Drugs and Harm Minimisation Policy Summary

Treating drug use as a health and social issue

The Greens are committed to reducing the damage done to individuals, their families and the wider community by drugs.

The “war on drugs” and prohibition have been expensive failures, with enormous personal, social and financial costs. They have failed to reduce the availability or consumption of illegal drugs, and they have not made our communities safe or reduced police corruption. They have resulted in unnecessary criminalisation and incarceration, with enormously damaging consequences, particularly amongst Indigenous and young people. Prohibition and the “war on drugs” have increased overall costs to society.

The Greens are committed to exploring new, more effective approaches which treat drug use as a health and social issue. While we support criminal penalties for the commercial supply of drugs, we believe that the principle of minimising the harm done by drugs will be more successful than resorting to tough, law-and-order sanctions for personal drug use.

The Greens consider drugs as more than simply the illegal ones. Our policy includes any substance which can be abused, like alcohol, tobacco, petrol and steroids. The Greens policy does not encourage drug use.

The Greens support:

• improved drug and alcohol treatment and counselling services, partly funded from the tax on alcohol sales;
• ending criminal sanctions for personal drug use, instead focusing on treatment and counselling as more effective approaches to minimising the harm done by drugs;
• removing legal penalties for growing a small number of cannabis plants for personal use and an end to the use of sniffer dogs for general drug detection in the community;
• continuing the medically supervised injecting room, improved needle  exchange and distribution programs, and a trial of heroin prescribed as part of a treatment program to registered addicts;
• supporting the prescription and regulated use of therapeutic drugs for medicinal purposes, regardless of their current legal status;
• banning donations to political parties from the drug, tobacco and alcohol industries; and
• banning advertising that promotes excessive alcohol consumption or tobacco use.