Doctors and lawyers require people who use drugs to have medical appointments instead of appearing in court.
A mayor with a front-row seat to the most liberal drug decriminalization policy in the US will join experts and decision-makers at a historic Australian forum aimed at building consensus on how drug use will be managed and its associated damages in the coming years. decades.
They will join representatives from almost 300 organizations and dozens of politicians on Wednesday at the Sydney leg of the NSW Drug Summit.
Royal Australasian College of Physicians president Jennifer Martin said tackling drug use would require funding for treatment services, including trauma that could lead people to start using drugs.
Reducing the stigma around use would make it easier for those in need of treatment to seek help, and decriminalization would prevent lasting adverse impacts associated with the justice system, he added.
“There is no silver bullet that will solve the problem…a health-focused approach requires a comprehensive understanding of interconnected problems,” Professor Martin said.
While Australia approaches drug use from a harm minimization perspective, reform advocates have urged New South Wales to go further with broader decriminalization for personal use and better support for drug services. rehabilitation.
Ted Wheeler is expected to describe the risk of doing one without the other.
Drug addicts photographed shooting each other in Melbourne. They do it without caring who passes by them.
Drug dealers do their dirty business on the streets of Melbourne
The mayor of Oregon’s largest city has said addiction and overdose rates soared in Portland after possession for personal use was decriminalized in 2020.
Instead of being sent to court or jail, people caught with a small amount of illicit drugs were fined up to US$100 (A$155).
The state backed down in April.
“Decriminalizing drug use before we had treatment services was obviously a big mistake,” Wheeler told the New York Times at the time.
The summit is also expected to discuss holistic rehabilitation approaches, including care for families.
“It is clear that there are a large number of children in New South Wales who are affected by their parents’ drug use,” the Association of Child Welfare Agencies said in a submission to the summit.
“However, there are very few services that can support the whole family and even fewer residential rehabilitation and withdrawal management services that can allow parents to bring their children.”
Inputs are also expected from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Center, law enforcement agencies, people with lived experience of drug use, and those who participated in the 1999 drug summit.
Those affected by drugs sit on the sidewalk in front of a busy supermarket
The drug business takes place in broad daylight in the city of Melbourne and its surrounding areas.
Data released by the summit suggested the number of people going through the court system for incidents of drug use and possession in New South Wales was declining, to approximately 22,800 in 2023.
About half were cannabis users, although one in three of those users were sent down diversion routes.
Law Society of NSW president Brett McGrath said the cannabis precautions and diversions were a positive step towards a health-based approach to drug reform, and backed greater investment in rehabilitation services.
“Investment in rehabilitation services, especially in regional, rural and remote areas of New South Wales, together with criminal law reform, will help improve community safety and relieve pressure on the police and the courts,” he stated.
The society also supports the reinstatement of a youth drug and alcohol court and the extension of the magistrates’ early referral to treatment program to the existing children’s court, both products of the previous drug summit.