The NSW government has finally scheduled its long-promised Drug Summit, which will take place over four days, including regional sessions in October and hearings in Sydney in December.
Announcing the summit on July 12, the government emphasised its aim to gather insights from medical professionals, law enforcement, individuals with personal experience, drug user organisations, families, and other stakeholders. This forum aims to foster a consensus on addressing drug use and its associated harms in NSW.
The summit raises hopes for progressive drug law reforms, echoing the precedent set by former Premier Bob Carr’s 1999 Drug Summit, which led to significant changes, including the establishment of the now-permanent medically supervised injecting room in Kings Cross.
The delay in announcing the summit dates had been a point of contention, with much credit for the eventual scheduling attributed to the advocacy of the Uniting Church. The agenda is expected to focus on treating drug use as a health issue rather than a criminal one, specifically targeting users rather than cultivators, manufacturers, or suppliers.
The NSW Council of Civil Liberties is another key organisation calling for the summit. Nicholas Cowdery, one of its former presidents and a former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions is on record calling for the deemed supply law to be revoked.
Section 29 of the Act addresses "deemed supply," which means that if someone possesses a quantity of drugs exceeding the threshold considered for personal use, they can be charged with intent to supply. For example, a person with one MDMA pill might only face a possession charge, but someone with three pills could be charged with supply, regardless of whether the drugs were solely for personal use.
Several key harm reduction reforms are likely to be discussed at the NSW Drug Summit. Among these, pill testing stands out as a major focus. This intervention involves testing a sample of an illicit substance to inform the owner about its contents and potential risks. Pill testing has been practised in Europe since the mid-1990s and became legal in the ACT in mid-2022. It has also started in Queensland and is set to begin trials in Victoria. Despite resistance in NSW, pill testing has been shown to reduce drug consumption, as people often discard substances once they learn about their harmful contents.
Another potentially contentious issue on the agenda is the use of drug detection dogs without warrants in public settings, particularly at music festivals. These dogs often result in a high number of false positives, with 2/3 to 3/4 of searches finding nothing. The presence of drug dogs has led to a phenomenon known as "panic overdosing," where individuals consume all their drugs at once to avoid detection, occasionally resulting in fatalities.
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