“ALL DRUGS SHOULD BE LEGALISED” IQ ^2 LIVE DEBATE MAY 10th 2011

A close look at the rejection of evidence and application of religious belief as guiding
principles for members of the Negative team. Jade Lewis, Greg Pike and Paul Sheehan.

All drugs should be legalised is the debate to be held by Intelligence Squared. You can
read brief bioʼs of all participants. One of the greatest moral, social and human rights
based questions today is: Should illicit drugs be legalised?

We ask this question because the harm caused at the community and personal level by
prohibition is irrefutable. To this we can add the devastating effects of The War On Drugs -
crafted initially by Nixon on the back of the Vietnam war. Few realise the first head of the
US Drug Enforcement Administration had his office in Saigon. Returning veterans had to
produce clean urine to show they were not using heroin.

Once begun, this foreign policy bonanza worked much like Dr. Whoʼs “psychic paper”
pass. Flash it at a sentry and they read whatever convinces them of ones legitimacy. But
more so was the USAʼs powerful control over the UNODCP and hence, UN drug policy.
Most in the Western world have knowledge of Harm Reduction. The acceptance that
punitive measures for drug users ultimately inflicts personal, monetary and social cost on
the wider community, and accepting use whilst minimising harm reaps benefits for all.

For this reason nations who focus on evidence and the international right to health provide
clean needles through NSPʼs - needle and syringe programmeʼs. Safe injecting facilities
are provided increasingly in Europe and elsewhere. Australia has over 1,000 NSPʼs and
one Medically Supervised Injecting Facility - MSIC - in Kings Cross, Sydney.

These programmeʼs and facilities serve to manage high risk behaviour, control the spread
of blood borne viruses, motivate/provide for users to seek treatment, and they meet
community discontent arising from obvious illicit drug use. Most users can return to work,
pay taxes, raise a family and remain healthy. But what of intractable addiction? More
recently several heroin on prescription schemes in Europe have shown dramatic results in
reducing crime, death/illness, uptake of heroin use and length of heroin addiction. Portugal
has full decriminalisation and demonstrates a resounding success to date.

Once world leaders in harm reduction, Australia was ready to be the first nation since the
War On Drugs began to introduce a heroin on prescription trial in 1997. Despite State
government sanction of 6-3, John Howard personally intervened to stop this, and weʼve
been backsliding ever since. The rise of Christian Evangelical lobbyists has caused
bemusement, angst and disgust.

Australiaʼs full policy is Harm Minimisation - HM. Supply reduction, demand reduction and
harm reduction. Zero Tolerance has only ever been rhetoric. Harm reduction is the least
funded, with the struggle to repel supply and the education and (usually failed)
advertisements thrust at young Australianʼs taking the two highest shares respectively.

Those who resist drug legalisation seek to distort the argument by misrepresenting the
success of harm minimisation. Indeed despite overall reduction in drug use they
fraudulently and falsely argue that HM encourages, condones, increases or has no
positive effect on use. Attacks on successful initiatives with peacock terminology and

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weasel worded opinion pieces are common. Published as “research” these are brought up
time and again.

In the case of Drug Free Australiaʼs Case For Closure [PDF] against the MSIC, written
during itʼs trial status, it is simply rehashed, republished and recirculated. One speaker,
Greg Pike is co-author and “statistical analyst”. Greg is best known from his role as
Director of the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute, which presently promotes his part in the
upcoming debate. Another co-author is the infamous “naltrexone fatality” doctor, Stuart
Reece. Embattled DFA secretary Gary Christian is another.

You may wonder why, if supply and demand reduction are funded more than harm
reduction, that such groups attack harm reduction - HR. My psychological profiling days
may be behind me, but this is clear. HR already attracts right wing condemnation and is
easy to misrepresent. The evil druggie and his/her filthy lifestyle is a false pop culture
phenomenon. However, conservative Christians cast HR in pop culture format usually in
the context of blaming HM. Enter the suggestion of why we need demand reduction.
Young Aussies take drugs. Kids from all walks of life. From all faith backgrounds.

For the religiously conservative mind this is an affront. An insult to parenting skills, the
instillation of Christian values and indeed, Godʼs work. God “cures” addiction. He does not
leave vacuums of vulnerability, in the mind of the fundamentalist. Thus HM in totality is an
affront to conservative Christians. Overlaying this is the fear of the success of HR
education. An analogue of sex education and condom availability, no proper child would
fail to just say no to sex and drugs - or rock n roll for that matter. With two down, supply
reduction must be increased along with punitive measures for users. And DFA are
adamant they speak for “all Australians”, promoting behaviour control: Harm Prevention.

Another speaker and DFA identity - whose intentions I kind of understand - Jade Lewis
wants a drug free Australia, [surprise!] through application of biblical values and the never
ending sale of her “story” on DVD. Not your story, or the story of drug policy, or evidence
based material - her amazing religious conversion. Jade is ruthlessly exploited by DFA.
The excessively priced, only-seen-if-you-buy-it DVD, “Golden Haze” earned Jade the title
“The goose that laid the golden haze” - (more on Jade later).

However, we need to revisit Greg Pike - co-author of the Case for Closure and a crusader
against humane or progressive policy and free choice. His “bioethics institute” gig is a
misleading peacock in some of todayʼs most pressing health issues. Abortion to him is of
course, murder and at one time he claimed - as a research outcome - most women do not
want choice. His argument against euthanasia once included the appalling claim that a
patient travelled to Switzerland - with others - to die with dignity, as “... a case of someone
wanting to pursue death under activist like circumstances.” [ABC 7:30 Report Feb. 2007].

The right to die for the terminally ill is supported by as many as 85% of Aussies according
to some polls. The reluctance of politicians shows the grip of the Australian Christian
Lobby on vote wary parties. Prior to the above debacle, Pike wrote “Once the killing starts,
thereʼs no stopping it” in January 2007. It included;

At the heart of this issue is the belief that everyone should have the right to die on their
own terms: when, where, and how they want, with social, legal, and medical support from
the state. While in the first instance this would take the form of legislation for difficult
cases, it would not stop there.

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 Greg Pike

As we have learnt from the Netherlands, legislating for hard euthanasia cases cannot be
contained.

Once the state legislates for the killing of any of its innocent members, even upon their
request, it has breached a principle that protects us all. When the state legalises
euthanasia, all are at risk.

How terrifying. A loss of a principle that protects us all, placing us all at risk like we see in
the Netherlands. Oh, wait! Thatʼs right - there is no risk in the Netherlands. Arguments
from personal incredulity, false dichotomies and straw men that blow away before they can
be torn down. Or as one commenter on Dying With Dignity Victoria said, Greg Pikeʼs
argument is the old ʻSlippery Slopeʼ.

As far back as April 2002 Pike was waving the “science” of stem cells to make a moral
argument that embryoʼs have rights. Then mounting an argument that flies in the face of
his “euthanasia” moral panic. He said on radio;

The reason being that everybody is concerned about people who are suffering. No one is
saying that we ought to allow people to continue suffering.

In September 2001 Pike wrote the opinion piece “Substance abuse, ethics and public
policy”. It includes;

Hence, the Prime Minister is right to be concerned that heroin trials for example, will “send
the wrong message‟, for the principal part of the message that the requisite legal change
would signify, particularly when interpreted by youth, would be that the state considers
maintaining addiction to be a valid way of treating addiction. And young people are smart
enough to read between the lines and see that this really means that the powers that be
would consider addiction per se not to be a problem. A corollary might be that addicts are
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not worth the hard work of really helping them with what they truly want, that is, to no
longer be enslaved to heroin. - p. 2

Some have described the age in which we live as being at a particularly low moral ebb,
and perhaps this can be interpreted as meaning that ethics is currently viewed by many in
a very individual and subjective way. Hand in hand with such a perspective is the view that
nothing is considered right or wrong in itself. - p. 4.

Harm minimisation or harm reduction is an expression of a utilitarian philosophy. It seeks

to weigh up the pleasures and pains associated with drug abuse, and then proposes
policies designed to reduce specific harms with minimal if any regard to the specific moral
question about the validity or otherwise of personal drug use. Having said this, when
pressed, some proponents of harm minimisation endorse recreational use, appealing to
the right of individuals to act freely in this area. - p, 6.

It is disturbing to find on a fairly consistent basis that since harm minimisation mainly
addresses secondary harms to the individual, the primary or direct harms of illicit drugs are
downplayed. This is deeply problematic because it means that objective scientific studies
showing real damage can be ignored. Such denial is not healthy for anyone, least of all
those addicted. Furthermore, whether certain harm minimisation policies have a
detrimental broader impact on the community, and in particular on the uptake of illicit drug
use by the young and impressionable, is seldom given serious consideration.

Second, one of the mantras of harm minimisation is that the “war on drugs‟ is futile and
should be abandoned. This is a very potent phrase because wars generally have an
endpoint, and since this one does not, because society will probably always have to deal
with the problem (just as it does with theft, murder, rape etc.), then futility is reinforced.
Working hard to protect young people in particular from the damage of illicit drugs is as
much about promoting the good as it is about keeping them from the bad.

Furthermore, many of those who do not endorse a harm minimisation approach are not
speaking in terms of a war, particularly because it is all too easy for such a metaphor to be
misdirected against the victims of addiction. They are really trying to keep the big picture in
mind and consider all aspects of this complex dilemma.

In reality, there is no “war on drugs‟ in Australia anyway. Australia is far further along the
permissive path than most countries. For at least 15 years, under harm minimisation, we
have seen rapidly expanding needle distribution programmes, widespread methadone
maintenance “treatment‟, cannabis decriminalisation, diminished policing, educational
programmes directed towards “safe responsible use‟, and calls for injecting rooms, heroin
trials, and further decriminalisation of use. Clearly, if there is any war, it has been against
restraint. - p. 7

We see the clear muddling of harm reduction - an apparent ticket to use drugs - with the
over-arching policy of Harm Minimisation. No doubt weʼll hear it as part of the debate. His
biography reads in part.

He is a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee, the Chairman of the Board of
the Australian Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation Programme, a member of The Institute
on Global Drug Policy, and a Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age
of Science and Technology.

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Best wishes to Dr. Greg Pike.

Jade Lewisʼ story is spread across the pages of Drug Free Australia publications.
Fortunately (for me), Jadeʼs Story, Journey and Saying “No” to drugs, tells itʼs own story.

From DFA Newsletter - Autumn 2007;

The same.... DFA Newsletter - Autumn 2007;

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DFA Newsletter - Spring 2007. Youth For A Drug Free Australia

The same.... DFA Newsletter - Spring 2007;

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DFA Newsletter - Autumn 2008;

The same.... DFA Newsletter - Autumn 2008;

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DFA Newsletter - Spring 2008;

But surely there must be more than repeating Jadeʼs “story” or “journey” or saying “no to
drugs” or that darn “Teen Challenge” plug or just flogging that DVD over and over and over
again?

I know! Jade has a website.

And websites can be updated with the latest, cutting edge material.

New stories, experiences and products. No more “Goose That Laid The Golden Haze”.

Letʼs see......

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Oh, no, no donʼt tell me.....

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Okay. So, we know where Jadeʼs story is coming from and perhaps even get a glimpse of
her argument. She had a minor drug abuse problem - given Iʼve had relapses longer than
her entire “career”. She was a promising athlete, which - speaking as an old creaky once
elite level athlete myself - is done to death. Iʼd much rather hear of the genetic similarities
of elite personalities, risk taking and substance abuse. So, Jade. Why does God hate
other drug users?

Good luck to Jade Lewis.

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Paul Sheehan is famous for winning The Wankley Award on the back of calling refugees,
“parasites”. Nailing himself to the far right thusly, Paul was bound to have come - and to
come - into contact with some weird, if not fringe, ideas.

Blaming Aboriginal lineage for the murder of a white male, and a host of inbred evils,
Sheehan wrote in 2007;

The NSW Police Media Unit is a paradigm of drip-feed information, a policy that comes
down from the top. It is part of a much broader and more serious problem, the
whitewashing of the official depiction of the realities of criminal life in Australia.

This begins with the piccaninny complex that dominates the welfare bureaucracy,
education system, court system, university system and the ABC.

Shudder! Education, justice and our own ABC are in on a conspiracy to... to... what
exactly?

The piccaninny complex is one of the reasons we've thrown a generation of young
Aborigines into the gutter, including a generation of zombies - the living dead in rural and
remote Australia of petrol-sniffing children, disproportionately under the primary care of
drunks.

As one of Australia's most prominent anthropologists, Peter Sutton, wrote in

Anthropological Forum back in 2001: "The contrast between the progressive public
rhetoric about empowerment and self-determination and the raw evidence of a disastrous
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failure in major aspects of Australian Aboriginal affairs policy since the early 1970s is
frightening."

Nothing has changed. We've known for years there is endemic child abuse within many
remote and rural Aboriginal communities, yet had the absurdity of the "shock revelation"
last year that child abuse is rampant in many Aboriginal communities.

No ambiguity there. Iʼll let you read Sheehanʼs The Race War of Black Against White and
challenge you not to laugh when we consider the exact opposite racial fear has been
whipped up in Melbourne to terrify Indian students. “And the problem is getting worse, not
better” he ominously warns, seizing on the type of select data that right wing attention
seekers are so apt to do. Way out of his depth Sheehan treads that most thunderously
immoral tight rope of blaming American blacks based on charge and conviction rates. I
shag you not.

Writing “Paul Sheehanʼs Dirty War” Shakira Hussein notes;

Itʼs a wonder White people dare leave their homes each morning, besieged as they are by
African American gangsters, Vietnamese triad members, Lebanese Muslim rapists and
terrorists, not to mention an Aboriginal ʻferal underclassʼ in Australian rural towns. And all
of these sinister characters backed by governments who are at the mercy of ethnic
branch-stacking and intent on imposing anti-White discrimination under the guise of
multiculturalism. No wonder all the White folk are out there joining militias and voting for
One Nation.

Except they arenʼt. As Sheehan often and repetitively points out, most Australians are not
deeply racist. Perhaps this is because, despite Sheehanʼs moral panic, they do in fact feel
basically safe when they venture onto the streets. Perhaps they donʼt feel put upon and
persecuted by uppity wogs and blackfellas. And perhaps they donʼt feel that way because,
in fact, they arenʼt.

But Sheehanʼs most relevant plunge from the window sill of journalistic integrity came
when he used Drug Free Australiaʼs Case For Closure in what Terry Wright of The
Australian Heroin Diaries queried as the worst article ever written.

Spoon fed by DFA Secretary, Young Earth Creationist and rapture ready biblical
fundamentalist, Gary Christian - whom Sheehan respected enough to call Gary
“Christiansen” - he simply parroted the Case for Closure errors. No doubt he was unaware
Gary Christian having badgered MPʼs, demanded closure, demanded MP views on drug
policy and run out of lackeys silly enough to out themselves as human rights opponents,
had chosen him. The sinner chosen for Godʼs work as it were.

The unconscionable lies found within Pike and Christianʼs ever-ready piece were fed to
Sheehan, who a primary school student could see would love them. Forgetting The Cross
has been many things - all related to crime, drugs and sex - but never cosmopolitan he
writes;

Look at Kings Cross. It used to be one of Australia's most sophisticated, cosmopolitan and
pleasant precincts. Now it is a bogan paradise, a cathedral to bad taste, a product of the
power of the alcohol, heroin and poker machine industries that have enjoyed
unprecedented power or tolerance for 16 years under the Labor patronage machine and
pork factory.
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In the Cross, the core of the rot is sponsored by the NSW government itself. It is the
blandly named Medically Supervised Injecting Centre, conveniently located on
Darlinghurst Road opposite the entrance to Kings Cross railway station. Never have so
many lies been fed to the public in support of this policy quagmire.

The argument justifying the centre is that has cleaned up the drug trade and saved
''hundreds'' of lives. This is propaganda worthy of North Korea. The reality is the opposite.
The centre is directly responsible for hundreds of drug overdoses. It has created an
environment where the most reckless and self-indulgent people in society - junkies - know
they will be bailed out of their own risks.

The result is stratospheric rates of drug overdoses and interventions, which are then
counted as lives saved. This is the basis on which more than $25 million in public funding
has been requested and justified by the drug-legalisation lobby. Anyone interested in the
non-North Korean view of this social experiment can find a blistering, highly detailed
counter-view on the website of Drug Free Australia.

Paul Sheehanʼs approach tomorrow will almost certainly include being the drummer boy
for DFAʼs religiously driven misinformation.

Good luck Paul.

Nicholas Cowdery, Wendy Harmer and Dr. Alex Wodak (who DFA claim has “vested
interests” in legalisation) speak for the positive. Of course, one theme theyʼll be up against
is the bread and butter of Aussie moral panic merchants - Family Values.

More here at Intelligence Squared.

Jesus - Matthew 10:35-37

"For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against
her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man's
enemies will be the members of his own household. He that loveth
father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth
son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

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