Variations in Prohibition: Harm Minimisation and Drug Wars in Australia and the United States
| Author | Wayne Hall |
| Published date | 01 December 1995 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00048658950280S110 |
| Date | 01 December 1995 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Variations
in
Prohibition: Harm Minimisation
and Drug Wars
in
Australia and the United
States
Wayne
Hall’
Australian society has shown a long-standing uncertainty about whether to
adopt a moral or a therapeutic approach to illicit drug users. Much of the time
we regard the use of socially unsanctioned intoxicants
as
the result of deviant
choices and
so
attempt to deter such drug use by punishing drug users. At
other times, we accept that at least some drug users become addicted to drugs,
and assume that the most humane and appropriate response is to treat their
addiction.
American drug policy, which
has
shaped
so
much international policy and
thinking about drugs, has been dominated by a thorough-going punitive
approach for much of the last century. During the period 1923-65, prohibition
was enforced with great rigour by
Harry
J Anslinger (Courtwright, Joseph
&
Des Jarlais 1989). There was a brief moderation of prohibition under Nixon
who simultaneously waged a ‘war on drugs’ while funding a major expansion
of
methadone treatment services. Under Reagan and Bush there has been a
reintensification
of
punitive policies exemplified in huge increases in
expenditure on law enforcement, massive increases in rates of incarceration of
drug users and a decrease in the provision of treatment for illicit drug users.
‘Zero tolerance’ of illicit drug use has meant a refusal to accept ‘compromises’
in the interests of public health, such
as
the distribution of clean needles and
syringes, or the expansion of methadone maintenance programs.
As Professor Drucker demonstrates, American drug and other social
policies (or lack thereof) have had disastrous consequences for public health
in the USA. There has been an explosive epidemic of HIV/AIDS among
injecting drug users in some American cities and the collapse of the public
health and welfare systems
has
led to the emergence of drug-resistant strains
of tuberculosis. These consequences seem to have been tolerated because
those affected have been the drug using members of minority groups living in
impoverished inner city areas who are seen as personally responsible for their
predicaments.
From an Australian perspective, American policies on illicit drugs and
firearms appear to be almost the reverse of what they ought to be. Guns, a
commodity designed for the express purpose of killing people,
are
freely
available in the USA because ‘the right to bear
arms’
is supposedly enshrined
in the Constitution. The right to use the intoxicant of one’s choice, which one
would have assumed was covered by the ‘pursuit of happiness’, is proscribed.
Moreover, the prohibition of drugs other than alcohol
is
enforced by draconian
laws that infringe civil liberties in ways that would not
be
tolerated in other
areas
of
American life. The vigorous enforcement of the prohibition on illicit
*
Director, National Drug
and
Alcohol Research
Centre,
University
of
New South
Wales,
Sydney.
74
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