Drug Free Australia: Results of Drug Free Australia’s Wish List to Political Parties

Thursday 22 November 2007 18:15 Age: 1 yrs

Results of Drug Free Australia’s Wish List to Political Parties

DFA has released the results of the Wishlist Survey which highlights responses from the major political parties in relation to drug policies.

Seven weeks ago Drug Free Australia sent a survey to all major parties, asking for their commitment to some key issues related to preventing and reducing illicit drug and alcohol use in Australia. The survey challenged the parties to commit to:

a multi-partite, more restrictive approach to illicit drugs
refocussing away from an emphasis on harm minimization to one of greater emphasis on harm prevention.
Not legalising illicit drugs

Last week, due to some generalized responses we followed up by emailing specific questions:

What is your party’s policy position on:

medically supervised injecting rooms,
heroin on prescription,
Pill testing at RAVEs,
medical use of cannabis,
cannabis decriminalisation?

We also issued two media releases calling for truth and transparency from parties, allowing time for their correction of any assumption we had made from the past.

From the information we have to date, the following is our assessment of current policy positions of each of the parties.

Party	Illicit Drug Policy
Liberal/Nationals:	Does commit to a ‘tough on drugs’ stance for all drugs, and a clear message of zero tolerance to illegal drugs Does acknowledge the dangers of cannabis and Ice and have plans in place to prevent and reduce their impact Does not support medically supervised injecting rooms, in line with United Nations Conventions and Australian Constitutional Law Does not condone the legalisation of illicit drugs. Does not support legalized heroin or cannabis for medical purposes Does not support pill testing at RAVES
Family first	Does commit to a zero tolerant approach to illicit drugs Does not condone harm minimization Does not condone the legalisation of illicit drugs and associated policies.
Labor	Does not commit to a zero tolerant approach to illicit drugs. Does have a general platform of prevention, early intervention and harm minimization, but no details yet provided Will commit to a campaign to combat ICE, but no details provided. No current information available about the policy on legalising illicit drugs Past records indicate that Labor: Does support medically supervised injecting rooms Does support legalized heroin or cannabis for medical purposes Does support pill testing at RAVES Does support the decriminalization of Cannabis
The Greens	Does not commit to a zero tolerant approach to illicit drugs Does support harm minimisation Does condone legalising cannabis for medical purposes
Democrats	Does not commit to a zero tolerant approach to illicit drugs Does not favour legalising illicit drugs Does support medically supervised injection rooms

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