Drugs and Harm Minimisation Policy

Principles

The Greens NSW believe:

1. The abuse of drugs causes massive harm. It poses a serious risk to the mental and physical health of individuals, and their families, and is costly to communities and society. The NSW Greens do not encourage drug use.
2. The abuse of drugs, not just illicit substances but also legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco, has a wide range of adverse health, social and economic effects.
3. The so-called 'War On Drugs', with its emphasis on prohibition and 'law and order' policies, has manifestly failed to reduce the harmful use of drugs and associated social impacts. In practice, drug prohibition leads to the development of unregulated black markets that encourage the growth of corruption and organised crime.
4. The evidence clearly demonstrates that the best way to reduce the negative effects of drug use is a harm minimisation approach, with policies and programs directed towards reducing the adverse health, social and economic consequences of drug use to the user and the community.
5. A funding mix should be adopted to enable the main components of harm minimisation: reducing both the supply and the demand and minimising the harm done to users and society as a whole. The allocation of resources should be proportional to the burden each substance places on society. Accordingly, minimising the impacts of the legal drugs alcohol and tobacco should receive a much higher level of funding than they currently do.
6. Informed debate about the effects of all drugs, including prescription, non-prescription, legal and illegal is essential to the development of sensible community attitudes.
7. Policies and programs should be adopted that are evidence-based and subject to continuous evaluation.
8. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities must control, to the greatest extent possible, the development and management of harm minimisation programs in their communities.

Goals

The Greens NSW will work to: 

9. Reduce harmful drug use.
10. Reduce deaths, disease, crime and corruption resulting from drug use.
11. Improve the efficacy of all management, treatment, regulatory and judicial responses to drug use in the community, focusing resources onto reducing demand, reducing supply and reducing harm.
12. Promote public debate on the best approach to handling drugs that is based on scientific evidence rather than political point scoring.

Policy Detail

The Greens NSW will:

Prevention

13. Ban advertising promotions for alcohol that encourage harmful and or under age drinking and continue the ban on tobacco advertising.
14. Require mandatory evidence-based health warnings on all drug, alcohol and tobacco products.
15. Reform licensing laws with respect to changes in opening hours and density of outlets to put the onus on licensees to prove that such changes will not adversely affect public health and safety. Also reform the laws to favour venue types less likely to encourage rapid consumption of alcohol, which is linked to increases in alcohol-related crime.
16. Support comprehensive evidence-based education programs on the adverse effects of drug use.
17. Support evidence-based driver education programs on the risks and penalties associated with drug use before driving vehicles.
18. Develop strategies, and preventative and community-based programmes to specifically discourage drug-taking behaviours in children and young people.

Drug and Alcohol Treatment

19. Improve the effectiveness and capacity of the drug and alcohol treatment system with increased funding, improved facilities and enhanced staffing levels. Also increase support services for families of substance users
20. Extend access to free counselling and treatment programs under the health system and fund targeted drug and alcohol treatment programs for high-risk groups.
21. Make methadone and other proven replacement treatments accessible, with intensive psychosocial support, to people who meet specified criteria as a means of treating heroin dependence.
22. Support rigorous scientific trials, to be carried out by accredited medical professionals, of new replacement treatments for substance dependence such as dexamphetamine for 'ice' dependence.
23. Increase the availability of diversion to rehabilitation and treatment programs as a sentencing alternative for people convicted of non-violent drug-related crimes.
24. Ensure that all drug treatment and harm minimisation programs are equally available across the community, in prisons, for young and elderly people and for people with disabilities.

Non-treatment Harm Minimisation Strategies

25. Increase the availability of harm reduction programs, including needle and syringe exchanges and medically supervised injecting rooms.
26. Implement the drug and alcohol related harm minimisation recommendations from the Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody.
27. Commit to ongoing evidence-based trials of innovative harm minimisation approaches to drug regulation.

Regulation and Penalties

28. Continue restrictions on the sale of alcohol and tobacco products to people under the age of 18.
29. Reform alcohol taxation so that the tax rate is based on alcohol content rather than beverage type and use the income to increase funding for alcohol and drug education and treatment.
30. Reduce the health impacts of passive smoking by banning smoking in hotels and other defined public places.
31. Ban donations from the tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical industries to political parties.
32. Support penalties for driving with impaired cognitive or psychomotor skills due to the consumption of alcohol or other drugs.
33. Remove criminal sanctions for personal drug use and the possession of associated implements.
34. Remove criminal sanctions for the possession and growing of a small number of cannabis plants for personal use.
35. Ensure the supply of any quantity of cannabis or other illegal drugs by an adult to a juvenile will remain a criminal offence.
36. Retain criminal penalties for the unsanctioned production, importation and commercial-scale supply of drugs.

Other Measures

37. Support the comprehensive roll out of non-sniffable fuel throughout regions of Australia where petrol sniffing is endemic, with associated diversionary and rehabilitation programs.
38. End the NSW Police practice of using sniffer dogs in public places to carry out stop and searches, because it is both a proven ineffective policing practice and an infringement of civil liberties.
39. Allow drugs to be regulated and prescribed for medicinal purposes based only on their therapeutic and palliative effects;.