Director of the drug policy modelling program at the University of New South Wales, Professor Alison Ritter backs the reform.
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00:00 They do make sense. They've been around in all other jurisdictions across Australia for
00:07 many, many years. And police diversion, which is what's been announced, is an evidence-based
00:16 approach to reducing the harmful consequences of the personal drug use.
00:22 Yeah, so go into that in a bit more detail for us. Why do they make sense?
00:28 So personal drug use is a health-related issue, and providing someone with the opportunity
00:36 to attend a health service, get some education and information, improve their choices about
00:42 drug use is a sensible and cost-effective way of responding to people, rather than putting
00:49 them through the criminal justice system. And applying it to all drugs makes really
00:54 good sense, because there's no reason to only apply it to cannabis and not to anything else.
01:00 And what impact will this have on the amount of overall drug use, do you think? What does
01:04 evidence show?
01:06 It's unlikely to change drug use. People worry that these kind of police diversion schemes
01:12 increase drug use, make drug use more permissive. There's no evidence for that. We have Australian
01:16 research, we have international research. What it will do is provide people with the
01:22 opportunity to not receive a criminal penalty, and to gain access to health and education.
01:29 And that's a good thing.
01:31 And up to two infringement notices can be issued per person before criminal sanctions
01:36 are imposed. Is that two the right number there?
01:41 I would argue that two is probably the wrong number. I would argue that it should be unlimited.
01:46 A number of jurisdictions across Australia do not have a limit on the number of times
01:51 someone can be diverted by police. And this, of course, is the alternative recommendation
01:58 from the ICE inquiry, which actually formally recommended that drug use, for personal use,
02:04 be completely decriminalised. This is not decriminalisation, this is just police diversion.
02:11 And I think you may have answered my next question there. According to you, what should
02:16 happen next with law reform?
02:19 Well, we need to have a debate about decriminalisation, the removal of criminal penalties for personal
02:25 use. This is a very important discussion that New South Wales needs to have. Drugs have
02:32 now been decriminalised for personal use. Queensland, BACT, cannabis in South Australia,
02:38 the Northern Territory, Western Australia. New South Wales is a laggard in relation to
02:44 the removal of criminal penalties for the personal use of drugs.
02:48 And what about people's concerns that, some people's concerns that it could lead to people
02:54 who use drugs using them more frequently and becoming more affected?
02:59 Yeah, I mean, I appreciate that that's what people are worried about. The trouble is there's
03:04 no evidence for that. We haven't seen, for example, in relation to cannabis in Australia
03:09 where that has been decriminalised, we haven't seen an increase in cannabis use in jurisdictions
03:15 that have had decriminalisation of cannabis for some time. So it's just, there's just
03:21 not the evidence to support the argument that it will increase drug use.
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