Anti-drug laws were always meant to be a vehicle to protect community, family<\/a>6 and our most important asset \u2013 our children<\/a>#1 \u2013 from multiple harms caused by permission models that adults believe they have the individual right<\/a>#2 to exercise around the use of addictive and destructive psychotropic toxins.<\/p>\n It is important to underscore that the current proactive and protective laws have not been used in any real punitive context for decades. They are part of a proactive framework \u2013 As the \u2018Judicial Educator\u2019.<\/a>7<\/p>\n An example of drug laws used in non-punitive context includes Problem Solving Courts,<\/a>8 to facilitate not only exit from drug use but passage into productive, safe, health and community benefiting narratives.<\/a>#3<\/p>\n The current laws do not require removal but can continue as a mechanism to facilitate rehabilitation and recovery, with great success.<\/a> 9 The existing criminal codes do not need to be weakened or worse erased through legalisation or decriminalisation but used for diversion from drug use and harms.<\/p>\n No criminal records need be recorded if the diversion path is embraced effectively.<\/p>\n The pro-drug lobby\u2019s completely fallacious meme of \u2018war on drugs has failed\u2019 reverses the real causes and effects of drug harms and violence. There has been no \u2018war on drugs\u2019 in this nation since 1985. Instead there is an ever growing \u2018war FOR drugs\u2019<\/a>10 as it continues to look to remove genuine tools that can bring best-practice drug use exiting outcomes and instead mislabels and propagandises these genuine efforts as \u2018wars\u2019 against drug users.<\/p>\n The Judicial educator is the one bookend to the corresponding health and education. Together these ensure a cohesive and compassionate message as experienced for decades with combating tobacco addiction and its attending harms, a community with One Voice, Once Message and One Focus. This should be the agenda of all drug use reduction vehicles.<\/a>11<\/p>\n The removal of the protective legal vehicle that would otherwise compel people into treatment, will instead only assist in adding to, not only individual drug harms, but harms to our more vulnerable communities and their families \u2013 and particularly to our children.<\/p>\n Once psychotropic toxins are an entrenched part of the behavioural mechanisms of an individual, whether it be short-term intoxication, or long-term dependency, the risk to health, safety and well-being of that individual and more concerningly, those around them requires more than a \u2018doctor\u2019 for change<\/a>. 12 Secure welfare engaged for rehabilitation continues to prove the safest and healthiest vehicle to assist that change.<\/a>13<\/p>\n Do these changes indicate that as a society there is more concern for tobacco users than illicit drug users? The latter deserve the same passionate assistance to exit drug use rather than any further enhancement or endorsement.<\/p>\n Any permission model \u2013 decriminalisation, legalisation or depenalization \u2013 that does not add to that capacity of drug users to move out of drug use<\/a> is a counterproductive measure.14 Consequently, the drug using individual will more readily continue use if the only proactively coercive vehicle \u2013 the law \u2013 is removed, further normalizing drug use and the inevitable harms that follow.<\/p>\n It is important to glean all the evidence-based facts about models prior to profiling them as options, particularly models that have either failed or are being reviewed due to poor outcomes and\/or just plain limited, inaccurate or misrepresentative data.<\/p>\n For a thorough and clinical review of the Portugal Drug Policy Framework go to Portugal Drug Policy \u2013 A Review of the Evidence<\/a> 15<\/p>\n![\"alternatives\"](\"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/alternatives.png\")
For the safety and future of not only the current drug user, but the protection of families and the most vulnerable in our community \u2013 our children \u2013 the legal status must remain unchanged. Yet re-tasked for better outcomes. The Dalgarno Institute is available to dialogue and assist in formulating this re-tasking.<\/p>\n