Could Radical Drug Reform Allow a Decaying Society to Thrive?

In 2001, the European nation of Portugal implemented a radical drug policy that vastly improved the lives of the citizens. So why doesn’t this happen elsewhere?

Years ago, I punched a cop in the face.

I despise violence. It hurts. But that solitary act doesn't bother me, it was in self defence. He shouldn't have slammed me head first into the wall in the first place. All I wished for that evening, like every other evening, was to purchase my heroin in peace, and mosey on home. A quick stroll down Lennox Street, North Richmond, score, inject myself into a semi-conscious state, and catch the train home. Not too much to ask is it? Why then, according to mainstream society, is that so wrong?

Under Victoria's current archaic drug legislation, the fact that I happened to be lounging around the apartment of a notorious drug dealer deems me an instant criminal by association. Why?

During the blistering heat of the day, I had worked a gruelling eleven hour shift, loading truck after truck with premium advanced trees to be delivered to the wealthy. After work, and with self-preservation in mind, I headed to the private abode of my drug dealer, Eung, rather than buy off the street. No witnesses, no drama. In recent times, I had been scoring on the street often, and noticed that the entire area had become a cesspool. Angry methamphetamine addicts, homeless heroin addicts, and a slew of inexperienced, under-resourced police a cesspool does make. So I played it safe and bought and used out of sight. Why is this illegal?

Now, of course, I realised at the time that I was a junky, a scum of the earth in the eyes of many. I also realised that heroin is highly ilegal and is considered a Class A Narcotic. Heroin, one-fifteenth of a molecular structure away from morphine, and one-tenth away from Oxycontin, both of which are easily attainable and perfectly legal. Unethical Big Pharma corporations controlling the political elite the main contributor to the hypocrisy. Maybe life would have been less complicated if I faked a back injury and switched to cheap, government-subsided pain killers. No one would judge me then.

Regardless, I bought my drugs with money I earned, well aware of all the risks. My choice, my cross to bear.

In my head, I was already home, no harm done. Instead, I ended up drugless, withdrawing, $200 worse off, and in a holding cell with a smashed face and a pending court date. The constable took my shoes, belt, and jewellery, in case I felt the urge to commit suicide. The same constable that not an hour before had smashed my face into a concrete wall.

Several hours later, in an attempt to be administered some pain medication to ease my growing withdrawal symptoms, I tried to worsen my smashed face by smashing it into the wall repeatedly. The plan didn’t work, but the irony tickled me like lightning. Governments all across the world have been smashing their own faces against the wall for decades in regard to archaic drug laws. repeating the same act over and over and expecting a different result is the true definition of insanity. It ain’t working. Still, the elites are fine with it.

The main issue for any government is of course, money. Regimes worldwide reap huge profits from the illegal drug trade, obviously, they don’t want us knowing that. Why do you think the U.S. government has such a hard-on for Mexico, China and Afghanistan? Corruption is funny that way.

When drug-related crime statistics rise, most governments pretend to be acting by throwing more police at the problem. Then, once a manufactured consent is promulgated, police resources are cut for “budgetary” reasons. So what becomes of the remaining drug squad members? They are now left to battle a continuous, raging war with a skeleton staff. Now, police on the beat are under resourced, over-stressed, battle fatigued, and lacking in judgement. With poor training, and little knowledge of addiction behaviours, combined with a deteriorating common sense, police must improvise, overseeing the streets with a bouncer mentality. This practice is no less dangerous than a truck driver falling asleep at the wheel, except in this case, the cops have guns. People have been needlessly murdered.

The negligent arsehole who assaulted me was young. He, along with six other trigger-happy Dirty Harry wannabes, forced their way into the apartment without a warrant, catching us completely off guard. Fair enough, I suppose. That’s the tactic, and whilst illegal, it is generally successful. I understand fully that I was breaking the law, but just because something is law does not make it just. Harm only came to be upon police presence. This is common. And me, only after I instinctively defended myself from the home invasion, did I realise that I had just clocked a policeman. Who’s at fault? They came in swinging, we swung back. It’s the chicken or the egg every goddamn time.

I am not alone, by the way. This incident is repeated a thousand of times per day across the globe. Multiply that by seventy-five years since the implementation of the Harrison Narcotics Act, and you’ve got approximately 27,000,375 ineffectual raids using approximately 164,000,250 police officers. Meanwhile, another heroin addict is robbing an elderly lady of her purse because he can’t afford heroin because it is illegal. Not an excuse, just the reality. Perhaps the order of the day should be to at the very least decriminalise personal drug use.

At the time of the incident, heroin was being sold on Melbourne's streets at an alarming rate. Without exaggeration, you could smell it in the streets. The drug’s presence was as candid as a neon billboard, while the heroin death toll sat side-by-side in the newspapers with the state's road toll. This was a time when it was easier for a minor to purchase heroin than to buy cigarettes. During that tumultuous period, victorian premier Jeff Kennett proposed a potential solution by suggesting that heroin addicts be removed from public view by strategically installing safe-injecting rooms across the city. The threat of incarceration has never worked, but maybe, by providing clean needles and a safe environment manned around the clock by professional nurses and counsellors, the problem could be solved.

Kennett didn't stop there. He also proposed that perhaps Victoria could become the first region on the planet to legalise heroin, and having it administered by a qualified pharmacist, much in the same way the methadone program functions. The problem is that the methadone program has been a complete failure since its inception in the 1970's. I was on the stuff for years, and it did absolutely nothing to prevent me from using heroin. If anything, the buzz was multiplied.

Methadone is not an agonist. It does not block opiate receptors, it feeds them. Its sole purpose is to allow the addict a daily level of satisfaction and stability. Admittedly, it works for a short while. Early on, a measured dose will most likely carry the addict through to the next day. The first few days of my methadone intake had me in a perpetual state of bliss. As far as I was concerned, this was the answer; cheap, legal, and with a longer lasting high than heroin. And therein lies the problem: most heroin addicts don’t treat the methadone program as a harm reduction tool, but as a supplemental dose to heroin use. Also, as with any drug, the methadone high wains once the body builds a tolerance. After one year in the program my heroin use had increased and my methadone dose tripled. A further problem is that many pharmacies licensed to carry methadone lay squarely in the bosom of a heroin hotspot. Not to mention, doctors today are not healers, merely a group of easily coerced Big Pharma customers. Problems aside, the methadone program principle remains pure, and could at least be used as a base to legalise heroin.

Let's pretend heroin was legalised and supplied only in selected pharmacies. Now the addict has a choice. Apart from methadone, there’s the sublingual partial agonist, Suboxone, and, if Jeff Kennett’s plans had come to fruition, guilt-free, strictly monitored heroin subsidised by the government. Under this system, a patient must only have the choice of one of these treatments; multiple opiate sources are a no-no. Heroin would disappear from public view streets faster than a junky can wash a windscreen, and police will be freed up to pursue more serious crimes. Even if the addict remains on heroin for the term of his natural life, he will be stable enough to gain employment, save money, settle down, be a good parent… whatever is wholesome. Why can’t this be? No junky ever sets out to become a junky, and no junky in the throes of addiction wants to remain a junky. Imagine the lives that will be saved.

The general public’s lives will be enriched too. No more will hard-earned tax dollars be spent on enforcing archaic, inefficient drug policy. Crime rates will free-fall, police resources will be spread more evenly, and small businesses located within drug hotspots will thrive. Their children will be able to go to better schools, afford better health care... the flow-on effect will be astronomical. What's the harm in just trialling this for a nominated period? Oh yeah, nothing in it for the elites.

Back to 1990’s Victoria, and the public were so outraged over Jeff Kennett's controversial proposition, that many of them threatened to start voting for the horrible Labor party. Ultimately, Kennett was shouted down in parliament, even by members of his own party, and the bill never came to fruition. Twenty-five years on, and Melbourne’s heroin scourge rolls on, joined at the hip with a growing methamphetamine epidemic. An argument can be made that the situation is now much, much worse. Addicts are now so aggressive and unpredictable that the police refuse to enter certain areas. Without naming names, I have been talking to a high-ranking officer of the Richmond C.I.B. via email over recent months who said that he and most of his colleagues, "Wish it was back to the days of heroin being the sole problem." He went on to say that, "At least back then, the addicts were mostly placid", and continued by saying that "we were forever coming across veteran heroin addicts who had been using for thirty or forty years. In thirty years, how many of the current ice addicts do you think there'll be? Zero." By zero, he meant that amphetamines age and kill the body's cells and organs much quicker than any grade of heroin ever has. Studies have shown that heroin is not significantly detrimental to the body's natural ageing process. One can't help but ponder what might have been if Kennett's proposal actually got off the ground.

Not long after the injecting room debacle, Portugal ramped up an attempt to solve a heroin crisis of their own. Heroin abuse and its societal effects had become a massive problem in Western Europe, and Portugal's capital, Lisbon, was no exception. An alarming 1999 study revealed that Portugal had the highest HIV rate of all the European Union, as well as one of the highest drug-related crime rates. Fast-forward two years, and the Portuguese government, led by Jorge Sampaio, implemented a radical program in the hope of eradicating the problem.

The allowance of a decriminalised heroin distribution left the addict with two choices:

Participate under the banner of the program’s strict regulations
or
Go cold turkey, as heroin had left the streets faster than a junky will steal your money.

As the need for heroin in the streets had been removed, drug traffickers moved their businesses to nearby Spain where the market was, and still is, far more lucrative. At a fraction of the street price, an addict could report on a daily basis to their local medical centre and be administered a dose in the presence of qualified pharmacologists, nurses and counsellors. Drug-related crime rate plummeted exponentially and police resources were spread far thicker than ever before. Lisbon went from being a highly dangerous city to a relatively safe one in the period of just two years.

Portugal's newly adopted drug policy set a worldwide benchmark for the social benefits of what some might call radical policy. Harm minimisation and substitution programs were put in place as well as social integration, job training, and basic health care programs. Over the ensuing years, the success rate has been astronomical, with tens of thousands of addicts receiving the appropriate care without fear of retribution.

So, why have other nations (other than Canada to an extent) not implemented similar policies? Government regimes are usually an analytical lot, and base many of their policies on the statistical effect of similar processes seen in other countries. But not in this case. Again, the war on drugs is far too lucrative. No one in power wants to lose potentially billions of dollars in profit, and pushing through a program such as this is tantamount to a lot less under-the-table ill-gotten gains. This is not a cynical viewpoint, just a fact.

Another reason is that the general public does not like change, let alone radical reform. They’ll all end up voting for the other guy. Perhaps, if the public wasn’t so reactionary to the whims of political propaganda, by now we would be free of this worldwide scourge, and able to live as God intended, as sovereign citizens.

On occasion, despite my own awful drug-related experiences, I choke on my tears at the horrific effect the drug epidemic is having on society. On occasion, despite my travels and well-honed bravado, I don’t feel safe walking the streets of Melbourne at all. Allowed to continue, the war on drugs will ultimately see once thriving societies crumble into a decay not seen since the fall of the Roman empire. Time to make a change.