Treating addiction as a health issue

By most public health measures, alcohol and tobacco are more harmful than cannabis and a range of other substances including MDMA and many psychedelics. Yet strict prohibitions remain on a range of such substances. The distinction between illegal and legal drugs is largely arbitrary, informed by prejudice or commercial interests rather than evidence or public health concerns. The result is that drug use is made more dangerous and the health, welfare and social costs are increased. Victorian Socialists believe drug policy must be rebuilt on evidence, not stigma.

What we think

1. Applying criminal law to drug use and access increases harm rather than reducing it.
2. Drug criminalisation creates a black market and hands a monopoly over the drugs trade to unregulated networks and syndicates that viciously exploit workers and substance users for profit.
3. Drug policy should be evidence-based, guided by harm minimisation, and free of moralism and fearmongering.
4. Substance misuse and addiction should be treated as health and welfare issues.

We’ll fight to

1. Decriminalise the possession, for personal use, of all currently illegal substances and associated paraphernalia.
2. Establish a regulated legal market for cannabis, including for recreational use, and use tax proceeds to fund research and programmes addressing substance misuse and addiction.
3. Allow restricted legal recreational access to low risk drugs under regulated conditions, ensuring that consumers have access to education and support.
4. Establish safe consumption sites with treatment and social services on-site.
5. Allow the restricted legal manufacture of low risk drugs, including those in regulated legal markets. These substances would only be accessible to those who are already using them for harm reduction purposes and will undercut illegal markets.
6. Expunge the criminal records of anyone convicted for offences related to the personal use or supply of drugs without commercial intent.
7. Legalise and provide drug checking services at festivals and venues and educate workers and service users about ongoing risks that may not be identified by drug checking.
8. Increase research into therapeutic uses of psychoactive substances including MDMA, ketamine and psychedelics.
9. Significantly expand the capacity of publicly funded addiction and substance use treatment facilities and remove the limit on the number of medically supervised injecting centres.
10. Release funding for ’The Crossing’, a union led, evidence based inpatient rehabilitation program for those suffering from substance use disorders.