NZ Centre for Political Research

"Research and treatment options develop and one day there may well be an effective substitute for meth."

Really?

There already is, ADAC, it's called ABSTINENCE.
It's called NATURAL HIGHS from just LIVING - and it's FREE !!!!!

So ADAC, please tell me - how many times do you 'counsel' a meth addict before they finally get off it? How much of my hard-earned taxes are paying for your Counselling sessions, and with what result? You're part of the $1.3 billion Drug harm Index which we're all paying!

I didn't set out to insult you, and maybe you didn't set out to insult me - but you have.
This is probably going to insult you even more. I find that Counsellors who get all their knowledge from text books and none from personal experience, are a waste of space - worse than that - they're dangerous.

Everytime a parent contacts me through the Fight Against P website, desperate for help with their kids using P, the first thing I tell them is that I'm not a 'professional', I'm 'just' a parent who has experienced this myself.

Without exception they tell me that they'd rather talk to someone like me, because the 'professionals' have been no help at all. Professionals have no empathy for what the family is suffering. I've had people tell me that Professionals have told them to 'mind their own business and leave the addict alone - and get on with their life'. We have to 'detach' ourselves from our kids.

How do you do that ADAC?

How do you think the addict's parent feels when they finally hit the headlines through committing some atrocity against an innocent person? When they have begged and begged for help to stop their kids frying their brains with P.

And Clayton Cosgrove told me that other day that he thought parents of P users should be FINED !!!!! How about fining the Police who ignore us when we go and tell them our kids are using P. !!!!

Professionals like you tell us that the addict has to 'want' to stop before they can be helped to stop. So what do you do to encourage them to stop? Or do you just pat their hand and make soothing noises because they're such sad little souls who nobody understands?

And THAT is why we have not managed to get on top of the P problem - because the Addict has the Right to do whatever they like - UNTIL they do serious harm to an innocent victim.

Let's say we're even ADAC - I've insulted you and you've insulted me.

I have no interest in debating this issue with you, we will never agree.

All drugs are unique Chris. Each has its own individual (unique) characteristics.

In regard to substitutes for P, some doctors have started prescribing ritalin to wean addicts off meth. Once upon a time there was no substitute for heroin. Now there is - methadone. Research and treatment options develop and one day there may well be an effective substitute for meth.

I could feel insulted that you would suggest I have no idea how dangerous meth is. I'm an alcohol and drug counsellor. I work with meth addicts on a daily basis. And as everyone in our field will tell you, alcohol causes 100 times more harm than meth does. That's because alcohol is also unique and its particular characteristics make it the drug of choice of so many more New Zealanders.

Not necessarily. I'm trying to open rational discussion on the subject and I certainly don't claim to have all the answers.

Personally I believe in the decriminalisation of cannabis and reform of other drug laws in order to avoid waste of resources on strategies that don't work. However, there is nothing stopping you from doing your own 'research' Amy and posting what you find out. It would surely add to the quality of the discussion. Go for it - see what you can find out about how Holland deals with drugs.

Aren't you advocating decriminalisation of drugs, ADAC? If so shouldn't you know what is happening in places where decriminalisation is the law?

ADAC, to answer your questions to me:

Option One) Using methamphetamine could be decriminalised to the extent that it is only a misdemeanor - for which the penalty is compulsory treatment. Failure to attend treatment could be a more serious offence with strong enough sanctions to persuade most users to go into treatment.

I don't care what they call it - an offence - misdemeanour - as long as they can enforce Treatment.

Selling and production of methamphetamine would perhaps still be a serious offence with more serious sanctions. Such an approach would get a lot more people into treatment instead of into prison.

No 'perhaps' about it.

Option Two) A more radical approach might be for methamphetamine (or a substitute) to be available on prescription for a limited period. Meth could be free for a maximum of 2 months on prescription while arrangements are made to get the addict into treatment. If the addict is getting his fix from a doctor, at least they get it in a health focused environment where the emphasis is on addressing the problem.

You have to be joking!
You apparently have no idea of how dangerous methamphetamine is.
I don't believe there is a substitute which provides the same 'high' as P - it's a unique drug.
Should the Police have diverted the motorway rock-thrower to smaller rocks on a quieter road?

Another advantage of free meth prescribed by a doctor, is that it diminishes the power of gangs to charge big money for it. Such an approach has the potential to save around $1 billion in resources currently required to deal with importation, manufacture, gangs etc and enables huge resources to go into the treatment process.

Currently NO resources are directed at the Demand side of the equation.
Get rid of the Demand and the need for the Supply will reduce.
How about we try that?

Good questions Amy. Perhaps you could do some research to add to the discussion. You could try googling "drug policy Holland" or "cannabis use in Holland" etc and see what comes up.

ADAC - what is the situation in Holland where drugs are legalised to some extent?

I understand that hard drugs are still illegal there.

I also thought that they are looking at reviewing their approach.

But of real interest would be to see what happened to drug crime and the wider issues of the effect of drugs on young people.

Also, I wonder how they deal with addicts - are treatment programmes readily available?

Do you have this sort of information?

Chris, here's some more thoughts on this subject. Reforming drug policy does not have to be an all or nothing process. It just requires a change of focus from punishment to treating it as a health problem.

Option One) Using methamphetamine could be decriminalised to the extent that it is only a misdemeanor - for which the penalty is compulsory treatment. Failure to attend treatment could be a more serious offence with strong enough sanctions to persuade most users to go into treatment.

Selling and production of methamphetamine would perhaps still be a serious offence with more serious sanctions. Such an approach would get a lot more people into treatment instead of into prison.

Option Two) A more radical approach might be for methamphetamine (or a substitute) to be available on prescription for a limited period. Meth could be free for a maximum of 2 months on prescription while arrangements are made to get the addict into treatment. If the addict is getting his fix from a doctor, at least they get it in a health focused environment where the emphasis is on addressing the problem.

Another advantage of free meth prescribed by a doctor, is that it diminishes the power of gangs to charge big money for it. Such an approach has the potential to save around $1 billion in resources currently required to deal with importation, manufacture, gangs etc and enables huge resources to go into the treatment process.

My point it there is more than one way to skin a cat, especially cats that take drugs.

If we decriminalise cannabis as Gov Schwazenegger is suggesting in California, that saves about $60 million a year which is currently spent by the Police, the Courts and Corrections Department enforcing laws which currently criminalise cannabis users. That $60 million could be better spent on treatment.

There is also the point that decriminalising cannabis would free up the police time to pursue methamphetamine dealers more vigorously.

ADAC - I believe that if you go right back to your first Post on this Topic, you're able to amend the title of the Topic - if that's what you want to do.

As far as punishment of illicit drug users is concerned, I believe that anyone who doesn't want to accept they have a problem, and who is 'made' to receive Treatment at a residential rehab unit, would consider this as much a punishment as being sent to jail. The Treatment Centre would have to be a secure Unit.

Only after they've experienced complete abstinence and detoxification for a period of time will their brain become clear again and they'll realise how the drugs made them behave, and isolated them from others. This won't happen in prison because they don't have the resources to focus on this.

We can't decriminalise illicit drug use, because then we wouldn't have the ability to enforce Treatment.

By all means change the focus of your Topic - I'm happy to continue with my focus on P.

I can't change the whole world, but I just might be able to help change my little patch of it.

Hi Chris,
The article doesn't say the US will legalise drugs. I suspect that will never happen, although different states in the US may try (see extra material from the story below.) However, this is an issue of drug policy reform - which is what I should have called this topic rather than talk about 'legalising' drugs. Drug policy (and treatment options) based on the concept of a war on drugs is not likely to lead to making more treatment available.

I know you are in favour of mandating offenders into treatment and I see from your posting that Roger Brooking supports this as well. Perhaps one of the reasons this doesn't happen is because drugs are illegal ie bad ie users should be punished.

In my view a fundamental change of attitude is required. If drug users were not criminalised so readily, perhaps this would change attitudes and policy makers would see the need to make more treatment available.

If you like, we could start a new topic together focussed more directly on the need to make more treatment available in NZ. Afterall, the damage caused by alcohol and drugs is far greater than the damage caused just by methamphetamine -without minimising your own story in any way.

US loosening up on cannabis
As Seattle police chief, Kerlikowske worked in a city that ran a needle-exchange program, celebrates an annual "Hempfest" that draws tens of thousands of marijuana smokers, and passed a referendum that made enforcing marijuana laws the department's lowest priority.

Other state and local governments have loosened their marijuana laws as well. Medical marijuana is now legal in 13 states, and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month welcomed a public debate about proposals to legalize and tax the drug.

While that's not going to happen on the federal level, Kerlikowske suggested the government should devote less effort to prosecuting nonviolent drug users. "We have finite resources," he said. "We need to devote those finite resources toward those people who are the most dangerous to the community."

ADAC - where in that last article does it suggest they're going to legalise drugs in the US?

All they're doing is focusing more on treating drug users instead of just sending them to jail.
Which is what I'm trying to get brought in here.

Maybe you should have posted that on my Topic, instead of this one.

US drug czar calls for end to 'war on drugs'
By Andy Sullivan http://www.whyprohibition.ca/content/in ... -war-drugs

WASHINGTON, June 5 (Reuters) - The Obama administration's top drug cop plans to spend more money on treating addiction and scale down the "war on drugs" rhetoric as part of an overhaul of U.S. counternarcotics strategy. As head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Kerlikowske coordinates the efforts of 32 government agencies to limit illicit drug use. He has been in office less than a month, but the Obama administration has already taken a less confrontational approach to the nation's 35 million illegal drug users.

The FBI is no longer raiding state-approved facilities that distribute marijuana for medical purposes, and the White House has told Congress to eliminate the sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine. Kerlikowske said he hopes to ditch the chest-thumping military rhetoric at the center of U.S. policy since President Nixon first declared a "war on drugs" 40 years ago. "We should stop using the metaphor about the war on drugs," said Kerlikowske, a career police officer who headed the Justice Department's community-policing initiative under President Clinton. "People look at it as a war on them, and frankly we're not at war with the people of this country."

U.S. drug policy has been criticized for focusing too much on fighting supplies from Colombia and other countries in South America and not enough on curbing demand at home, the world's largest drug market. Kerlikowske said a more balanced approach was needed, with greater emphasis on treatment programs, especially in prisons. "It's clear that if they go to prison and they have a drug problem and you don't treat it and they return ... to the same neighborhood from whence they came that you are going to have the same problem," he said. "Quite frankly people in neighborhoods, police officers, et cetera, are tired of recycling the problem. Let's try and fix it."

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