When I was a young police officer, I encountered a retired couple struggling with their adult son, a long-term meth addict who lived in their home. They endured chronic petty theft, abuse, and violence, all inflicted by their own son. He did not want to stop using meth or other illicit drugs and would not move out. His parents wanted him arrested. 

If the Greens get their way on drug policy, that would not be possible.

The Greens propose to “decriminalise the personal use, possession, and non-commercial sale of drugs”.

All drugs.

This includes currently illegal stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine, depressants such as heroin and deadly fentanyl, hallucinogens like LSD, and the ever-evolving Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS), which are more prevalent and deadly than ever. All made by organised crime in appalling conditions. Cut with deadly substances. 

Under the Greens these would all be decriminalised for personal use and as easy to buy as a bottle of wine. 

Just what families need.

Consider Oregon, USA. In 2020, this city decriminalised the personal use of nearly every illegal drug. Four years on, the place is a disaster zone:

• Addiction rates soared.
• Overdose deaths reached record highs.
• Drug-related crimes, including violent offenses, increased.

One study of Oregon concluded: “The decriminalisation of illicit drugs by itself is not a solution to the problem of addiction. We cannot decriminalise dangerous drugs and honestly think we’ve solved their abuse by washing our hands of the matter after voting.”

The liberalisation they adopted worsened matters considerably.

In fact, at the NSW Drug Summit this week, the visiting Mayor of Portland, Oregon, Ted Wheeler, told the summit his city’s experiment with drug decriminalisation had been a disaster, creating a “free for all” for drug dealers and resulting in the “worst of both worlds”. 

“The public ... started to see drug dealers congregated in front of their libraries, their schools and their parks, in front of their grocery stores, and it really outraged people,” he said. 

But the Greens did not want to hear it.

In a subsequent 3AW radio interview, Greens senator Shoebridge dismissed the mayor’s point of view as “right wing hyperbole”, arguing it was simply an individual addiction issue.

This narrow focus on the user absolves the Greens of any broader community care, let alone the government’s responsibility to balance authority and individual freedoms to serve all the Australian public interests.

In the same interview, Senator Shoebridge failed to even answer the question about the Green’s legalising fentanyl for personal use. 

“I know it's awkward that your politics leads to people dying,” he blustered.

Isn’t that exactly where his own policy of a drug free for all would lead?

Last year, Greens MP Cate Faehrmann called for cocaine to be legalised.

“The worst thing for the drug lords right now would be a legal market; that's what they would fear the most,” she argued.

Yet Oregon's experience shows the exact opposite. 

Oregon and other experiences show that if the Greens policy was implemented it would:

• Increase illicit drug use at home and in public: Decriminalisation sends a message that all illicit drugs are ok. Young people, in particular, are vulnerable. Broader access increases the risk of accidental use by people close to users, such as children, family members, and friends. 
• Increase crime: Domestic violence, assault, child neglect, and dangerous driving could rise. Substance abuse fuels chaos in homes and on the streets.
• Undermine drug education and prevention: Programs warning against drug use lose credibility when all drugs are decriminalised. Mixed messaging makes prevention even harder.
• Overburden hospitals: Already stressed emergency departments and rehabilitation services would be further stretched, diverting critical resources from other community healthcare needs.
• Empower organised crime: Criminal networks won’t stop (even in regulated markets like alcohol). They’ll continue producing and distributing all drugs, profiting at Australia’s expense.
• Complicate policing: Defining and enforcing threshold limits for “personal use” of all drugs are challenging to enforce. When does “personal use” escalate into drug dealing? Policing and judicial processes will become convoluted, further straining resources.

That’s just an overview. 

It is clear that illicit drugs pose significantly wider and complex risks to families, communities, public places, and institutions, as well as to users. 

That’s why illicit drugs should stay criminalised. Criminalisation reduces supply and demand of substances that kill Australians. 

Scratch the surface and the only thing the Greens policy will do is more harm. 

Because the Greens are not who they used to be. 

Sandra Bourke
ADVANCE Spokeswoman

References

A NSW MP's call to legalise cocaine is unlikely to be adopted. But experts say decriminalisation could be more realistic - ABC News

Larkin, Paul J., Oregon's Drug Decriminalization Debacle (October 19, 2024). 

‘Rude and obnoxious’: Greens Senator David Shoebridge called out during heated clash on drug decriminalization | Sky News Australia

Russoniello K, Vakharia SP, Netherland J, et al. Decriminalization of drug possession in Oregon: Analysis and early lessons. Drug Science, Policy and Law. 2023;9. doi:10.1177/20503245231167407