August 22, 2014
by Anne Miller
There’s no simple, or polite way of saying it … there is a drug problem in our local area.
We doubt it’s worse than other places, but we’re doing no one any favours if we pretend we’re better than other places, either.
Who could believe that random roadside tests would detect MORE THAN TWICE as many drug drivers than drink drivers?
This is what happened recently during police operation Mike Chime in the South Burnett.
And during just an hour of testing at the weekend, police allegedly detected two more.
We’re talking about illegal drugs – amphetamine, methamphetamine and cannabis – not prescribed medication or over-the-counter pills.
There is no legal limit.
So what’s going on?
Admittedly, drugs stay in the system for much longer than alcohol, so users have a much longer timeframe during which they can be detected.
However, the number of positive readings that police are reporting indicates a couple of things:
1. A lot of local residents have a complete disregard for the law. It doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree, using drugs is illegal. If you’re willing to snub this law, what other ones do you choose to ignore, too?
2. A lot of local residents have little regard for their health, both physical and psychological.
Somewhere there are a lot of people making a lot of tax-free money from our local drug industry, and they’re costing the rest of us a motza.
And they’re tying up police resources.
So have we lost the “war on drugs”? Is it time to run up a white flag and just decriminalise the lot?
It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. Portugal did this more than 12 years ago. The Dutch have also had liberal drug laws for decades.
Now several American States are loosening things up. And in July, even the World Health Organisation called for global drug decriminalisation as part of a push to control the spread of HIV-AIDs.
The world has hardly fallen apart.
Maybe, just maybe, if this did happen in Australia drug use could start being considered a priority health problem – like cancer – and dollars saved from policing and incarceration could be directed towards research and counselling.
And the money that is disappearing into the black market would become taxable income; the thugs would be eliminated from the supply chain; and users could have confidence in the consistency of what they are ingesting.
We would then need full-time drug-testing police units – much like RBT units – to ensure drugged drivers stay off the road.
These are just thoughts, but I know that something has to be done.
I don’t want your drug problem to become my head-on smash somewhere along the D’Aguilar Highway …
