NSW Government plans to issue spot fines for drug possession

Director of the drug policy modelling program at the University of New South Wales, Professor Alison Ritter backs the reform.

Transcript

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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