supervised injecting centre.

That summit was sparked after a photo ran on the front page of the Sun-Herald newspaper in January 1999 showing a 16-year-old boy using heroin intravenously.

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