I'm 'coming out' about drugs: it's time get real about pill testing
"As lawmakers we won’t save lives by sticking our heads in the sand," Cate Faehrmann says
Monday, January 21, 2019
As a politician I’ve made the difficult decision to "come out" in this way because the government’s zero-tolerance approach to drugs has not only been a catastrophic failure in stopping drug use, it is costing people their lives. It is so out-of-touch with millions of people’s reality that everyone has stopped listening. Young people are not fools. They want us, as politicians, to "get real" about illegal drugs. Their parents want us to stop the moral crusade and listen to the evidence. This means being honest about the nature and extent of drug use and accepting the evidence that a harm minimisation approach, where illegal drug use is treated as a health issue not a criminal one, works. That's why we need pill testing and other harm minimisation measures to keep our young people safe.
