Bad drug policy is killing our kids.
Why won’t we face the facts?
Drug prohibition doesn’t work. In fact, it makes it more dangerous. It creates a lucrative billion-dollar black market, it’s unregulated, and consequently it’s dangerous. It’s easy to say ‘don’t do it’, but that’s hardly a policy, it’s unrealistic, unsafe and not cognisant of how people use drugs, and who uses drugs. Pretty well half of everybody at some time in their life.
People have always experimented with drugs. It’s why we made alcohol. The ancient Chinese found cannabis and people were taking hallucinogenic drugs at rave-like cave ceremonies 3,000 years ago. Humans like to play with their brains. Studies show that 47% of Australians have used illicit substances at some time in their life. And most people who use drugs do it a couple of times a year and aren’t addicted. Moral objections to drug use are as dangerous as the pills we buy on the internet.
Last week I sat with the parents of a boy who died from taking half a pill he bought on the internet. He bought just one OxyContin, took half and died. Anyone who has ever used substances knows the basic safety protocol of ‘take half’. He clearly attempted to do what anyone who is careful and abiding by harm reduction principles does. And one pill is very moderate. But the pill he took wasn’t OxyContin – it was counterfeit.
It was bought online, not through the ‘dark web’. Just the regular old internet. It was coloured and stamped as Oxy but contained nitozine – a substance that is 883 times stronger than morphine. It’s turning up in a lot of pills made on the black market. It’s lethal.
We are in a mental health crisis where it can take months to see someone, so that just increases the number of people seeing Dr Google and buying pharmaceuticals online. Xanax, Valium, Oxy – all available on the internet – but it’s generally NOT what you think it is, and in NSW and in most of Australia, you’d have no way of knowing. If you can’t regulate the internet – which clearly no one can, pill testing is the most obvious solution. People think they are taking pharmaceuticals, but they’re not. Increasing access to mental health services and support would be a good harm reduction approach as well.
Pill testing would have saved someone’s 18-year-old son. Pill testing now operates in 20 countries, including New Zealand, the US, Canada and this summer in Victoria where they intend to set up mobile pill testing teams at festivals and events. By mid-2025 they are on track to set up a fixed, inner-city site where people can come and have their drugs tested.
Let people make informed decisions. Research in the UK shows there was a 95% reduction in drug-related transfers to hospital at a festival when they had drug checking. Australian data said that there was a sizable proportion of people who discarded substances after testing. So drug testing doesn’t increase drug use, it actually decreases it. Sadly we can’t seem to get a pill testing service passed in NSW, so our kids and our community are at risk. In my opinion it’s negligent. Stop victim blaming. Pill testing is the equivalent of seat belts in cars. Is the idea to punish or reduce death?
In the meantime, there is a federal government program called ‘Take Home Naloxone’. Everyone should have naloxone in their first-aid kit. It’s free. If anyone has an opiate overdose it gives you a window of time to revive someone before medical help arrives.
The ‘Just Say No’ drug policy is a proven disaster. Pill testing saves lives.
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