Illicit drugs a major health risk

Many of us are feeling more chipper than we did 20 years ago, with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reporting on Thursday that our total disease burden has decreased by 11 per cent since 2003. But mental health and substance abuse disorders have increased to be the second biggest burden (15 per cent), just behind cancers (17 per cent). The institute also warns “alcohol, tobacco and other drug use is a major cause of preventable disease, illness and death in Australia”.

Illegal drugs account for a tiny proportion of the overall disease burden but, combined with mental health problems, they have an enormous impact on communities. More than nine in 10 people who recently used crystal methamphetamine found it “easy” or “very easy” to obtain, the AIHW says. This may not alarm the ACT government, which has “a harm minimisation approach to the use of illicit drugs”. But it’s the harm endemic drug use causes on city streets that is focusing US municipal government.

In Portland, Oregon, decriminalising possession of small amounts of hard drugs has created a trifecta of misery – linking addiction, homelessness and mental illness. The city now wants to ban public drug use to make the city safe, lest it end up like San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, presumably, where a plague of the artificial opioid fentanyl has rendered it ungovernable.

It’s a long way from the US to Canberra but the American drug problem was made far worse by not taking addiction seriously as a threat to the community. As The Australian has reported, that appears to be the case in the ACT, where there is a $100 fine for possessing 15 street-deals of the drug ice. Drivers exceeding a 40km speed limit pay more than three times that penalty.