VIDEO: Hopes for radical change as drug summit kicks off

TOM HARTLEY, REPORTER: It's Friday afternoon in Tamworth. A female driver in an unregistered car has caught the attention of police. She’s asked to step out of the wagon.

POLICE OFFICER:  Now is probably the time, have you got anything in the car you want to tell me about?

TOM HARTLEY:  They’ve pulled over this woman, they’ve done a roadside drug test – she has returned a positive result. Now they’re going to search her car, and I think they’re going to call a female officer to search her person.

POLICE OFFICER:  I certainly think there's an undercurrent of drugs and alcohol as a causal factor in a lot of the incidents that we respond to. 

A lot of the common ones that people may not realise is domestic violence.

TOM HARTLEY:  After midnight, officers get a call to a domestic violence case.

So, police are currently looking for a man who’s breached an AVO. He’s basically shown up at a home that he wasn’t supposed to be at, and the allegation is that he’s made threats toward a woman, and we’re told that it’s highly likely he’s on ice. 

Several units continue patrolling into morning.

Many police acknowledge issues related to alcohol and drugs can’t be solved in the realms of law and order without sufficient community services and support. 

ASST COMM. ANDREW HOLLAND, WESTERN REGION COMMANDER The police are seen as the thin blue line that does the work of every other agency when the business hours finish and unfortunately the blue shirt, the blue line that we talk about, picks up all the pieces. 

They become the mental health officer, they become the treating physician, they become the youth carer. All those roles that police take on, which is added to our normal role, with our limited numbers, at the moment, it's probably putting extra pressure on the local police to do that.

TOM HARTLEY:  It's estimated state, territory and federal governments spend double the amount of money on law enforcement compared with drug treatment; and a small percentage on prevention and harm reduction.

A growing number of organisations want that spending split to be scrutinised at the New South Wales Drug Summit, demanding new policies to prioritise the health response. 

PROF. JENNIFER MARTIN, RACP PRESIDENT:  We think it’s time that we actually have a whole of society discussion about where we want to be in this area, where we actually want to put our funds. 

TOM HARTLEY: Toxicologist Jennifer Martin is the president of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians which represents 30,000 medical professionals in Australia and New Zealand including addiction medicine, public health and general medicine. 

JENNIFER MARTIN:  We really want to focus our agenda on trying to prevent people from getting to those cycles of ill health and popping in and out of institutions and incarceration.

TOM HARTLEY:  The RACP is now calling for radical policy change, including:

*Decriminalising the use of drugs and possession for personal use.

*Establishing trials of regulated cannabis markets.

*Expanding free needle syringe programs. 

*And the expansion of drug checking services and pill testing trials. 

JENNIFER MARTIN:  And the safety of the community, we can actually encourage that if we can actually get people with drug and alcohol issues healthy. 

PROF. ALISON RITTER. DRUG POLICY MODELLING PROGRAM:  So if we were going to design decrim for New South Wales have you got particular principles in mind? 

TEAM MEMBER:  A lot of these people have had repeated interactions with the system and we’re trying to avoid that. 

TOM HARTLEY:  This team at UNSW is coming up with new drug policy recommendations, based off the latest research and government data which they say is hard to access. 

ALISON RITTER:  It’s been quite secretive and it is very difficult to analyse. 

Generally speaking, New South Wales is going backwards. And there are some really obvious things that could be done, including changing the diversion scheme, changing the laws, increasing investment in treatment, and the special commission of inquiry into the drug ice recommended exactly the same things.

TOM HARTLEY:  While the New South Wales Government has committed to developing a drug strategy, one key policy is already off the cards. 

RYAN PARK, NSW HEALTH MINISTER:  The Premier’s made some things clear around decriminalisation, that we probably wouldn’t be going down that path per se. What we are looking at is how we can do things better and then what are the opportunities to do things in a more collective way going forward.

DAN HOWARD, ICE INQUIRY COMMISSIONER:  It's just madness to leave the policies as they are. 

TOM HARTLEY:  Dan Howard was the Commissioner of the 2018 ice inquiry – decriminalising simple drug offences were among his rejected recommendations.

DAN HOWARD:  A lot of people misunderstand that. They think it's open slather, but it's not. It just means that we're not going to treat simple use and possession of illicit drugs as a crime. 

We’ll instead find some other remedy for that, that wouldn't stigmatize people for that simple use and possession.

TOM HARTLEY:  His backup suggestion was a compulsory diversion scheme for offenders. A watered-down version came into effect in February this year. 

Currently, under the scheme, first and second time offenders are offered two choices. One is a phone call with a health professional, the other is paying a $400 fine. Police have full discretion over every matter. 

However, they can’t offer diversion if the offending is linked to other more serious drug charges. 

DAN HOWARD:  The way it's been trotted out is desultory and almost useless, frankly. So that has to change.

TOM HARTLEY:  Alison Ritter’s team scrutinized the available data and found out of the 6,332 minor drug charges issued between February and August, only 6.4 per cent were diverted.

ALISON RITTER:  This scheme in New South Wales privilege the people who are least likely to need an education intervention. It's just like, it is perverse almost.

DEXTON:  If, the first time I appeared in court, if I was offered that diversion, if I was offered to go to counselling or to go to rehab or to detox or to be even offered that, I would not have gone down the path of seven years of active addiction. 

TOM HARTLEY:  It’s been over a year since Dexton last used drugs. He moved to Tamworth for a clean start, after languishing in Queensland, with a growing criminal record. 

DEXTON:  It was impossible. There was nobody in Brisbane that would actually employ me, with me having a criminal record which is no longer me. That's no longer the person that I actually am.

TOM HARTLEY:  Some policing areas, including where Tamworth is, show a diversion rate of zero. Assistant Commissioner Andrew Holland says officers are bound by the law’s strict parameters.

ANDREW HOLLAND:  A lot of the times when the diversion is available, there's other offenses involved, so the police don't have that discretion. We would like to keep people out of custody as much as we possibly can.

DAN HOWARD:  It's meaningless, in terms of law reform, that is just a meaningless outcome. I've got huge respect for the police force. They do great work, but on this one, they're not being given the right impetus or direction from above.

TOM HARTLEY:  You look at statewide diversion rates, there's a dramatic difference between non-Indigenous and Indigenous cases. 

ALISON RITTER:  The average for a non-Indigenous person is 7 per cent, the average for an Indigenous person is 2 per cent and that's appalling.

Without evidence of why those rates are so significantly different, it certainly doesn't protect police from the argument that they are racist.

TOM HARTLEY:  What’s your take on that? 

ANDREW HOLLAND:  I can’t talk about statistics, but I will say this, police have their chance to do everything on an individual basis.

There may be situations where an officer could have diverted and didn't. I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but there probably is. The reason is you need to know the understanding the mindset of the officer involved and why, you'd have to go to an individual caseload to understand that.

TOM HARTLEY:  Police Minister Yasmin Catley told 7.30 the scheme will be reviewed next February, saying “if we can do better, we will.” 

DEXTON:  The way I look at it, it's you've got, you put your hand out, and it's like, somebody just grab it, just grab it, just give me that bit of help. And everyone's just looking and going, nah, so yeah, you got yourself into this position, you deal with it.

DAN HOWARD:  They've got to understand stigma, and we've got to change our whole approach. 

RYAN PARK:  What we are trying to do with this conversation is have a real and meaningful dialogue with the community around what the next stage of drug reform looks like, and what we might do as a government to contribute to that.