The Ice Age (40 page)

•$1.12 billion on law enforcement — two-thirds of the total spend (66 per cent)

•$361 million on treatment — just over one-fifth (21 per cent)

•$157 million on prevention — just under one-tenth (9 per cent)

•$36 million on harm reduction — 2 per cent

State and territory government spending accounted for more than two thirds of the spend (69 per cent).
Moreover, it is state governments who tip the balance of funding, because they are responsible for law-and-order spending, and because a ‘tough' approach to law-and-order issues has become an increasingly bipartisan stance from state governments over the past decade.

In the lead up to the election his party eventually won, then Victorian opposition leader, Daniel Andrews, said those caught spreading recipes for ice, or who turned a blind eye to it being sold and used on their premises, would face up to twenty-five years in jail under proposed law changes. He said that harsher penalties would also apply to anyone caught trafficking the drug into or near a primary or secondary school. The New South Wales state government brought in laws so that lower-level ice dealers would get harsher sentences in September 2015, meaning carrying 500 grams, rather than 1 kilogram of crystal meth, as had been the case previously, would now count as a ‘large commercial quantity'. A person carrying between 500 grams and 1 kilogram could now face life imprisonment, rather than the maximum 20-year sentence that had been previously available. The New South Wales government also made public announcements asking people to report anybody to the police who they suspected of making or dealing crystal meth. This followed a $1 million announcement by the then Abbott government for it's ‘Dob in a Dealer' hotline. On 26 May 2015, Nathan Barratt, a Northern Territory government MP and the chair of the Northern Territory government's inquiry into ice, flagged random, mandatory drug testing for private and public sectors, as well as for revellers on Darwin's nightclub strip.

According to the 2010 National Drug Strategy and Household Survey (NDSHS), a large majority of Australians — four out of five — supported tougher sentencing laws for the sale and supply of heroin, amphetamines, cocaine, and ecstasy. Similarly, a hypothetical distribution of $100 showed that a law-enforcement approach ($40.50) was favoured by Australians, as compared to the funds they would allocate for drug education ($33.80) and drug treatment ($25.70) in reducing illegal drug use.

There are few areas in public policy with such a significant gap between what the public wants and what the policy wonks and frontline workers think is best.

At the same time, expressing drug policy in Australia as a dichotomous and clear divide between a ‘tough-on-drugs' approach and a ‘harm minimisation' approach simply doesn't fit what has been, to date, a mixed-policy approach. The current regime, while undeniably and predominantly law-enforcement focused, has nonetheless become more progressive, evidence-based, and effective at reducing the extent and harms of drug abuse: particularly federally over the past thirty years.

Since 1985, Australia's drug policies have been guided by our National Drug Strategy (the NDS), which has three components: demand reduction, supply reduction, and harm minimisation. In the seventy years prior to that, an approach that prioritised law enforcement dominated our policy thinking. In fact, it was the murder of a prominent anti-cannabis campaigner, Donald Mackay, in 1977, combined with the emergence of the ‘hippie era', and soldiers coming back from the Vietnam War with significant amount of other drugs, that prompted several royal commissions, including the Australian Royal Commission of Inquiry into Drugs (the Williams Inquiry) in 1979. The federal inquiry, combined with similar state-level inquiries, all concluded we needed more laws, better laws, and more money for law enforcement. However, it also became clear that drug use and drug harms — including drug-related crime — were actually rising, along with the rise of HIV/AIDS, and policy-makers decided a new approach was needed.

This new approach brought in some very new ideas: first, that drug use should be treated mainly as a health issue; and second, that drug use is a complex phenomenon that will never be entirely eliminated. While the majority of funds were still put into law enforcement, the approach was modified, and, importantly, the political authority for drug policy was moved from the federal Attorney-General's Department to the federal Department of Health.

Politicians are often quick to draw attention to or brand their approaches as ‘tough' when they have strong elements of harm reduction. Indeed, there is evidence that the approach to drug policy at the highest levels is being increasingly — albeit incrementally and sometimes with ‘two steps forward, one step back' — informed by research and what drug experts believe. Politicians will often lead their press statements and press releases with great detail on the ‘tough' aspects of their policy plan, while new money for treatment is often buried; when the New South Wales Liberal government announced its lowering of the ‘large commercial quantity' threshold in September 2015, buried toward the end of the announcement was the fact it had also spent $11 million on treatment.

Released in late 2015, a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) titled ‘Methamphetamine: focusing Australia's national ice strategy on the problem, not the symptoms', suggested that the reduction of crystal-meth abuse in Canada served as an ongoing example of why treatment and education are better than policing (co-author Vernn White is a former police officer from Canada). At the same time, it noted that Australia's political approaches were often tougher in words than action. It cites, for instance, the 1997 Howard government's ‘Tough on Drugs' strategy in response to the 1990s heroin surge. While the bulk of the ‘Tough on Drugs' funding went to organisations such as the Australian Federal Police and the federal Customs Service (and in fact reprioritised funding to law enforcement) — there was also funding for new treatment centres, upgrading of new treatment centres, and school education programs. The program also created a number of progressive new initiatives, such as the Illicit Drug Diversion Initiative to divert cannabis and other drug users out of the criminal justice system and into education/treatment.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) adds in their 2008 report ‘Drugs Policy and Results in Australia' that, despite being called ‘Tough on Drugs', the strategy also:

included proposals to enable the diversion of drug users from prison to treatment with a view to breaking the cycle of drug dependency and criminal behavior. In addition, the strategy also singled out the importance of research, notably towards prevention and treatment of illicit drug use, with a stronger focus on abstinence-based treatment and eventual re-integration of users into the community.

The UNODC report also argued that this was a successful policy mix noting that ‘overall drug use increased 69% over the 1988–98 period, notably between 1995 and 1998' but also that ‘between 1998 and 2007 overall illicit drug use declined close to 40%. Amphetamines use declined by 38%; cannabis use fell by close to 50%; and use of heroin dropped by an impressive 75%'.

These figures again remind us of just how much the arrival of crystal meth has rendered previous knowledge of drug treatment and drug policy at least partially redundant — not least of all, some argue, because despite this multi-faceted approach, there is still a heavy emphasis on law-enforcement spending.

In addition, governments have traditionally favoured mass-media advertising campaigns — for reasons that aren't all together clear. The biggest spend from the federal government before it announced its federal inquiry and ice taskforce (which I will talk about in the next chapter) was a $9 million mass-media advertising campaign that was launched 10 May 2015. The advert showed some of the worst consequences from crystal-meth addiction: psychosis; a woman in tears picking at her skin; a young man punching his mother in the face while his little sister looks on; a man head-butting a doctor in a hospital while two elderly patients watch; and a worker telling his boss he hasn't finished his work. Beyond showing dramatic events, the advert doesn't contain very much information at all about crystal meth. It is almost identical to a federal government anti-ice advert that ran in 2007, but with different actors.

There is evidence that in some cases TV drug adverts can have the opposite effect than intended: in
Drugs and Drugs Policy,
Kleiman, Caulkins, and Hawken say that ‘even the best prevention programs have only modest effects', and studies have shown that the main reason for this is that youth are also exposed to ‘thousands of hours of other social influences: friends, television, music, and other media'. Information-only prevention programs were abandoned in the 1960s and 1970s because they were found to actually increase drug use among younger populations.

National Drug Research Institute director Steve Allsop, who has studied the general effectiveness of anti-drug advertising campaigns, told the Victorian inquiry that these ‘Messages do not sit well with an individual's own experience (for example implying that ecstasy use will often lead to death when in fact such occurrences are rare) [and thus] may not be credible with the target audience, and have the potential to undermine confidence in other messages or strategies.' He adds that mass media campaigns which strongly highlight the adverse impact of drug use may contribute to the stigmatisation and marginalisation of drug users ‘thereby reducing the possibility that they will seek or be offered assistance'.

It would be difficult to accuse Australian governments of not reaching out to communities and experts for guidance on the best way to deal with crystal meth. As we know, crystal-meth use in Australia first surged in Victoria; about two years into the surge, the then Napthine government announced a parliamentary inquiry into crystal meth. The report for the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into crystal meth was tabled on 3 September 2014, making 54 recommendations based on 15 underlying principles. This 856-page report is one of the most extensive, well-balanced, evidence-based, and well thought-out research inquiries I have ever read. It remains one of the most comprehensive documents about crystal-meth policy publicly available all over the world. The report's recommendations were a mix of drug prevention plans, ideas for awareness campaigns, calls for specialist crystal-meth treatment programs, calls for more drug treatment centres, particularly in rural Victoria, specific plans for crackdown on precursors and organised crime, and an expansion of alternative justice programs such as drug courts.

The report also highlighted the way New Zealand reduced its methamphetamine problem with a specific methamphetamine plan. While New Zealand's problems weren't with crystal meth but with highly potent powdered methamphetamine pills, the associated issues gave the nation a similar shock to the one Australia experienced later with crystal meth. New Zealand had an even bigger meth problem than Australia did a decade ago, and thanks partially to some decisive government action, meth use in the general population has now dropped from 3 per cent to 0.9 per cent. So how did they do it? Well, in 2009, the New Zealand government developed its ‘Methamphetamine Action Plan'.

The package had five essential elements:

1.Crack down on precursors.

2.Break supply chains.

3.Provide better routes into treatment.

4.Support communities.

5.Strengthen governance.

Speaking to ABC Radio Central Victoria, Ross Bell, executive director of the
New Zealand Drug Foundation, said:

We got the initial response wrong; we thought a traditional law and enforcement approach worked. We thought we could just stop the supply, but this didn't make any impact. Instead, we made an effort to decrease the stigma attached to meth users in the community … and increased the number of people convicted of meth convictions going into drug treatment programs.

Bell explained that most of the new money going in to the program was invested in treatment, and making sure that more treatment beds were available, as a way of ensuring that if somebody needed help, it could be given to them.

Then in May 2015, Victoria became the first Australian state to develop its own methamphetamine action plan: the ‘Ice Action Plan'. Like New Zealand's and Canada's plans before it, it focused on a combination of harm reduction, reduced access to the drug, and increased services and treatment options. It also identified a need for building ‘workforce capacity' by focusing on the violence experienced by frontline workers, and by structuring specific training and support for those workers.

The Andrews government later announced a $45.5 million spend to implement the plan — $18 million would be used ‘to expand drug treatment and rehabilitation' for ice users. A further $15 million was allocated to new drug-and-booze buses, $4.5 million to expand Victoria police forensic teams to crack down on clandestine drug labs, and $4.7 million to help support ice users and their families, including a new ice helpline.

For many, there are clear positives in the plan, as it indicates a shift in funding proportion from law enforcement to information and treatment. A $45 million increase in drug-treatment services is nothing to be sneezed at. The Andrews government said this funding would create about 500 new residential rehab beds each year not to mention other new drug treatment services in areas, like Pakenham, where the population's growth has moved significantly faster than its infrastructure. So for instance, in Narre Warren — a central suburb in the Victoria City of Casey (near Pakenham) that now has a bigger population than Canberra — there is now funding to run a new specialist drug program that will provide rehabilitation services in an area that previously had almost none.