Dr Jiggens

R egime of Prohibition (RoP) is a measure of how hard governments and police crack down on drug users measured by the ratio of the number of drug offences per thousand drug users. Not all illicit drugs are prosecuted equally in Australia. If the illicit drugs were being policed in terms of their harmfulness (the potential for fatal overdoses and addiction) then cannabis, which is the least addictive, and which is never associated with fatal overdoses, should have the lowest relative Regime of Prohibition, followed by the amphetamine type stimulants, then cocaine and heroin. Instead, the war on drugs in Australia is a war on cannabis, the softest drug, while cocaine, a far more addictive drug, is almost decriminalised. The reason seems to be class: cocaine is the drug of choice of the highest socioeconomic groups and is rarely policed. Relative Regime of Prohibition compares the offences/1000 users of the various illicit drugs to cocaine’s Regime of Prohibition, which was 2.1 offences per 1000 users in 2010.
The main target of the War on Drugs in Australia is cannabis: 70% of all illicit drug offences are for cannabis. Among cannabis seizures, by far the biggest operation is the annual helicopter raids on the alternative communities on the NSW north coast. In the US, drug prohibition falls disproportionally on black Americans. Not so, it seems, in Australia. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander account for 26% of the total Australian prisoner population, an imprisonment rate 14 times more than the non-Indigenous rate. However, they constitute only 4% of the population imprisoned for illicit drugs. As well, they use cannabis and meth/amphetamines, the drugs most Australians get arrested for, at twice the national rate. In this regard, Australia’s drug laws are not racially discriminatory. Drug prosecutions in Australia seem to be about lifestyle and class, rather than colour.