The (not so) tough stand on drugs

Posted: Published on June 14th, 2013

This post was added by Dr P. Richardson

Busted, kinda: The Voice coach and US rocker Joel Madden.

There was outrage and confected outrage, but mostly there was mirth. ''Joel Madden proves that in Australia the grass really is greener!,'' tweeted one wag. ''I think it's pretty obvious the weed belonged to Joel Madden's hairdresser,'' quipped another.

Not even the police could summon much enthusiasm over the discovery of a small amount of cannabis in Madden's hotel room when they were alerted to it on Sunday afternoon. They took six hours to turn up and then let The Voice judge off with a caution. Among Madden's co-judges and the public at large, more scorn was heaped on the media for sensationalism than it was upon the Good Charlotte frontman.

It was a far cry from the drug scandals of the 1970s, when the rock'n'roll stars who were busted got really busted - arrested, deported, banned from venues and gloriously disgraced.

Cannabis : Creeping towards decriminalisation.

But the trivial treatment of the nadir in Madden's criminal history was a sign of the times. Though it is not politic to say so, a gentle trend towards the decriminalisation of marijuana has been creeping across Australia for the past 15 years.

Advertisement

The process has been uncontroversial and gone largely unnoticed, partly due to broader public acceptance of drug use and also to the way various jurisdictions have sold their drug policies to the public.

The Howard government dubbed its harm minimisation strategy the ''tough on drugs'' policy. One by one, the states fell into step, introducing programs that allowed them to caution or fine people for minor possession offences, rather than send them careening into the court system.

''It was clever policy,'' says Professor Alison Ritter, deputy director of the national drug and alcohol research centre at the University of NSW, of the Howard initiative. ''You badge it as 'tough on drugs' but you introduce programs that reduce the significant legal consequences for people who deal with drugs.''

See the original post:
The (not so) tough stand on drugs

Related Posts
This entry was posted in Drugs. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.