Ten Ways To Tackle Drugs Today – The Story Of The Street University

Tony Abbott kept his promise in the 2014 Budget to fund ten Headspace centres across Australia, bringing their total to 100. But a review of the Headspace program, an initiative of the Rudd-Gillard governments, will follow. Matt and Naomi Noffs  are the founders of the Street Universities – taking the Ted Noffs legacy to a new and more contemporary level. They have their own ideas about ways to deal with mental health in the many young Australians they see at their Street University. On Wednesday 21 May 2014, Matt and Naomi Noffs spoke for The Sydney Institute about the Noffs Foundation and its new look Street Universities.

 TEN WAYS TO TACKLE DRUGS TODAY – THE STORY OF THE STREET UNIVERSITY

MATT NOFFS

Just over a fortnight ago, the Prime Minister said that the drug war is unwinnable…and he was right. It sounded as though he was confused and had given up on the drug epidemic and many people believe that he has but I don’t believe that.

Tony Abbott, under John Howard, did more to bring about efficient drug policy than any previous government before them. It’s a fact.

Not everything that government promoted was evidence-based and what I mean to say is  –  “saying no to drugs” simply doesn’t work and neither does abstinence alone. In the same way, the idea of a “war on drugs” doesn’t make sense either.

Our national drug and alcohol crisis is our number one health issue and it is not a war. It is not a war because there are no clear winners…but it is very clear who loses.

It is not a war, it’s an epidemic. It’s also a pandemic.

This is catastrophic social and health issue that affects Australia and the rest of the world. But it affects Australia less so because we have been, since the beginning, pioneers in this field.

Tonight, I want to outline ten ways that we can tackle drugs as a nation and I also want to point out that we have been doing so, as a nation, effectively, for some time. But before I do I want to share a story with you.

I had a journalist out from the USA – from NPR. America’s National Public Radio. He was doing two stories – one of them on what we were doing in Liverpool but also one on Australia’s roaring cocaine trade. He had asked me to drive him to the worst crime spots in Sydney and I did so, obligingly.

I took him around the inner city trouble spots amongst Kings Cross and Redfern. I took him out South West to Liverpool, Bankstown and Mount Druitt. His response was intruiging.

Although this journalist was out here to study our cocaine habit, he seemed completely underwhelmed. Even though he understood that a lot of crime occurred behind closed doors and the police had given him a very grim picture of our issues with cocaine, he simply said, “Compared to the USA, you guys really don’t have a problem here.”

Comparatively, it’s easy to see his point. Compared to the US, Australia’s crime and drug issues are a walk in the park. But that’s largely because of the investment made by Tony Abbott and John Howard ten years ago.

Crime and drug use is always dropping because of wise investments. It’s also because we invested early – like the time when my grandfather walked into Premier Neville Wran’s office and dumped a bag full of used needles on his desk saying, “What are you going to do about this?”

Almost immediately, Neville Wran invested his own time and became one of Ted’s board members and allies. Bob Carr also invested his time toward my parents cause when they began their work building adolescent rehabs around NSW. Bob Carr also called for the NSW drug summit. And Mike Baird has spent a considerable amount of time with me and the young people out at our first Street University in Liverpool.

But this isn’t just about Premier’s and Prime Ministers devoting their time to causes like ours. It’s also about the community. Because it is my belief that the community holds MOST of the answers.

But they are seldom asked to contribute. And this is one of the issues facing Australia today. That everyday Australians are kept out of the solution process. We need to be far more solution-focused in times like these. Ted Noffs would say, “The community has the solutions.” And they do. You do.

If we are to continue seeing crime, drug and alcohol abuse decrease we must continue to be pioneers in reducing drug abuse. We must open the flood gates to the millions of Australians who have simple but remarkable ideas.

We have never in our history needed new ideas more than now. Your voice is needed now. And your action is required even more so.

But what can you do? What can our politicians do? And what should we believe when we the drug epidemic seems so large in scaled that it feels, as the Prime Minister said recently, unwinnable? It is easy to be confused about this. And so I want to outline ten ways that we can tackle drugs as a country today.

Most of these tasks are for people in power to act on immediately but you too, as individuals, have the capacity to come up with solutions un-heard of.

You should not leave it to the health professionals. They do not, contrary to opinion, hold all the answers. There is no silver bullet. Your ideas are worthy.

That is what we have found at the Street University – as Ted Noffs said, “The community has the solutions.”

Here are ten ways that I believe we can continue to see a decrease in crime, drug and alcohol use in Australia.

Find the balance between law and health

I was with former Police Commissioner Mick Palmer two weeks ago. Mick was the Police Commissioner under Howard and was one of the leaders of the “Tough on Drugs” policy.

We were doing media and brain storming with a group of high school students in Adelaide about what they would do to curb the drug epidemic. Again, we were asking the community for answers.

Mick is a big believer in the fact that the police cannot do this job alone. Nor should they. Mick believes that police have been successful to some degree but that they haven’t dinted the drug market. In Mick’s own words “Effective policing has in fact proven ineffective in reducing supply or demand.” Mick goes on to say that, “The evidence suggests, it is not a police problem and police cannot be expected to fix it.”

I believe the government always needs to have a 50/50 mix of policing and health funding when looking at the drug epidemic. Putting more money into policing won’t work and neither will taking money from drug services. Which brings me to my second point.

Evidence

I have witnessed, all to often, that the government simply chooses the organisations that it believes the community wants it to fund. But the reality is the community isn’t asked and the community isn’t briefed either. The community needs to make more noise when it comes to billions of dollars being spent in the wrong direction.

There is one thing that the government needs to consider when funding community organizations above all and that’s evidence.

Evidence proving that that organization can do the job, evidence that clearly shows they are successful – that they have throughput.

An article published earlier this month about the impact of Methamphetamines by the Australian Financial Review written by Jonathan Barrett discusses exactly how much the government can save when it invests in evidence-based organizations.

Methamphetamines

Speaking of methamphetamines I want to come to my third point.

Ice, Crystal meth, or simply meth, is a drug that is in many ways still in its infancy.

We saw heroin rise to prominence and take the lives of too many young people and it took the government far too long to do anything about it.

Here is what we do know about ice. Disadvantaged communities are the ones who are most affected by it. A senior NSW public servant recently told me that the worst combination you can have is a group of people with mental health issues living in a housing estate together using ice.

This is when terrifying things happen. But ice is not the drug that causes most of Australia’s pain. Before I come to that I want to come back to mental health.

Funding 

Mental health funding should be separated from drug funding. Mental health issues affect thousands of Australians but every single one of us know someone with a drug related issue if we do not have one ourselves.

There is nothing more pressing than the drug epidemic.

In their advertising for tonight, The Sydney Institute questioned whether a national debate between myself and Pat McGorry would be the next great BBQ debate. Which was flattering… I have a lot of respect for Pat McGorry and the Headspace organisation.

But the two organisations can’t be compared. Discussing those two things in the same breath is like comparing apples with oranges. I will say this about Headspcae – I don’t think they need anymore money.

When you look at the money that Headspace and EPIC controls – it’s close to if not over half a billion dollars. And what we really need to address is the disproportionate funding that mental health field currently receives.

Because the drug issue is just as complex as the mental health issue for young people and should be funded equally.

Mental health is demanding and should be funded well. But we should not conflate these two when it comes to budgets. I also believe that when it comes to mental health, a diverse field will deliver better results than placing all your eggs in one basket. It’s similar to buying shares. You’re far better to spread your risk.

Right now there a many organisations trying to work within the Headspace model and I would think that they would be better receiving the money independently and coming to their own conclusions about how they would work with young people with mental health issues . Which brings me to my fifth point:

 Health intervention

Health interventions are the best investment but investing in only one program is a bad idea. Only investing in a program like Headspace can monopolise the health and welfare sector and kill the diversity of vital organisations that provide us with a plethora of opportunities for people who need them most.

It is my belief that the government should be funding the organisations big and small that the community currently invests in.

Organisations like Noffs yes, but also smaller grassroots organisations like “Hello Sunday Morning” which is a fantastic example of how young community members can create solutions to national problems.

And the other great thing about “Hello Sunday Morning” is that isn’t simply a clinical program – it’s a community one. But it is still one that relies on evidence.

Headspace would be better served having an organisation like Noffs support them to help them engage better with you people. And it’s something we’d be honoured to do. I will say that I have offered to help Headspace “engage” better with disadvantaged populations. And I will also add that the Abbott Government whilst in opposition first introduced me to Headspace to offer this. The offer has not been taken up as yet.

Harm not alarm

We just don’t have enough research on ice yet but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vigilant about it as a significant health issue. On the other hand we have more than enough evidence to suggest just how big the alcohol issue is.

We know that there is no drug that creates more harm than alcohol so therefore we should be spending most money regulating it. We don’t need to be warring with the alcohol companies but we also shouldn’t be allowing them to advertise in an unrestricted fashion.

They should not be able to advertise at football games or on football merchandise. This sends a negative message to young people watching the game. We need to get tougher with alcohol – it is the most dangerous drug in Australia and therefore requires the most spending.

Communication

This one is for parents everywhere. In all of our research and work at Noffs there is no greater weapon to battle the drug epidemic at home than “communication”.

Communication is the tool that can save lives.

If you, as parent, teacher or friend, can communicate with a young person and have open and honest dialogue, that young person will be far less likely to get entangled with drugs.

So parents please remember: Communication, communication, communication. It sounds simple but it saves lives.

Terminology

We should abandon the term “drug war” from this point onwards. Why?

Because words misspend political money. Words can persuade people in the wrong direction.

The drug war is costing far too many victims of drugs and it’s hardly touching the drug dealers. From this point on we should simply refer to it as the drug epidemic.

The term “drug epidemic” shows it for what it is – a health crisis. So when Tony Abbott said the war on drugs was unwinnable, it is unwinnable in much the same way as a bus in cannot fly or a building is cannot be driven.

It doesn’t make sense because drugs is not something we can have a war on. And it needs to be treated as a health crisis.

The Prime Minister needs to revisit his dole scheme

My worst fear from last week’s budget is that the young people who are going to be kept away from their Centrelink payments for six months will find any means possible to stay safe while they work out their situations.

My prediction (Gerard I know you love predictions and I hope it’s one I am wrong about) is that many of these young people will become drug dealers. It’s the easiest job to fill on the planet. And it makes cash fast.

Countless young lives will end up in jail and that’s not just a waste of lives, it’s a waste of money. It costs the government up to $150,000 a year to keep a young person locked up. It’s a real waste. And it’s a dangerous situation. It’s terribly expensive and ineffective.

On the other hand, health interventions can be measured, should be measured and should be heavily invested in, in a diverse and non-monopolistic manner. My advice here is that the government revisit that decision immediately and we should be studying the decision’s impact.

Vision

Have a vision and a clear one. My vision is this. Our job today, as a country, is to make drugs pale in comparison to a fulfilling life.

I’ll say it again – make drugs pale in comparison to a fulfilling life. We can achieve that with interventions like the Street University. I want you to share that vision with me.