The impending execution of Van Nguyen has rightly aroused a lot of outrage. While it seems unrealistic to suggest trade sanctions or anything similar, there is one response that is relevant, proportionate and justified. The Singaporean government should be told that, if the execution proceeds, they will never again receive any co-operation from Australia on drug crimes. The same message should be given to Indonesia in relation to the Bali Nine (where, disgracefully, Australian police set up the arrests while leaving their Indonesian counterparts free to seek the death penalty).
John Quiggin 
QUTOE: Multiculturalism is simply about leaving people alone to practice their own traditions so long as the acts involved are consensual and violate no laws.
RESPONSE: That is what Multiculturism should be about. Sometimes however it is not.
Would you believe it? Singaporeans snuff out a bloke for merely helping people to harmlessly inject and now those evil Yanks are gunna lethally inject a black writer of kiddies’ books!
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20380
It’s getting nigh impossible for a sensitive bloke to know where to conspicuously indignate these days.
No. Multiculturalism involves leaning over backwards in favour of each culture involved. It includes forcing me to eat curry on a Melbourne-Adelaide train because the only food available was different kinds of curry.
Yes, that’s absurd – but that is precisely what multiculturalism is, absurd. The values of multiculturalism, applied consistently, would necessarily include a vast leaning over backward to avoid criticising Singapore.
For those who hadn’t noticed, I was trying to highlight the absurdity, not to endorse it.
funny, PML, I didn’t realise Parliament had recently passed a law forcing train operators to only offer curry to its passengers.
Ian Gould: Please provide link to my making of tasteless jokes.
Jack Strocchi said
“And guess what? Heroin availability plummeted. Heroin use plummeted. Death from heroin overdoses plummeted – from 968 in 1999 to 306 in 2001.”
Yes, but this was not due to a supply reduction caused by effective policing on the Australian side. It was caused by a worldwide reduction in the amount of available Heroin — the late 90s were a high for herion production (and, if memory serves me correctly, so were the early 80s) all around the world (and hence movies like “Trainspotting”).
Given that Afganistan doesn’t seem to be getting enough money to rebuild, Burmese rebels still need money to fight their government, and Iraq looks like it will fall apart, it doesn’t seem to unlikely that supply will pick up again, and therefore so will Heroin deaths in Australia as the price comes down again, even if the goverment uses authoritarian policing strategies.
Katz: “Why shouldn’t Australians have at least as much sex with sheep as New Zealanders?” Er… you mean for every time we have sex with a New Zealander we must also have sex with a sheep? (this would overnight reduce a kiwi lad’s chances of scoring in Sydney to less than zero)
I am not objecting to the racist immigration policies of Malaysia & Japan et al, merely pointing out they are far more restrictive today than the white australia policy ever was.
Overseas people were correct in their knowledge of the white australia policy. However this is not to suggest that the white australia policy was wrong or was anything to be ashamed of.
Maybe more about the absurdity of parenthood PML.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1656041,00.html
Perhaps Terry Hicks is the lucky one in an unlucky sort of way?
Steve at the pub
As someone born in Malaysia, I am perfectly happy to condemn restrictive immigration policies everywhere, whether in Malaysia, China, Japan, Australia or anywhere else you can think of. I think they fall below the standards on which a better global society should be based. The same goes for the hanging of people for drug trafficking.
Anything else you want to clear up?
SATP November 18th: “We should fax to Singapore telling them to keep up the good work? Excellent idea, thanks PM Lawrence, will see that Singapore is deluged with “good onyaâ€? messages!”
SATP: “You are correct, I have never met a hangman I didn’t like, … Also have never met a lash-swinger didn’t like”
I wrote about Prohibition a couple of years ago, starting from the observation that it was not only successful in its own terms, but more so than the War on Drugs.
https://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2003/07/10/drugs-and-prohibition/
I don’t think Watters can rely on the line that alcohol is deeply embedded in our society – so are marijuana and ecstasy, and, within substantial groups, heroin and cocaine.
“I am perfectly happy to condemn restrictive immigration policies everywhere, whether in Malaysia, China, Japan, Australia or anywhere else you can think of. I think they fall below the standards on which a better global society should be based.”
That sort of ‘sentimentality’ Jason, may well fall under the umbrella of ‘Wouldn’t it be nice?’, which I think Samizdata discusses fairly eloquently and is broadly relevant to the overall discussion here.
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/008291.html
Now you might like to take the ‘nice’ stand (wouldn’t we all), but it may be an increasingly lonely one, lacking a certain degree of practicality. You can see the trend here
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/france-plans-to-pull-up-drawbridge-on-migrants/2005/11/30/1133311105915.html
Ian Gould: We are still waiting for links to tasteless jokes made by me. Be aware that you may face slander/libel action if you lie when representing anything I said.
Neither of the comments you quote are funny, nor are they meant to be. A previous commenter had posted email address/fax number of authorities in Singapore for us to send messages opposing/supporting Singapore’s rigid enforcement of the law. I was not joking. Perhaps the law is a joke to you Ian?
The Howard is looking to the states to crack down on marijuana saying not doing so sends the wrong message. Though I went through the experimentation stage -including inhaling- even as a teenager I thought it was hypocritical to ban one drug that was harmful when the most popular legal drugs both kill, harm or costs the community hundreds of millions of dollars.
Could someone happy with this situation explain it to me?
Jack Strocchi wrote:
“The root of the hard drug abuse problem is demand, not supply. Pumping lethal poisons into your body is a moral failure, not just a health problem. (Wine and malt whiskey are good for you if taken in moderate quantities.) Punishing hard drug users works to curb these nasty habits.”
Heroin is not a “lethal poison”. It’s a painkilling drug that induces euphoria. Taken in moderate quantities, it’s a lot better for you than wine or whiskey. Heroin was completely legal and available under the archaic version of the PBS in Australia until 1953.
“It is a piece of Wet mythology that prohibition does not work. Zero tolerance and three-strikes out policy has massively reduced drug-related crime in the US and elsewhere.”
Drug-related crime that would not exist in the first place if it wasn’t for prohibition. You don’t see much panadol-related or tobacco-related crime around, do you? If they made cigarettes illegal tomorrow, you’d see an awful lot.
Thinking that it’s a good idea to restrict access to certain (addictive) drugs in a basically arbitrary fashion is a moral failure, not just a mental health problem.
I think we should decriminalize most drugs and liberalise the trade in drugs. However I think that it would be a toxic policy unless we also dismantle the welfare state.
Essentially the problem is two separate ones Simon. Firstly we don’t want adults giving harmful drugs to children in their physically formative years for obvious reasons. eg sex is OK between consenting adults but not with minors. There’s little argument with that, but even the kids get confused by the next bit- that there are the inherited preferences among adults, which you might liken to missionary position straight sex(aspirin, paracetamol, booze and fags…err cigarettes) and then there’s what might be called ‘other’ sexual predilictions. Hypocritical even to kids and its hard to rationalise for one above the other, if as you say, they may all have equally harmful side effects if abused(ie herpes, aids, syphilis,etc) Nevertheless, it’s easy to come over all harm minimising and moral with the more is worse line and it’s best to hold the fort.
2 rational alternatives present themselves. Prohibition- this is all harmful shit and should only be prescribed by doctors and dispensed by pharmacists for medicinal purposes and for that you have to convince beer drinkers that their favourite tipple should coexist with aspirin and cough syrup at the pharmacists OR Liberalisation- Basically adults have a right to alter their consciousness any way they see fit(providing it doesn’t impinge upon the quiet enjoyment of others ie govt licensing, individual responsibility and informed use)and for that you have to convince Grange drinkers and cigar puffers they need to share adults only hotels/restaurants with cocaine sniffers, heroin injecters and the like. In both cases you should probably treat adults who provide drugs to minors like peddos. No small task, I’d suggest, but rationally arguable to the kids. In the meantime we bumble along and hang the consequences.
“I think that it would be a toxic policy unless we also dismantle the welfare state.”
Not a bad health warning on the packet from Terje there for liberalisation buffs Simon.
Jack Strocchi rants about Howard’s success in controlling drugs. Apparently poor Jack is unaware that drug laws are a state issue.
Another salient fact, heroin fatalities are mostly caused by user’s overdosing as a result of striking an unexpectedly pure batch of heroin. If heroin use was decriminalised and regulated, quality control could be assured. In that sense, it is prohibition that is the cause of the fatalities.
As an aside, I used legally prescribed morphine (MS Contin) for about four years for chronic pain relief. Morphine, like heroin, is derived from the opium poppy and it has very similar pharmocological properties. As my doctor said at the time, moderate opiate usage has no permanent detrimental health effects.
Prohibition is part of the problem, not the solution.
>Ian Gould: We are still waiting for links to tasteless jokes made by me. Be aware that you may face slander/libel action if you lie when representing anything I said.
Well i nthat case be aware that I think you’re a sad pathetic man who assuming he has the financial means to get me into court and assuming he isn;t laughed out court will probably be incapable of proving that any or all messages on this blog were in fact written be me – or in fact that you are in fact the individual to whom I was referring.
whatever you say Ian, however am still waiting for a link to a tasteless hanging joke by me.
Please nobody confuse my distaste of hanging jokes with a disapproval of the hanging. I have no problem with hanging (or shooting or garotting or whatever) of all drug pushers, addicts, dealers, smugglers etc.
Hanging is however a measure of a civilized nation. Zimbabwe, (for example) has horrendous crimes committed daily, without any punishments dished out. A few hard working gibbets would go a long way there. Anyone who desires a society free from hangings should go & live for a while in a society where rule of law is absent (eg, PNG)
Steve at the Pub- your threat to sue (amongst other things) is enough to confirm that you are one sick puppy. I think you should be banned from this forum. Moreover, you clearly need psychiatric help- please get it and best of luck.
“Hanging is however a measure of a civilized nation.”
A partial list of countries with the death penalty:
Afghanistan
Bangladesh
China
Iran
Iraq
Kuwait
Laos
Libya
Pakistan
Rwanda
Saudi Arabia
Somalia
Sudan
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
Yemen
Zimbabwe (sic)
http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/overview04.html
“Anyone who desires a society free from hangings should go & live for a while in a society where rule of law is absent”
Or they could stay right here in Australia.
The further implication of John Quiggin’s argument (which doesn’t necessarily bother me) is that Australians should refuse to work with the Federal Police in any capacity given they are complicit in the likely deaths of Australians. We should not view the Federal Police any differently to Indonesia, and in fact, they should be treated as rogues and pariahs – and all citizens should refuse to cooperate in their investigations.
careful there Steve Edwards, the anti-sedition laws will get you for that!
We’re for one not at all bothered. Apparently the amount he had stashed away consisted of the eqivalent of 24,000 to 26,000 hits.
As a victim of drug addicts – two drug addicts burgled our house and trashed it – I struggle to feel any sympathy, except for this character’s mum who has been put through hell by one son sentenced to death, and by the other one that virtually put him there.
Katz: “Why shouldn’t Australians have at least as much sex with sheep as New Zealanders?� Er… you mean for every time we have sex with a New Zealander we must also have sex with a sheep? (this would overnight reduce a kiwi lad’s chances of scoring in Sydney to less than zero)
LOL!
Bah! (Depends on how much you enjoy pillow talk!)
“Katz, one of the valuable results of a healthy contempt for foreigners’ opinions is that your own self-image doesn’t get undercut. This has nothing to do with the merits of any particular case, but it does appear that you were largely swayed in your view of the White Australia Policy by what other people thought and not just by looking into the matter for yourself.”
PML, I believe that my contempt for the opinions of others is in robust good health.
Your conclusions about the causes and chronology of my opinions on the matter of official racism in Australia at the time in question require some modification.
My attitude to racism was well formed before I lived among large numbers of persons who may have been required to have a good working grasp of the Basque tongue, should they have desired to attain a visa of any kind to enter Australia.
What I did not know when I first lived among these folks were:
1. That a knowledge of the Basque tongue may have been considered a vital qualification for visiting Australia.
2. That these folk could know more about my country’s policies than I did. Admittedly, they were highly educated.
After some delay, perhaps even motivated by contempt which I may have thought at the time to be “healthy”, I made a brief study of the case.
Turns out these foreign folk were correct.
Week by Week, I suggest that if you are not able to do simple mathematics you use a more reliable source than the Singapore government.
The idea that less than 400 grams of anything could possibly translate to 24,000 hits (let alone 26,000) is risable. The fact that the Singapore government resorted to such pathetic lies says a lot about them, and the weakness of their general case.
PS I too have been burgled by a drug addict, as well as having money snatched out of my hand by someone who was probably desperate for a hit. I’m fully aware of the tragedy drugs represent.
Steve Munn: Thanks for the medical/pyschiatric advice and the character assessment. You have a long way to go to be more cutting, witty, or insightful than my clientele, (beginner).
Interesting that in your mind, psychiatric assistance is required for for me because of my talk of legal action, rather than my talk of sex with sheep.
Stephen L Says: December 3rd, 2005 at 10:19 pm “Week by Week, I suggest that if you are not able to do simple mathematics you use a more reliable source than the Singapore government.”
The vols were mentioned in numerous independent sources including CNN @ http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/12/01/singapore.execution/
as well as other leading independent sources.
Even Radio NZ used the figure: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/bulletins/radionz/200511301944/98d49e2
So I guess, not only is Singapore peddling a conspiracy, but CNN, as well as the New Zealand national radio broadcaster.
Australia, awake from your slumber!
Awake from your slumber, Australia!
Awake before it is too late!
Today a son of yours has been killed.
Don’t you care? Don’t you care, Australia?
Certainly, it is your prodigal son.
Certainly, he has wandered away from home.
Today, your son has been killed.
Don’t you care? Don’t you care, Australia?
Where is your fatherhood?
Where is your motherhood?
In your warm bed how could you sleep?
O Australia, don’t you care of your wandering children?
How many more of them will be killed?
Will you leave them to their fate?
Will you say it was their fault?
Australia, where is your parenthood?
You do not kill your children if they commit fault.
How could you let your neighbors kill them?
True, you have warned them of the danger.
Is that the reason for you to ignore their death?
How could you shake hands of the killers?
Was your face veiled by money?
Is the business deal with your neighbors more important?
Or are you careless about your children’s lives?
How could you keep a big smile with your neighbors?
How could you claim your successful reign,
When your children are being slaughtered in your sight?
Australia, arise from your sleep before it is too late!
Australia, where is your fatherhood?
Where is your motherhood?
How many more of your children will be killed?
Will you leave them to their fate?
Awake, Australia! Awake, before it is too late!
What can you tell God about your parenthood?
What will you leave in the memory of your children
From generation to generation and for ever?
Minh Bui
In memory of Van Nguyen
A drug trafficker killed by the Singapore Government
2nd December 2005
Steve at the Pub,
As the publisher of this site, I have to take threats of libel action seriously. I don’t believe that Ian Gould’s comments can be regarded as defamatory in any way. I therefore request that you retract your threat of libel action.
I apologise for not responding sooner, but I have been very busy,.
If you think he’s got no case, why bother retracting the threat? Let him waste his money.
To Week by Week and StephenL: You are blaming the wrong culprit for the burglaries. It’s not heroin that causes people to burgle your house. Heroin, like many other drugs such as Caffeine, Tobacco, Paracetomol, Codeine and what have you, does not increase criminal tendencies in the user.
The reason addicts burgle your house is because heroin is very expensive, and the reason it is very expensive is because it is illegal.
The federal government is much more to blame for the burglary of your house than Nguyen is – but of course the person most to blame is the junkie that did it.
If you’re going to apportion blame to others then at least get it right – Nguyen as a distributor is no more to blame for the burglary of your house than General Motors is to blame for somebody crashing into your car in the Woolies carpark.
If Tobacco was illegal and a packet of cigarettes cost something like $100, you’d probably find desperate nicotine addicts robbing your house too. Would it be Nicotine’s fault? No – the fault would lie with the government that made the stupid law banning tobacco in the first place.
Don’t worry Yobbo – banning tobacco is on the cards, too.
QUOTE: The reason addicts burgle your house is because heroin is very expensive, and the reason it is very expensive is because it is illegal.
RESPONSE: This is like blaming guns for murder. Heroin does not force anybody to rob people. And if it does then perhaps the heroin should be locked up.
It amuses me that we want people to feel empowered enough to throw away the cigarettes and then we put lables on the cigarettes that say “smoking is addictive”. In other words you are powerless against this stuff so just submit.
The reason some heroin addicts rob people is because doing heroin is very pleasurable and they either associate minimal pain with robbing people or they believe that its acceptable.
Given a strong enough motive there are in essence only two things that can stop a human from committing a given act. One is a strong belief that the act is wrong. The other is a strong association of pain with the given act.
“The reason some heroin addicts rob people is because doing heroin is very pleasurable.”
Actually I suspect it has more to do with heroin withdrawal being extremely painful.
Steve Munn Says: December 2nd, 2005 at 8:59 pm
“Jack Strocchi rants about Howard’s success in controlling drugs. Apparently poor Jack is unaware that drug laws are a state issue.”
That mistates the case. Drug interception is part of the AFP’s brief. Also, Howard has show leadership changing the law enforcement culture to a tougher line that saves lives and stops people from indulging their worst instincts.
“This phenomenon came two years after a much-criticised change in Australia’s drug strategy. We switched from a disastrous decade-long experiment with harm minimisation and lax law enforcement (which saw a doubling of daily heroin users) to an official Tough on Drugs strategy, overseen by the Australian National Council on Drugs (ANCD). In charge was Salvation Army Major Brian Watters, a zero-tolerance advocate hand-picked by the Prime Minister and scorned as an anachronism by the influential drug liberalisation lobby.
“We are building a fence at the top of the cliff rather than having ambulances waiting at the bottom,” Watters said on Friday. ”
More Wet mythology about harm minimization:
“Another salient fact, heroin fatalities are mostly caused by user’s overdosing as a result of striking an unexpectedly pure batch of heroin. If heroin use was decriminalised and regulated, quality control could be assured. In that sense, it is prohibition that is the cause of the fatalities.”
Heroin usage depends on price and the demand for heroin is somewhat price elastic. The heroin drought has reduced overall heroin usage inlcluding abusage caused by “bad smack”.
Harm minimization sounds nice. But the most minimized harm is one that is stopped completely. Its strange that constructivists want to ban guns but legalise drugs. This is despite the fact that there is no non-medicinal way to use heroin that is not harmful but at least one way to use a gun that is helpful.
“This is despite the fact that there is no non-medicinal way to use heroin that is not harmful but at least one way to use a gun that is helpful.”
That’s a fact, is it?
It depends how you define “harmful” I guess. If you mean in the sense of moral harm then you may be right, but taking heroin is not intrinsically harmful – it’s addiction to heroin that is harmful. Are you under the impression that heroin is some kind of lethal poison? It’s no more dangerous than many other common opiates that are available by prescription.
People overdose on codeine and other painkillers too – the difference is that they don’t do it accidentally, because the dosage is printed on the bottle.
Your comments on this thread suggest that you think you know a lot more about the subject than you actually do – or is it just the boogeyman word “heroin” that’s causing the irrationality?
Let’s get a few facts straight before we go on:
1. Heroin is no more dangerous than other opiates if taken in the correct dosage.
2. The main thing that sets heroin apart from other opiates is that the euphoric effect onsets much more quickly (and has a decreased duration)
3. The main “harm” caused by heroin is death by overdose – which is many orders of magnitude more likely under a regime of prohibition.
4. The other main side effects are the cramps and nausea associated with withdrawal and constipation.
Those are the facts. To say “there is no non-medicinal way to use heroin that is not harmful” is like saying theres no non-harmful way to eat a cheeseburger. Essentially true but meaningless.
Absolute prohibition combined with zero-tolerance law enforcement may result in a few fewer deaths by heroin overdose – at a cost to the taxpayer of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, the social cost of entrenching the profits of organised crime groups, and erosion of civil liberties in the name of the “war on drugs” – which is the longest-running and most expensive war in history.
I’m personally quite happy to accept that a few more people would die each year as a result of heroin abuse if it was legal – if it meant that all the other bullshit would be done away with.
We accept that many people abuse alcohol and it ends up killing them, yet you won’t find many people who think bringing back alcohol prohibition is a good idea.
And by the way, I find you’ll find that there’s at least a few us on here that think both guns AND heroin should be legal, so your attempted gotcha has failed there too.
Ian, The experiimental evidence is that people do in fact use heroin primarily because it acts ion the pleasure centres of the mid-brain not because of fear of withdrawal.
On another strand, the connection between crime and heroin use is complex. Many who use heroin have anti-social, criminal tendencies to begin with and heroin use is part of a pattern. Goldstein’s book, Addiction: From Biology to Drug Policy, makes the case. Almost none of the econometric evidence supports the notion that drug use causes crime.
I have been working in this area of heroin and illegal drug use for a while. It is complex. However I think the case for legalisation is very weak. People like to drug themselves — a significant fracrtion of many populations are addicted to nicotine and alcohol. Supporters of legalising heroin are inviting a social experiment which could result in a large fraction of the population using drugs that are very dangerous.
On the other hand there is a strong case for using harm-minimisation policies for that segment who are addicted long-term. Methadone and buprenorphine maintenance provide a better alternative to heroin. They are less expensive and have lower damaging effects in ‘spiking’ the brain.
Katz, you’re addressing the wrong issue. It’s not important whether foreigners gave you a factual awareness of the hypocritical techniques of the White Australia Policy. It’s important whether you got your disapproval of the policy itself (not just its techniques) from them.
Me, I disapprove of the techniques because of their hypocrisy, but I am indifferent as to the policy – really on the grounds that if that’s what Australians wanted, it was nobody else’s damned business. I don’t mean by that that it was bound to be right because it was democratic (that’s a widespread fallacy), but rather that flouting Australians’ wishes in matters of identity was bound to be wrong – one of the rare cases where a tautological justification does emerge from the processes of democracy.
If the young Katz simply followed the herd of “world opinion”, that was despicable. But if the young Katz was alerted by world opinion and then followed his conscience, that was admirable. “Healthy contempt” is the kind of contempt for acquiring values simply because someone else holds them.
Jason Soon, the whole point of my true story was to describe the real and actual effects of multiculturalism. Formal laws have very little to do with it. Multiculturalism really did force me to go hungry during daylight hours while travelling (it was a day train), or risk nausea. The cafeteria even lied about my last hope, a takeaway satay, when I asked if it was the curry kind or just the peanut kind. So I was ripped off as well as seriously inconvenienced.
EXECUTION LESS BARBARIC THAN A LIFE SENTENCE
HELEN SAID: “Unless you are just being bloodthirsty, surely a custodial sentence is more than adequate for someone of Nguyen’s profile (first serious offence, remorseful, unlikely to reoffend). Advocates of capital punishment seem to assume prison is some kind of walk in the park!”
Actually, quite to the contrary, if Van was not executed he would face up to 50 years of rapes, beatings and the other barbaric things that we know go on in jails. That is one of the reasons I support the death penalty – although a first best approach might be to fix up prisons so that the penalty they provide was simply a restriction of liberty; not the torture and sexual assualt that goes along with it in today’s prisons.
The Heroin drought of 2000 requires a more deep analysis than you provide Jack. This quote from the MJA 2005; 182 (3):140-141 .Alison J Ritter,* Alex D Wodak,†J Nick Crofts‡”The present federal government, unlike its predecessor, frequently and stridently attacks emotionally charged symbols of harm reduction, such as the proposed prescription heroin trial or the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Sydney. However, as the allocation of substantial funding to the Illicit Drug Diversion Initiative demonstrates, in most respects it is very much a case of business as usual.” The literature on that heroin drought is not methodologically strong so conclusions about who or what was responsible can not be definitely concluded . The effect of reduced mortality given reduced supply of heroin is beyond dispute I think. The controversial point is replicating that drought. ( Which has not been achieved in democratic countries elsewhere ).
van nguyen is a loser, he deserves to be dead!
If we were all treated according to our desserts, who would escape whipping? (You are Bill Shakespeare, aren’t you?)
two quotes :
Conrad said:
Perhaps the Australian police just set people up in other countries so they don’t have to fill in the hundreds of forms and court appearances that presumably go with arresting people for drug trafficking in Australia.
Reply:
No they set them up so that they get true justice not the slap o0n the hand which they would get in Oz
MINH BUI said:
Today a son of yours has been killed.
Don’t you care? Don’t you care, Australia?
Reply:
perhaps this could apply to the legions of heroin adicts who die daily in Australia because of slimy little bastards importing the stuff into Oz…
THEY ARE THE ONES I CARE ABOUT
There has no been no debate about the cost effectiveness of the Federal Police’s strategy on heroin importation assuming that it is having an effect . ( This has not been proved). We would need to know the size of the AFP’s budget spent on this.
The amount of excess mortality caused by the importation of 400g of heroin ( tha amount which Nguyen had ) would be vary small . The rate of deaths per annum is around 20 per tonne of heroin imported.