Between the Law and the Street

A Personal Statement on Drug Policy, Law Enforcement, Harm Reduction and a Force for Good

My position is an unusual and, at times, contradictory one.

I have spent much of my adult life standing somewhere near the line separating law enforcement and the street, legality and illegality, authority and the people affected by authority.

I don't pretend that those contradictions disappear simply because I have a political or moral argument to make. I believe they are precisely why I have something worth contributing to the conversation.

For more than eighteen years, drugs have been part of my life in different ways.

I began as a recreational user. Ecstasy was something I occasionally used at parties and events. Cannabis became a regular part of my life. From 2009, I used methamphetamine intermittently, and by late 2013 my use had become regular enough that I became involved in supplying drugs partly to sustain my own habit.

I was caught.

I experienced the consequences of the law personally, stopped using and dealing for a period, and then returned to methamphetamine use on 28 May 2015. By 2017, my use had become considerably more regular.

I don't present any of that as heroic, nor do I believe breaking a law automatically becomes ethical because somebody disagrees with that law.

It is simply part of my history.

And history matters.

Standing on Both Sides of the Debate

The unusual part of my story is that 2017 was also the year I began seriously considering a future connected with policing and public service, including Victoria Police's Force for Good recruitment message.

That created an obvious contradiction:

How could somebody using an illegal drug simultaneously believe in policing, public service and the rule of law?

I believe that question deserves a better answer than either pretending my drug use never happened or pretending drug laws don't exist.

My experiences have instead forced me to confront the uncomfortable territory between the two.

I have known people who use drugs.

I have known the culture surrounding drugs.

I have experienced addiction and problematic patterns of use.

I have experienced enforcement.

I have also spent years thinking about policing, public institutions, defence, international cooperation, peace and what the phrase Force for Good ought to mean in the twenty-first century.

I have had interactions and experiences that I personally associate with institutions including Victoria Police and the Australian defence environment. Where those experiences are not supported by an official or traceable record, I do not claim that they constitute an appointment, endorsement or formal relationship.

Likewise, my references to organisations and figures such as the United Nations or the Dalai Lama represent the broader ideals of peace, diplomacy and international cooperation that influence my thinking; I do not claim to speak on their behalf.

That distinction is important to me.

A genuine movement for institutional accountability must also be accountable in the claims it makes about itself.

The Lesson of Lawyer X

Victoria's Lawyer X scandal demonstrated how dangerous blurred ethical boundaries can become when institutions believe that an objective justifies the methods used to achieve it.

It damaged confidence in Victoria Police, the management of human sources and parts of the criminal justice system.

My lesson from that history is not that policing itself is corrupt.

It is almost the opposite.

If policing is going to retain the extraordinary authority society entrusts to it, policing must be willing to examine itself when something has gone profoundly wrong.

The rule of law cannot mean accountability for citizens but immunity from scrutiny for institutions.

A Force for Good has to be capable of admitting mistakes, learning from them and changing.

The War on Drugs

The same principle should apply to drug policy.

For decades governments around the world have declared a War on Drugs.

Yet illicit drugs remain widely available. Organised criminal markets continue to generate enormous amounts of money. Governments continue spending enormous resources on enforcement, courts and imprisonment, while addiction, overdose, mental distress and social disadvantage continue to exist.

That doesn't mean law enforcement has no role.

It means we should be mature enough to ask:

What is law enforcement actually best placed to do?

Police should have the resources to pursue violence, coercion, exploitation, organised criminal activity, corruption, trafficking and people who deliberately prey upon vulnerable communities.

But somebody experiencing addiction also presents a health and social problem.

Those two situations should not automatically receive the same answer simply because a prohibited substance appears in both.

I believe drug dependence should increasingly be approached through healthcare, treatment, harm reduction, education and social support, while criminal enforcement concentrates on conduct that actually causes serious harm to other people.

That is not surrender.

It is changing tactics after decades of evidence tell us that the existing strategy has not eliminated the market.

My “Peace Pipe”

I sometimes describe the pipe associated with my own drug use as my PEACE PIPE.

I understand the deliberate contradiction in that phrase.

For me, it symbolises the uncomfortable question at the centre of this debate: when somebody possesses or consumes a drug, are we looking first at a criminal, a patient, a citizen, or simply a complicated human being?

But I don't want the symbol confused with an argument that drug use is harmless, or that continuing to use a particular substance is necessary to prove my commitment to reform.

The political principle survives regardless of what I personally consume tomorrow.

The Peace Pipe is therefore best understood as a symbol of ceasefire:

Stop treating every drug problem as though it requires a battlefield.

Replace an endless war with evidence, health policy, proportionate policing, harm reduction and dialogue.

A Force for Good

The phrase Force for Good has come to mean considerably more to me than a recruitment slogan.

I interpret it as a principle.

Power should exist to protect people.

Police power.

Government power.

Military power.

Economic power.

Political power.

Even the power of protest.

None should exist merely to preserve themselves.

The institutions I respect most are not institutions that never make mistakes. They are institutions capable of recognising mistakes, correcting them and earning public trust again.

The same responsibility belongs to people challenging those institutions.

Reform cannot demand honesty from government while abandoning honesty itself.

Peace cannot be achieved by simply replacing one form of hostility with another.

Democracy in the Twenty-First Century

I believe democratic institutions need substantial reform as society changes.

But I want that change to be peaceful, democratic, lawful and diplomatic.

The objective should not be the destruction of institutions.

It should be their evolution.

That means bringing people who normally stand on opposite sides of an argument into the same conversation:

police and people who use drugs;

government and communities affected by government policy;

health professionals and law enforcement;

people with lived experience and people responsible for writing legislation.

Sometimes the person standing closest to the dividing line can see things that are harder to see from either extreme.

That is where I believe my experience has placed me.

I have lived contradictions.

I don't want to hide them.

I want to learn from them.

My Position

I am not asking society to declare that every choice I have made was right.

Some weren't.

I am asking society to recognise that a person can have broken laws, struggled with drugs, encountered policing and still care deeply about justice, public service, safer communities and the future of democratic institutions.

Likewise, supporting police does not require believing every policing policy has been successful.

Supporting the rule of law does not prohibit advocating for laws to change.

And acknowledging the harms associated with drugs does not require believing that criminalisation is always the most effective response to those harms.

My position therefore isn't pro-drug versus anti-police.

Nor is it pro-police versus people who use drugs.

It is:

PRO-PEOPLE.

PRO-ACCOUNTABILITY.

PRO-EVIDENCE.

PRO-HARM REDUCTION.

PRO-DEMOCRATIC REFORM.

PRO-PEACE.

If the War on Drugs has taught us anything, it should be that declaring war is considerably easier than creating peace.

My contribution is an attempt to stand somewhere between those worlds and say:

There has to be another way.

Not lawlessness.

Not endless punishment.

Not institutional denial.

A responsible transition from conflict toward health, evidence, accountability and cooperation.

Because ultimately, being a Force for Good should not be about which side of a line somebody once stood on.

It should be about which direction we are prepared to move together.