Home
* Contact * INDEX *
Current Issues * Priority Issues *
Reference Index * Selwyn's
Profile * Your
Comments
.
The Drug Problem
Research into Australia's drug trade makes frightening
reading. Australian authorities are not even holding the line against the drug trade.
Heroin trafficking alone, estimated at approximately $3 billion a year, is imported into
Australia with customs services admitting that they are only intercepting about 10%.
Decades of prohibition against the use of drugs has done
nothing but allow international criminal organisations to amass huge wealth and power,
corrupt entire societies to the point where some - like Colombia - may no longer be
salvageable.
Indeed, the flow of drug money is now so large that some
experts believe it could pose a threat to national economies and even in the stability of
the international financial system. They estimate that up to one quarter of all
investments on the international money market is now drug related.
This sort of evidence, anyone might have thought, would be
enough to shock any government into action. Australia's response to date has
been inadequate.
All the tough anti-drug laws that exist in most countries
have managed to achieve over the years is to foster powerful criminal organisations of
every kind and encourage corruption on a global scale.
It is time for a radical rethink of our failed, illegal drug
policies. The scale of the disaster that awaits our society if we continue along the
current path is almost too great to contemplate.
Consider the following statistics:
