BY GARY MEYERHOFF
There's an election brewing in the Northern Territory: the ruling Country Liberal Party has passed an act to extend police powers, the Anti-Social Conduct and Public Order Act, and suddenly illicit drug use has become a hot topic.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Northern Territory has the highest rates of illicit drug use in Australia, and one of the highest rates of cannabis use in the world.
The CLP has always taken a zero tolerance stance on drug use — prohibition is alive and well in the NT. When Shane Stone was chief minister (before he became the present national president of the Liberal Party), the CLP's policy for illicit drug users was a one-way bus ticket out of the NT.
Since Denis Burke took over from Stone as chief minister, he has continued this head-in-the-sand approach, even denying on a number of occasions that illicit drug use is an issue for the NT.
His stance on needle exchange is an example of the CLP's approach.
In late 1999, the NT AIDS Council received funding from the federal government to establish a needle exchange program. Burke, who is also the territory's attorney-general, refused to issue a license for the program, arguing that the AIDS Council hadn't demonstrated the need, even though over 460,000 syringes were distributed in Darwin.
Eighteen months later, the program is still waiting for approval to start.
Under Burke, the territory remains the only jurisdiction in Australia that does not have a methadone maintenance program.
The NT only has a methadone reduction program, which has a six week waiting list and will only provide you methadone on a rapid reduction rate over three months. This is despite evidence which shows that methadone is more effective if used as a long-term program, with the majority of methadone users in Australia being prescribed for around two years.
The CLP government's zero tolerance policy has also worsened the situation for users of opiates. There is little or no heroin in Darwin, with many users instead dependent on the prescription drug MS Contin, a morphine, which has found its way from doctors' surgeries onto the streets where it is sold for $50 to $100 per tablet.
The government has replied with a crackdown, in the false belief that prohibition will stop its supply and distribution.
In practice this has doubled the street value of one 100 milligrams tablet of MS Contin, increased the number of injectors who are injecting other more dangerous prescription drugs, such as the oil-based temazepam, and increased the vulnerability of all drug users, particularly women and young people who are being forced to engage in sex work and sex for favours to support their dependence.
The NT government has offered to compromise with trials of a new drug, buprenorphine. This has been introduced after aggressive marketing by the flyspray company Reckitt-Benkiser, not by the aggressive lobbying of local drug user activists. People with opiate dependencies have not been consulted by the NT Government about this development.
Alternatives to such a zero tolerance policy are starting to get a hearing, however. Much work has been undertaken by Donna Kittel, a local community activist who has been championing improved detoxification and rehabilitation services for people who use illicit drugs in the NT. Kittel has helped organise two community rallies, the most recent of which was held in Raintree Park in the centre of Darwin.
Drug user activists have begun to raise calls for the legalisation of cannabis, as a first point, as many cannabis users are still going to jail for being unable to pay fines issued under the infringement system. A system of cannabis dealership licenses could be issued in the suburbs, with an Amsterdam-style "coffee shop" setting in the Darwin city and major regional centres.
Activists also argue that prescription heroin should be made available immediately, through trained medical practitioners. Other drugs such as ecstacy and LSD could be regulated in other ways.