AUSTRALIA, the “country down under,” has an estimated three million of its residents addicted to prohibited drugs. But drug abuse is not considered a crime; it is a disease calling for medical attention.
This was how a Sydney, Australia-based Filipino nurse explained that country’s bloodless war on drugs in his appearance on Tonette Toledo’s Facebook live show “Talking Point” while in Iloilo City the other day.
Denmark Suede — son of the late Bombo Radyo broadcaster Eddie K. Suede who has worked in hospitals in New Zealand and Austalia for the past 16 years – spoke of himself as directly involved in rehabilitating Australian drug dependents.
“I have administered methadone on them,” he quipped. The methadone program is available for free in certain rehab centers.
Methadone, an opioid to treat extreme pain, doubles as treatment for addiction to prohibited drugs like heroin and methamphetamine or shabu. Methadone, which blocks the “high” the user gets from addictive drugs, is available in tablet, powder and liquid forms.
Crackdown is not strictly enforced unless necessary.
“You can sniff marijuana in Australia,” Suede explained. “The police will not arrest you unless you drive a motor vehicle.”
Obviously it’s because, like alcohol, marijuana impairs judgment, motor coordination, and reaction time. Studies have found a direct relationship between its blood concentration and impaired driving ability.
Suede said that while there is vigorous drive by the Australian government to rehabilitate drug dependents, they are never treated as criminals unless they commit crimes. Killings done as a result of drug addiction are rare.
“Mass killings are now unheard of,” he revealed. “The last-recorded mass shooting in Australia happened in 1996 yet.”
It happened when a problematic 28-year-old Martin Bryant shot and killed 35 people in a café.
Suede attributed peace in Australia to its small population that partakes of its huge material wealth. Its land area is almost as big as the United States but its current population of only 25,000,000 is only around one-fourth of the Philippine population.
His logic is believable when contrasted with the Philippine setting where shabu pushing among the poor is directly related to the need to make both ends meet. Cases of jeepney and tricycle drivers doubling as shabu couriers have been well-recorded.
“How could I feed my family on an income of P200 or less per day?”
It is a common excuse heard from tricycle drivers.
“Necessity knows no law,” goes a popular quotation. It mirrors the reality that pushers risk life and limb in trying to keep their loved ones alive. After all, mass hunger as alternative could be a more fearful path to the grave.
But with the bread winner eliminated, how would the bereaved survive with no decent jobs available for them?
On the other hand where people live in abundance – the opposite of lack – it eliminates the need to turn to crime for a living.
The best way to win the war on drugs is to win the war on poverty first. Too bad. According to the World Bank, poverty incidence in the Philippines hovers at 26 percent.
How could I disagree with Denmark Suede when I, too, had personally rubbed elbows with “high” shabu users in Australia’s neighbor, New Zealand?
During my three-week vacation in NZ’s Auckland, Tauranga and Hamilton cities, I neither heard nor read of violent crimes committed by meth users. In fact, I sidled up to one of them who was singing on a street corner.
My Filipino companion, a car washer in Tauranga, explained that the “singer” had obviously no criminal instinct. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
