For the most part, Australia has followed the orthodox drug policies favoured by the U.S., but high levels of heroin addiction, along with the threat of AIDS, have fostered a strong movement in Australia toward the so-called “harm reduction” approach. This is the idea that the top goal of drug policy shouldn’t necessarily be to reduce drug use, but to reduce the harms done by drug use — even if that requires easing the ban on drug possession. One harm-reduction policy is “heroin maintenance,” in which serious heroin addicts who haven’t been able to break their addiction are prescribed legal heroin. Heroin maintenance has been shown in some studies to lead to dramatic decreases in deaths by overdose and in crimes committed by addicts. There have been equally dramatic increases in health and employment. With their lives in some semblance of order, addicts are often better able to voluntarily reduce their drug use and even kick their addiction — both of which happen at far greater rates than without heroin maintenance.
Australia began considering a heroin maintenance trial project in the early 1990s. By 1996, it was a serious proposal being reviewed by several committees of health experts.
That year, Bill Clinton’s top international drug enforcer, Bob Gelbard, flew to the Australian state of Tasmania. Officially, Mr. Gelbard went to inspect the state’s opium poppy industry, an operation licensed by the UN to produce morphine and codeine for medical use. While in Tasmania, Mr. Gelbard invited the members of a state committee considering the heroin maintenance trial to speak with him.
Dr. David Pennington, a respected Australian expert on drugs and the chair of the committee meeting with the American, recalls that Mr. Gelbard was “very courteous” but emphatic that it would be a terrible mistake for Australia to deviate from “the straight, hard-line position.” Mr. Gelbard, says Dr. Pennington, made it “clear that the State Department considered this issue an absolutely critical one.”
Mr. Gelbard, he says, also mentioned Tasmania’s opium poppy industry, worth $160 million (Aus) per year. He “pointed out that Australia was allowed by (the UN) to have its poppy industry in Tasmania,” says Dr. Pennington. And “if (the UN) were to decide that Australia were not a reliable country, that of course that industry could be at risk.” The American, notes Dr. Pennington, avoided saying explicitly that an unwelcome decision would jeopardize the industry. “On the other hand, it was a very heavy hint.”
Nonetheless, Dr. Pennington’s committee recommended the heroin trial go ahead. So did a federal committee made up of top health and police officials from across Australia.
But in 1997, after heavy lobbying from the frightened poppy industry and the government of Tasmania, the Australian federal cabinet rejected the advice of the expert committees. The cabinet said it would “send the wrong message” about drug use.
The State Department was asked by the Citizen to comment on these events. A State Department official said it could not provide a response because several years had passed and the officials involved had changed employment. Mr. Gelbard, who is now the American ambassador to Indonesia, declined to comment.
