Despite politicians across the world admitting to these kinds of shenanigans, our home grown versions refuse to admit any involvement.
OPINION – Neil Pharaoh
“When I was a kid, I inhaled, that was the point.”
This marked the first political admission of drug use and it was soon followed up with an admission of also using cocaine. Could this man be electable?
How would he enforce the law if he admitted to breaking it? And yet the person that made that statement holds the record in Australia for being one of the most popular world politicians, with opinion polls regularly putting him at over 72 per cent support from the Australian population.
Yes, Barack Obama admitted to both cocaine and weed use and was still elected President of the USA.
Have any politicians in Australia showed similar honesty when it comes to drug use?
To my knowledge, no PM or leader of the opposition has offered such a frank admission during a campaign.
📷: Former U.S. President Barack Obama has admitted to using both cocaine and marijuana. Picture: Sean Gallup Source: Getty Images
The only person of note with the conviction and belief to admit to drug use (well before it was popular) was Fiona Patten MP, Leader of the Reason Party (formerly Sex Party) in Victoria. So, is there continuity between our “tough on drugs” policy and our parliamentarians, or are they just keeping it quiet?
In 2016, 3.1 million Australians reported using an illicit drug — 16 per cent of Australia’s adult population.
If we have 227 Parliamentarians in Canberra, and another 800 in State and Territory parliaments Australia wide, that would indicate that nearly 37 Federal and 128 State and; Territory MPs used drugs in 2016.
And when you look at drug use across lifespan, 43 per cent of Australians have taken illicit drugs at least once in their life — nearly half of the population.
By that measurement almost 98 Federal MPs and Senators and 344 State and Territory MPs have used drugs at some point in their lifetime. Yet the number of public admissions of drug use by politicians can be counted on one hand.
Australia has had a “tough on drugs” approach since around 1998, when the then Howard government moved away from a harm minimisation model and towards a moralistic and philosophical code — one that stresses zero tolerance, law enforcement and abstinence.
Until the introduction of the “National Drugs Strategic Framework 1998-2002”, Australia was regarded as a world leader in drug policy.
Looking back to my teenage years, a lot of people I knew had drugs in their possession and partied with them, yet the death rate and incidents of drug related violence were substantially lower than today.
Currently in Australia, despite years of taking a zero-tolerance stance, over 2000 people die from illicit drug use each year. And the drugs available today are considered to be “harder” and have more flow on consequences than the drugs of the past.
📷: Fiona Patten. Source: News Corp Australia
I have been out in Sydney and Melbourne and seen the consequences of our “tough on drugs” policy on young people. When undercover police appear at a club, party goers will swallow anything and everything they have on them rather than be caught in possession, leading to ambulances being called.
I have been thrown against walls and (fruitlessly) searched by police, assumed guilty simply because I was visiting a “known” venue. The number of police drug dogs always out and about in NSW is vastly higher than in Victoria and I have witnessed rough handling of people by police (out of the view of the club CCTV).
Fine you say, it’s the law, but is this approach working? Recent parliamentary trips to countries like Portugal have led to some substantial Conservative advocates wanting to shift the drug policy in Australia, however inertia is holding firm.
But when 43 per cent of the adult population have used drugs (even if we give some leeway to Parliamentarians and assume they have a lower rate of offending), what is stopping our politicians in Australia considering a change of course on drugs policy?
If we had more politicians admit they themselves had used drugs, it might be the first step to being able to have a real conversation on the issue.
There is a generational political divide on drug policy. My parents are Baby Boomers who grew up during an era when there was no such thing as being “tough on drugs”. Both my parents, judging by their dress sense were quite the hippy in their day, before the responsibilities of children came along.
Yet the baby boomer generation, content with their own personal histories of drug taking, have been the strongest supporters of criminalising drug use. But with the drugs we face today being more addictive and harsher than ever, has there ever been an instance where abstinence was a successful strategy?
Cutting supply of both the “hippy” drugs and the “party” drugs didn’t stop Australians taking drugs, people just moved to cheaper and poorer quality drugs, a move which had a number of consequences.
Meth use literally makes people crazy and mixing substances like Ratsak with ecstasy and cocaine increases death and illness from overdose. Add in the heavy-handed police searches, an excess of drug dogs at events and an unwillingness to shift back to the harm minimisation policies which predate Howard and you have the potent “drug mess” Australia is in today — with six people (on average) dying from illicit drug use every day, a number greater than our road toll.
It’s a crisis, but no one seems to want to take up the cause and lead the debate like other important causes like the quest to reduce the road toll or tackling our terrible suicide statistics.
I wonder also why Labor has backed the “tough on drugs” platform, given that the pre-1998 Hawke and Keating years are globally regarded as indicative frameworks for drug solutions — even by many countries today.
This brings us back to politics.
I do not know why we respect and appreciate a US president who admits to cocaine and marijuana use and who follows a long line of Presidents who have admitted to drug use (Bush Jr and Clinton all admitted to a variety of illicit drug offences), yet in Australia I can’t find a single political leader who has accorded the Australian public the same honesty and integrity when entering discussions about drug policy.
Can Australians really not handle the truth? Are we that judgmental?
If politicians are going to preach and actively support policies that are “tough on drugs”, as our political leaders continue to do, Australians deserve the respect of an honest conversation with the (statistically) 37 Federal MPs who may have used illicit drugs last year, and the 98 who have used them in their lifetime.
It might just change the conversation and steer it towards a debate in the national interest, something all our politicians should be embracing — not running away from.
Neil Pharaoh was the Former National co-convener of Rainbow Labor and twice Victorian Labor Candidate for Prahran. Continue the conversation @neilpharaoh
