For gangs, the Misuse of Drugs Act (1975) has been one of the best recruiting tools they’ve ever had. Criminalisation of a raft of illicit drugs not only provide s them with a wildly lucrative black market. The punitive approach to personal drug use has also plainly done more harm than good, especially to families and communities living in poverty.
Easy to see why. Kids raised amidst chronic drug and alcohol use and subjected to the physical and sexual abuse that often comes with it, are at high risk of becoming drug users themselves by their early teens. As drugs become a solace and then an addiction, criminal acts (shoplifting, burglary, robbery etc) become the only means to obtain drugs at the market price. Once users are prosecuted and get sent to jail, gangs offer not only a vital form of self-preservation on the inside, but are (often) the only willing employer waiting on the outside.
Regardless, we continue to spend a lot of money on the failed war on drugs. According to Otago University research, New Zealand spent just shy of half a billion dollars in 2022/23 on our pro-active response to illicit drugs:
This represents 0.3 per cent of total Crown expenditure in that year, and a per-person spend of $95….The research found that law enforcement receives 68.2 per cent of drug policy funding, with treatment receiving 24.8 per cent, prevention receiving 5.5 per cent, and harm reduction receiving 1.4 per cent.
So… we’re spending over two thirds of our response to the drugs crisis on the failed tactics of law enforcement, less than a quarter of the spend on treating the addicted, and only $5 in every $100 on prevention. Australia spends as slightly smaller proportion (64%) on policing, but they spend much more – overall – on their drug response, ($5.6 billion dollars annually) which works out at $210 per citizen, twice the per capita spend in New Zealand. It isn’t successful, either.
Interestingly, the same Otago University research found that most New Zealanders would prefer to spend a whole lot more on prevention and harm reduction, and a whole lot less on law enforcement. That message though, is not getting through to politicians who prefer to compete for votes by promising to be “tough on crime.”
The Portugal Option
According to research by the NZ Drug Foundation, 2-3 preventable deaths are occurring each week in New Zealand, Reportedly, there were 188 deaths from preventable overdoses in 2023, and on provisional figures, 148 such deaths occurred last year. On a deaths per population basis of those aged 15-64, our rate was 33 deaths per million in 2023, and (provisionally) 28 deaths per million in 2024.
Portugal, where drugs were decriminalised in 2001, the same death rate figure plunged from 76 deaths per million that year, to only 6 in 2019, a stunning 93% decrease. True…since 2021, the overdose death rate has increased in cities like Lisbon in particular, while still remaining well below the OECD average. Portugal’s recent rise has been widely attributed to a premature reduction in government funding for treatment and rehabilitation centres rather than being due to flaws in the de-criminalisation principle itself.
There have been other benefits for Portugal from de-criminalisation. Thanks largely to officially supported needle swaps, confirmed HIV cases fell from 1,287 in 2001 to just 16 in 2019. Other social benefits have ensued:
In 2001, over 40% of the sentenced Portuguese prison population were held for drug offences, considerably above the European average, and 70% of reported crime was associated with drugs.13 While the European average has gradually risen over the past twenty years (from 14 to 18%), the proportion of people sentenced for drug offences in Portuguese prisons has fallen dramatically to 15.7% in 2019 — now below the European average.14
Could we achieve the same benefits here?
In its recent major report available here, the NZ Drug Foundation provided ample evidence of the personal, social, and economic benefits we would stand to gain from proceeding along much the same lines as in Portugal, and like the other countries and regions that Portugal’s success has inspired. There is an urgent need here for a major policy re-set. NZ Drug Foundation executive director Sarah Helm has cited some of the major aspects of the crisis we are experiencing:
In the past 18 months alone, we have seen methamphetamine and cocaine use double, new potent substances enter thew drug supply, communities over-run with drug harm, and 3,000 New Zealanders criminalised for cannabis consumption.
Moreover, more than half of those imprisoned for drug offences in 2023 were Māori, and the rate of fatal overdose deaths among Māori is twice that of non-Māori. Given the scale of these and other related problems, the government response has been token at best:
About $30 million over four years would be allocated to increase the services available to communities hardest hit by meth, within the ‘Vote Health’ mental health and addiction budget.
Really? A paltry $7.5 million increase annually for the rest of the decade hardly even qualifies as a Band-aid response to the worsening conditions of illicit drug use. On the overseas evidence, a de-criminalisation, health -based approach here would (a) save lives, (b) deliver immediate health benefits,(c) reduce the economic costs and staffing pressures within our public health and prison systems, and (d) offer a more effective (and just) set of solutions to Māori in particular.
Faint chance though, of any of those changes happening. The tough on crime/tough on drug users rhetoric is far too valuable to the politicians to expect them to engage in any rational debate about the palpable benefits of de-criminalisation. Nor would they be likely to stump up with the transitional funding needed to put a different approach in place.
Footnote: As the NZ Drug Foundation has also pointed out, the overseas evidence indicates that state funding of the transition to a more sensible and health-based drug policy (involving rehabilitation, physical and mental healthcare etc) delivers much better results than the commercial, market -driven model that has been pursued in North America.
Worst Ever
Reportedly, the international market research company IPSOS has been running surveys here since 2017 and lo, the performance of the Luxon government was being rated in October by respondents as the worst since the surveys began. That’s not entirely a surprise.
The more interesting result is that the Luxon/Willis combo is so toxic that it has managed to subvert one of the bedrock myths of post war Western politics: namely, that the centre-right is somehow, just inherently a better manager of the economy. That perception exists no more. Labour is not only being seen for the first time as a better manager of the economy/cost of living crisis, but is reportedly polling ahead in 15 out of the 20 factors held to be most important by the public.
We’re getting the point where we have to ask (a) what else Christopher Luxon has to do to lose his job and (b) is he, in fact, a secret centre-left operative in disguise? Surely, only someone working as an undercover Labour asset could have restored Labour to contender status quite this quickly…
Robyn’s Return
Robyn, Sweden’s beloved technopop musician has just released her first new single in seven years, but before getting to that.. some of her classics are worth revisiting. Early cuts like ‘With Every Heartbeat” and “Fembot” are still total bangers, but “Dancing On My Own is/was her masterpiece of dancefloor alienation. On this 2019 live rendition she- and the crowd – turn this saddest of songs into a communal celebration:
OK….and bringing the focus right in close to the personal, here’s an intimate live version of “Hang With Me…”
There’s there’s “Cry Wen You Get Older,” with its brilliant set of lyrics:
”…Back in suburbia, kids get high and make out on the train, yeah
Then endless incomprehensible boredom takes a-hold again
And in this other dream, I’m on top of the world
Ahead of the game
Think of reality and it hits me hardcore to the brain
(We’ve got to get away)
She said : There just must be more to life than this
He said: Careful, ‘cause you might just get your wish…”
And finally, here’s Robyn’s new single, “Dopamine..” The lyric concedes that feelings may be merely chemistry in action, and there are plenty of reasons to resist the drive for constant, instant gratification. Yet the song overflows with the sense of being transported regardless: by love, the pop music rush, whatever. You can cry when you get older: