Select Committee into Alternate Approaches to Reducing Illicit Drug Use and its Effects on the Community

Select Committee into Alternate Approaches to Reducing Illicit Drug Use and its Effects on the Community — Final Report — “Help, Not Handcuffs: Evidence-Based Approaches to Reducing Harm from Illicit Drug Use”

Resumed from 28 November 2019.

Motion

Hon ALISON XAMON: I move —

That the report be noted.

It is with much pleasure that I rise to talk about this report titled “Help, Not Handcuffs: Evidence-Based Approaches to Reducing Harm from Illicit Drug Use”, which was the final report of the Select Committee into Alternate Approaches to Reducing Illicit Drug Use and its Effects on the Community. I begin by acknowledging and thanking the members of the committee, who worked so very hard on this report alongside me. That is, of course, Hon Samantha Rowe, who was the Deputy Chair of the committee, Hon Michael Mischin, Hon Colin de Grussa and Hon Aaron Stonehouse. I want to particularly acknowledge the good faith that all five members brought to the deliberations on this report. It was extensive and involved quite a number of hearings and many, many submissions from people who are directly affected by the effects of illicit drug use, either as users themselves, former users, families or carers, and the police, who are often left to deal with the implications of the impacts of illicit drug use. Of course, we heard extensively from service providers as well. We got to hear from experts in the field of alcohol and other drug use, from here in Western Australia, nationally and around the world. There are many, many, minds— numerous minds—who have been turning their expertise for some time to how to address the harm arising from illicit drug use. That was very much at the forefront of the thinking of this committee: how do we practically deal with the harm arising from illicit drug use? We talked about harm. We talked about harm to the individual and families, but also about harm to the community, because we have to recognise that when people are caught up in the cycle of drug abuse, the impact is not just on them, it is on many. It is something that we, as a community, are really struggling to grapple with. It was critical that we went in with an open mind, with a commitment to an evidence-based approach, to look at what is happening in other jurisdictions, to hear from the experts and to try to unpick what we could do here in Western Australia to address the harm arising from illicit drug use.

I want to talk a little bit about some of the processes that the committee went through in order to end up with the recommendations we have in front of us today. One of the things we needed to do was be clear about the scope of the investigation. It is quite clear, for example, that an enormous amount of harm arises from the illicit use of licit drugs. To frame it another way, there is extensive harm from the illegal use of currently legal drugs. We in no way wish to diminish the impact of that. In fact, in the report we have recommended that it should be the subject of a future parliamentary inquiry. We know that the rates of overdoses and deaths arising from those overdoses are huge for legal drugs. This is something we are going to have to grapple with and it is worthy of further investigation, again to hear from professionals and service providers about what can be done to deal with that issue. We wanted to look at whether there was a better way we could deal with drugs that are currently classified as illicit and whether there was a better way to encourage people who are caught up in drug abuse to address their drug use and its adverse impacts. That was the starting point that we needed to confirm.

The other thing we needed to do was to narrow down the types of drugs we were looking at. I want to make it very clear that by no means did we comprehensively cover the number of illicit drugs that are potentially available to a user in Western Australia. There are all sorts of drugs that are either manufactured, grown or illegally imported that people are utilising, but we felt it was important to focus on the drugs most commonly in use and hence most commonly at risk of causing harm. A drug we focused on was, of course, methamphetamine. How could we possibly have a report such as this without looking at the effects of methamphetamine? It is something that we, as members of Parliament, are all acutely aware of as an issue in our community. We looked at heroin. I note that even since this report was tabled, rates of heroin use in Western Australia are on the increase again, which is consistent with the evidence presented throughout the 13-month period we undertook this inquiry. We looked at marijuana, because it is a very widely used drug. In fact, it is the most commonly used illicit drug in Western Australia. We also wanted to look at drugs associated with festivals—drugs that are often called party drugs such as MDMA and ecstasy, as well as potentially other drugs such as acid.

Committee interrupted, pursuant to standing orders.

 

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