Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform

committed to preventing tragedy that arises from illicit drug use  

Towards a drug-free world by 2008 - we can do it

UN Chronicle,  Summer, 1998  by Pino Arlacchi (United Nations Under-Secretary-General)

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What's New

• Nobody’s Children Inquiry 
  Submission of Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform 
  to the Inquiry into the Early Intervention and Care of  Vulnerable Infants in the Act
  by the Standing Committee on Health and Disability of  the Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory 

  "Politicians have the capacity to set policy which prescribes measures that servants of government implement. At the very least, this engages the responsibility of politicians to give open minded consideration to a serious possibility that a policy that is within their capacity to change actually harms."

• Drug Action Week Forum 2008 Tuesday 24 June, 2008

  Can NSPs reduce OH&S risk in the AMC?
  Syringes and Work Safety in the new ACT prison 
  download copy of flyer to print here
  
  Speaker:  Mr John Ryan
  John Ryan (BA/LLB) is Chief Executive Officer of Anex in Victoria where he has overseen projects such as the review of injecting equipment supplied by NSP in Victoria;  the review of service delivery and models of best practice for the Inner West Region of Melbourne and the “National Consultations on the situational Context, Service Types and Issues of Concern for NSP in Australia”  He has been chair of the mental Health and Illegal Drugs Conference.  He is also Chair of the Anex Needle and Syringe Programs in Prison Committee.
  Listen to audio here Introductions/Speech/Questions
  

• An open letter to the Prime Minister seeking evidence based drug policies
  
  Dear Prime Minister,
  A number of days ago you said that you were preparing to make an announcement on illicit drugs. You have also said that you are determined to tackle homelessness, mental health, education, child protection, and other social problems and that you would bring evidence to bear in policies of your government.

  Evidence shows that drugs are a potent factor in a high percentage of all these social problems. No substantial headway in removing the social problems that you have so clearly identified will ever be made unless drug policy is seriously examined.  ....more
  

• Media Release - No new ideas in Coalition's dead end policy
  

• 12th Annual Remembrance Ceremony Program
  

• The ACT is building a new prison but is having second thoughts about introducing a needle and syringe program in the prison. Find out more. Join the campaign for a needle and syringe program in the new ACT prison. Your help is needed.
  

• The heroin trial 10 years on: how politics killed hope. By Dr Alex Wodak.
  Ten years ago, on 19 August 1997, Federal Cabinet at the behest of Prime Minister John Howard aborted a proposed scientific trial to evaluate the effectiveness of prescription heroin as a treatment for heroin dependence. Six years of careful scientific research work was trashed.

  Cabinet claimed the heroin trial was abandoned because it would have ''sent the wrong message''. After the meeting, two Cabinet members (Peter Reith, Judith Moylan) breached the Westminster tradition by telling waiting reporters that Cabinet had erred.

• Drug Action Week Public Forum June 2007
  Parental substance abuse, parenting capacity and child protection: always a three way tug of war?  Presented by Dr Sue Packer, AM, FRACP
  ....[there is a] mutual obligation between generations ... [and] ... the safety of every child is the responsibility of everyone associated with the child’s life and no one person is to blame. 
   I believe these are two excellent principles to guide the development of more effective services for children of substance abusing families. more here>>
  

• ACT Prison: The Bill for ACT Corrections Management has been passed by the Legislative Assembly. See minutes of proceedings here>>.
  FFDLR Media Release
  “The Corrections Management Act that the Government pushed through the Assembly last night will do nothing to improve rehabilitation of prisoners and reduce reoffending,” said John Ley, vice-president of Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform.

  This is because the Government seems to have been intent on establishing an efficient law for discipline, searching, banning, seizing and punishment at the expense of one that addresses the severe health problems that cause people to be in prison and that will cause them to return if not addressed.
  Read the full  media release here>>
  Worrying signs of health in ACT jail.
  Article by Bill Bush published in The Canberra Times 1 June 2007
  THERE is real doubt that the ACT community and its politicians are aware of all they are acquiring with their new human­rights-compliant jail.
  
  Much is made of ceasing transportation to NSW and taking responsibility for our own prisoners, of providing more ready access by families to detainees and of providing opportunities for local businesses. The mere establishment of a jail in the ACT will achieve these objectives. The problem is whether the project will meet its other most important objectives: rehabilitation and a safer ACT community. Paying lip service to human rights will not bring this about.
  Read the full article here>>
  

• Submission of Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform to the inquiry of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services into the impact of illicit drug use on families. Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform. believes that the starting point of the Committee’s inquiry should be acknowledgment of the moral compass that it intends to use in guiding its deliberations. We urge the committee to take to itself two principles:

• That the overriding objective should be to safeguard life and promote the physical and mental well-being and social functionality of all; and

• That in seeking to forward this objective they should be open to truth. 

• Legislative Assembly Standing Committee on Health and Disability – Inquiry into the use of crystal methamphetamine read the submission here and read the supplementary submission here.
  It is not possible to examine crystal methamphetamine in isolation. ...  the use of that drug is currently fashionable and at some point in time will fall out of fashion and be replaced by another drug. Thus the Committee should  adopt a broad approach and be forward looking, else the problems currently being experienced with crystal methamphetamine will simply transfer to the next most fashionable drug. And it is entirely possible that the next most fashionable drug will be more concentrated and bring with it a whole new set of problems, including as with methamphetamines, an unpreparedness of suitable responses. 
  The supplementary submission corrects some errors in the charts included in that submission, takes account of information that has become available since or addresses issues that have assumed prominence, such as the banning of ice pipes.
• Evidence-based drug policy - myth or reality? - the ways in which research evidence is used or not used in policy making processes
  Public meeting presented on 6 Feb 2007 by Alison Ritter, Associate Professor, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre and Director, the Drug Policy Modelling Program (DPMP)  view the presentation slides >>
  
• Cries of futility in dead ends of drug policy By Neil Lade
  Published in the Canberra Times 22 October 2006
  Lost in an empty ring, going round in circles. Where words drift into nothing and there's no escape from deja vu. Just blinding stupor in a tunnel of darkness. And deep behind dark glasses no one can see my tears.
  It's another time of year when futility struggles with reality. When I'm drawn somewhat reluctantly to Weston Park in Yarralumla - and wounds gape again. It's last Monday, and I'm back for the ACT Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform's 11th Annual Remembrance Ceremony for those who lose their life to illicit drugs.
• Focus must be parenting, not framework to micro-manage
  Bill Bush, Published in the Canberra Times on Wednesday 27 September 2006, p. 13
  The deaths of three more babies from families known to child protection authorities (CT, 22 Sept. p. 1) rightly dismays us all. A firestorm of fury is an understandable response but it is essential that we take stock of the facts.
  ..........
  The Australia-wide crisis in child protection has brought the system across the country to its knees. It is getting worse rather than better ......

• FFDLR on Australia’s mutual assistance arrangements
  FFDLR's submission finds serious deficiencies in the arrangements and recomends: 
  The Mutual Assistance Act needs to be amended to broaden the scope of assistance to which the safeguards of the Act apply. In particular, Australia should not provide assistance where a person may be convicted for an offence carrying the death penalty unless the requesting State gives an undertaking that the death penalty will not be imposed or if imposed will not be carried out:
  1.      In civil law countries where evidence is being gathered or may be provided that could result in the death penalty.
  2.      Where assistance may be provided on an officer level or any other level, irrespective of whether a request is or is not made.

• PRISON, DRUGS AND MENTAL ILLNESS: MUST THEY ALWAYS GO TOGETHER? Transcript of an 21 June 2006 Drug Action Week address by Father Peter Norden, policy director of Jesuit Social Services, Adjunct Professor in the School of Social Science and Planning at RMIT University, national board member of ACOSS (Australian Council of Social Service) and the Convenor of the Victorian Criminal Justice Coalition. 
  “We have dramatic changes taking place within our Australian society at the present time.  Growing prosperity for many, poor distribution of resources, and increased alienation and growing disadvantage for many Australian communities.  It is about time that we learnt that the only effective intervention with such young people is a holistic program that engages the young person as an individual and does not just focus on their drug usage or their mental illness. Our present way of responding to illicit drug use in our community needs dramatic rethinking.”

• Read the presentation made at the public meeting on Thursday 30th March 2006
  Topic: Methamphetamines, Mental Health and Drug Law Reform by Andrew Macintosh, Deputy Director of the Australia Institute.

• Submission of Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform to the Inquiry by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission into Amphetamines and other Synthetic Drugs.
  There is now a robust and growing market for methamphetamine and ecstasy in Australia. The involvement of highly resourced, large scale and very well organised criminal syndicates is obvious. But there is no realistic prospect that growth can be reversed under the present policy.

• Media release: Young and mentally ill endangered by Howard's cannabis scare.
  When COAG meets on Friday Prime Minister Howard plans to urge the Premiers and Chief Ministers to adopt draconian laws on cannabis as a means of tackling mental health problems. Although claimed to be aimed at drug dealers these laws will effectively widen the net to catch and prosecute young occasional users and the mentally ill.

• Introduction to Australian Parliamentary Group Public Meeting, Parliament House Canberra, 2 Dec 2005 by Brian McConnell.
  Introductory talk to APGDLR public meeting held on the day that Nguyen Tuong Van, an Australian citizen, was executed by the Singapore government for trafficking 396 grams of heroin through Singapore to Australia.

• Prism of political correctness still distorting drugs issue by Bill Bush
  Published in the Canberra Times, Wednesday, November 9, 2005
  If drug addiction is best understood as a psychological problem than a lifestyle issue, why do we continue to treat drug abuse primarily in a criminal law rather than primarily in a health context?

• Submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee Review on the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002. In its review of the Australian Crime Commission Act Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform asks that the Committee consider the seven recommendations the group made in its submission dated 14 April 2005 on the 2003-2004 annual report of the Australian Crime Commission. In the present submission Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform makes just one further recommendation. It is that:
  The Australian Crime Commission should apply drug market indicators in performance criteria that assess the effectiveness of law enforcement in reducing the supply of illicit drugs to the Australian community. 

• Inquiry of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee into the provisions of the Law and Justice Legislation Amendment (Serious Drug Offences and Other Measures) Bill 2005. This submission focuses on those aspects of the Bill that deal with drugs and in particular with those affecting drug users.  The Bill is misnamed. It is far from confined to serious drug offences by large scale suppliers. It is a radical extension of Commonwealth legislative authority into the criminal law of drugs with potential application to every drug user in the country. Moreover, it does this in a heavy handed way. Actions that in plain language would not be regarded as ‘serious crimes’ will be labelled as serious drug offences to which draconian penalties will apply.

• Submission of Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform to the inquiry of the senate select committee on mental health into the provision of mental health services in Australia. Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform has just one plea to make to the Committee. That is for it to recognise that the response in Australia to illicit drugs contributes to the worsening crisis in mental health far beyond the adverse effects of the drugs themselves. In particular, we call on the Committee to reject the current disempowering mindset that insists first and foremost that people should overcome their addiction before addressing other problems in their life.

• Submission to the enquiry of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission.  FFDLR made 7 recommendations to the PJC.

• New drug laws reflect badly on Government by Brian McConnell 
  Although aimed at drug traffickers and serious drug offenders, the new ACT cannabis laws effective from 6 March, in fact widens the net and can impose draconian penalties on young people experimenting in or addicted to the drug. Parents who want their kids to survive their experimenting years without the burden of a criminal record, should be concerned about the implications of these changes
  

• Upheaval in the Australian drug market: the cause and impacts of the sudden heroin shortage and increased supply of stimulants in 2000-01 by Bill Bush
  This study is intended as a survey of what is known about the large and unprecedented changes to the Australian drug market in 2000 and 2001. It focuses on those changes. They are important because of their uniqueness for Australia, the fact that similar changes did not seem to occur elsewhere, the insight that they give into the working of illicit drugs markets and for what they reveal about the efficacy of existing drug policy.
  

• Inquiry of The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Mental Health Council of Australia into the human rights of people affected by mental illness including the need for better mental health care.
  

• No silver bullet for drug abuse
  Advocates of zero tolerance ignore its side effects says Brian McConnell
  Published in The Canberra Times 24 September 2004
  

"The prestige of government is undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."
- Albert Einstein, My First Impressions of the USA, 1921

Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform (ACT) Inc.
PO Box 36
HIGGINS ACT 2615
Enquiries: PHONE: (02) 6254 2961