Sex Party – Candidate Wants to Decriminalise Drugs in Niddrie

Sex Party Candidate Wants to Decriminalise Drugs in Niddrie
The Sex Party candidate for Niddrie in tomorrow’s by election, says that her social agenda could transform the electorate and make it a glowing model for the rest of Victoria.
Amy Myers said that the Sex Party’s drug policies could see drug usage rates in young people in Niddrie drop by 20% in just a few years. “Decriminalisation of personal drug use is the only way to ween young people off drugs. When drugs are not illegal, you can produce educational material to advice young people. At a government level the issue needs to be taken away from the criminal justice area and given to the health portfolio. When they did this in Portugal a decade ago, it led to a significant drop in drug use by young teenagers”, she said. “Niddrie has had major drug use problems for years. Neither Liberal, Labor or the Greens parties have even bothered to put forward a drug policy for this election except to tacitly support more of the same”.
Ms Myers said that unless reformist candidates were elected to the state parliament, Victorian governments would continue to cause illicit drug use to rise. “Nothing that any government in Victoria has ever done has caused drug usage rates to decline”, she said. “In fact, every government in Victoria since the 1950s has presided over increased drug use and has been complicit in this escalation through their ‘tough on drugs’ policies.”
She said that the explosion in the numbers of synthetic drugs on the market in recent years had been directly caused by government laws which were meant to stop them. “Every time the government has listed one of these new designer drugs onto the poisons schedule, they hand a new drug, complete with marketing and promotion, over to drug dealers. Victorian drug dealers have never been happier than they are at the moment. We are now seeing a new designer drug introduced into the market place every month now to replace the one that was just made illegal”, she said.
Amy Myers: 0424 240262
Fiona Patten: 0413 734 613