Aussie war on drugs disregards family ties

By Rob Goodfellow

WOLLONGONG, Australia (JP): This week the Australian government declared "War on Drugs" with a AUS$27 million national media education campaign targeting families. The appeal to parents to "talk to with their children" has many experts thinking that it make a doubtful contribution to the very large problem of drug abuse in the Australian community. The campaign appears to have been inspired by the government's own research that 70 percent of Australian teenagers indicated that they would be positively influenced by better communication with their parents.

The problem with the campaign is that it fails to recognize that drug abuse is a very complex problem, which demands a complex and comprehensive range of strategies. Howard's approach appeals to the very natural desire for a magic bullet solution -- the logic is "if only families communicated openly and honestly with each other then young people would stop taking drugs".

It is the same logic that inspires desperate middle class families to pay large amounts of money for rapid detoxification therapy, often overseas in places like Israel, in the hope that a single treatment will undo years of damage.

Despite the campaign's television images of prosperous nuclear families, what Australians read in the governments literature and see on television disregards the fact that in Australia often the source of abuse that triggers the cycle of drug dependency comes from within the family relationship itself.

Paradoxically experts also sadly acknowledge that loving families that do communicate openly have children who experiment with drugs. The campaign's shock images of young overdose victims being placed into "body bags" is politically risky because those families who have lost children to a drug overdose now feel condemned rather than inspired by the government's shock tactics.

What we know of the reasons why teenagers experiment with illicit drugs is associated with the recklessness of youth, with peer pressure and with anti-social personality disorders. However in Australia the sustained use of hazardous amounts of any substance -- including alcohol, is associated with more sensitive issues such as physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and fundamental social problems such as unemployment.

We also know that many young people use a range of drugs to self-medicate undiagnosed and untreated clinical depression. In the absence of other solutions, drugs make all of this pain, confusion and disappointment go away -- for a short time.

There is now a ground swell of criticism -- particular from expert groups, that if the Howard government wants to make a long term impact on the drug problem they should gear their resources towards clearly measurable outcomes, not just throw money at a media campaign that only satisfies the imperatives of a desperate government trying to appeal to a unconvinced conservative electorate in an election year.

Many people are now calling for the $27 million to be spent on long term employment or living skills programs, rehabilitation centers, or on improving mental health services. These programs can be measured for effectiveness. A shock media campaign cannot.

What Prime Minister Howard has inadvertently done is cause more harm than good; because now that Howard has raised the profile of a "war on drugs" it will put increasing strain on an already over-stretched drug and alcohol treatment system. As parents desperately seek advice and treatment for their children they will soon discover that there are rationed services and waiting lists.

There are other problems with the campaign. Mr Howard's strategy completely ignores the damming statistics that the real drug problem in Australia are not the illicit, or illegal drugs such as heroin, cannabis or amphetamines, but alcohol.

In 1998 2.2 percent of the population had used heroin at some time with 737 deaths directly attributed to heroin overdose. Compare this to figures of the same year that indicate half of all Australians aged from 20 to 59 consumed alcohol at least once a week -- with more than 60 percent of teenagers claiming they were recent drinkers.

In this same year approximately 3,700 Australians died due to the effects of drinking with a staggering 85,000 hospital admissions nationally attributed to alcohol consumption. The difference of course is that alcohol is legal.

Any teenager with a fake identification card can purchase enough alcohol to harm themselves from any bottle shop, anywhere in the country.

There are no single answers to the drug problem. There are only complex and coordinated strategies. This includes a seamless program of education, engagement and triage, detoxification, rehabilitation, living skills programs and finally meaningful employment.

This means that there are a few young people who will be positively influenced by the governments message, but it also means that there are many tens of thousands who need immediate treatment intervention.

Solutions also include the possibility that there are many young people who are so damaged that they will require a lifetime of care and support just to keep them from hurting themselves and others.

Given the scarcity of resources for drug and alcohol treatment there is growing opinion that the Prime Minister would have been better advised to invest public money in reducing barriers to service provision, and expanding cooperation between general practitioners, and other services such as community health and mental health, more detoxification beds, outreach case management and long term rehabilitation services.

The writer is based at the University of Wollongong, Australia.