DRUG PROHIBITION DOESN'T WORK - SO WHAT DO WE DO NEXT?

It's not Suzanne's fault that she became addicted to heroin at 16.
For a while it numbed the emotional pain of the abuse she suffered as
a ward of the state. Four years later, she uses heroin three times a
day just to feel normal. She never knows how strong it will be and
has overdosed six times in the past year. Without the first aid of
ambulance officers, Suzanne would be dead - like four of her friends
who died from overdoses in the past year.

Suzanne's habit costs more than $1000 a week. She engages in street
sex work - the only way she has to raise that kind of money. Suzanne
is sometimes beaten by the men who pay her for sex. She needs to
spend every dollar she can generate on maintaining her heroin
addiction. She sleeps on the streets and often goes hungry. Last
winter, pneumonia nearly finished her off. She has criminal records
for possession and street prostitution. She can't get a conventional job.

For many Australian drug users, the criminalisation of drugs
continues to create significant misery. The more radical drug policy
reformers would argue that if Suzanne could pick up a regulated dose
of heroin from a chemist for $5 a day (as addicts can methadone), she
could establish a healthy and safe life. In other words, her
regrettable situation is largely caused by drug laws, not by the heroin itself.

It's a fair point. While current drug laws have not stopped people
using drugs, they have produced two dreadful by-products. They have
spawned a ruthless black market generating billions of dollars, and
have turned users, often teenagers, into criminals.

Despite legal prohibition, the number of people who use illicit drugs
is greater now than ever. Taking as an example marijuana, which
accounts for two-thirds of all drug arrests, more than 2 million
Australians will smoke this substance over the next year.

But there are indications that times may be changing. Barack Obama's
Administration is the first to stop using the "war on drugs" rhetoric
that Richard Nixon initiated when he declared the conflict 40 years
ago. Obama has even said publicly that the war has been an "utter
failure". This is momentous. Until recently, America had been a
hectoring advocate of drug policies involving prohibition and zero
tolerance - with Australia marching to the beat of their drum. In
1988, the US Congress actually passed laws declaring that the US
would be drug-free by 1995. Billions of dollars have been wasted on
policing, yet drugs remain a central fact of American life.

In several Latin American countries and in mainland Europe,
legislators have already brought about significant reforms in drug
policy in recent times. This has not involved an open-slather
legalisation of drugs, but the decriminalisation of personal
possession and use. Most famously, in 2001 Portugal decriminalised
all drugs - from heroin to cocaine - and, to many people's surprise,
overall drug use actually fell.

In Switzerland, giving addicts free heroin in supervised clinics has
been deemed a success, with begging, prostitution, homelessness and
burglary all dropping dramatically. A national referendum in 2008
voted overwhelmingly to retain the program, which began as a trial in 1994.

The focus of any drug debate should not be morals or the law; it
should concentrate on the welfare of human beings. The common use of
the term "junkie" helps us to maintain the belief that users of
substances are in some way lesser beings. Part of the reason we've
comfortably followed the prohibition path for so long has been
mainstream culture's view of drug users as subhuman creatures who
need redemption. What they really need is medical support and laws
that make sense.

In Britain, the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, a respected drug
reform group, has been working to dispel ignorance and prejudice.
Believing that the time for action is now, the group recently
published After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation. The
document is generating worldwide support from doctors, lawmakers and
commentators. It pivots on the question that if we can accept that
prohibition does not work, what do we do next? How we answer this is vital.

After the War harnesses a great deal of intellectual firepower to
argue the case for drug reform and social transformation. It examines
how decriminalisation might work with strict regulations for vendors,
outlets and venues where drugs could be used. It will upset the
orthodoxy and exhilarate reformers.

The most common argument in favour of maintaining a "war on drugs" is
that drugs are harmful. But we know that if we had to rate drugs by
the harm they actually did, then alcohol and cigarettes would go to
the top of the list. Regulation and education are the key. It is
always worth recalling that when America made alcohol illegal through
prohibition in 1919, they created powerful crime figures such as Al
Capone, and people started drinking seriously dangerous moonshine,
more potent than wine or beer.

Many people don't think seriously about drug use until a family
member becomes affected. The law and order populism of the "war on
drugs" has been allowed to develop precisely because free debate and
careful thinking has been sidelined. Let's hope those days are numbered.