On the afternoon of the release of the report which detailed how the war on drugs had failed, 12 police officers with sniffer dogs were working the escalators at Bondi Junction railway station in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
It was 3pm and the only people they might get were a few students or a backpacker with a joint in his pocket.
The dogs have a fail rate of one-in-four, which means one-in-four people are needlessly stopped, surrounded by cops in full view of everyone else and given the shakedown.
Occasionally they find a joint and a fine is issued.
The war on drugs… it’s not working. Photograph via Sydney Morning Herald.
Is this what the war on drugs is all about? Sadly, the answer seems to be "yes".
But these kids are not criminals. They are more like villagers in Afghanistan who have seen their houses destroyed by a drone. They are collateral damage.
My son was stopped by the dogs on his way home from work. The police found nothing; he was one of those negatives. But there he was in his work clothes, surrounded by coppers. The top of the railway station is a funnel through which many of his mates passed and so it is likely he was spotted, possibly even by a colleague.
If you live in Sydney's east, the irony of sniffer dogs on the station targeting rail commuters will not be lost on you.
We know that a few kilometres away the rich and famous, who wouldn’t travel by train if their life depended on it, have easy access to cocaine and designer drugs.
If you live in Sydney's east, you know that if the war on drugs were serious, the sniffer dogs would be on the red carpet at the A(?) List events the beautiful people attend. And after they had finished on the carpet, the dogs would be let loose in the dunnies. Now that would turn up a few interesting people.
The Australia 21 report presented our PM with a political opportunity. She blew it.
As with most things in Australia at the moment, whenever anything momentous happens, we need to talk about Julia.
As the Prime Minster and her senior colleagues closed ranks and rejected the report out of hand, I once again wondered what sort of political instincts she has.
In the post-Queensland wipe-out, Labor pundits and critics are saying the party has to stand for something, yet when a report compiled by serious people addresses the central question of what it is we really want out of a drug policy, it is dismissed out of hand.
Here was an opportunity to stand for something, a chance for the PM to say: "Look, I respect the people who put this report together. Let's look at it, tease out its findings and see where it takes us."
Here was a chance to engage in a serious debate with the public.
Public opinion is way ahead of the narrow "drugs are bad, OK?" approach of our parliaments.
Any of us who think about substance abuse, and in this I include alcohol, and think about the damage it causes and whether current policy settings are really doing anything worthwhile, are looking for a debate. The aim surely is harm minimisation – finding ways to get people off drugs, keep them out of jail and break the criminal gangs who prosper because of the draconian war on drugs. It pushes up the price of the product and generates corruption throughout the system.
Source: http://thehoopla.com.au/drugs-gillard-blew//
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