Current Drug Laws Support Racial Profiling: O’Sullivan

Dr Lance O’Sullivan says New Zealand’s current drug laws, which criminalise the possession of small amounts of cannabis, lead to poor outcomes for young Maori men in particular.

Speaking to Q+A’s Jessica Mutch, Dr O’Sullivan says when young people, especially Maori, come to the to the attention of the police for low-level crime it’s a “slippery slope”.
“These kids get engaged in the criminal system, and if you treat a person like a criminal, they’ll end up like a criminal,” he said.

“I actually believe our current legislation, which criminalises low-level crime, acts to support racial profiling. A police officer can stop and search someone on reasonable grounds to suspect they have marijuana. That could be just a whiff of something; it could be anything. You don’t have to subjectively prove that to the judge. You can just say, ‘Oh, I thought that person carried drugs.’ Now, I actually think that contributes to the racial profiling that goes on in New Zealand.”

Dr O’Sullivan supports treating low level drug crime as a health issue, with better support services available to people whose lives are affected by drug use.

END



Q + A
Episode 96
LANCE O’SULLIVAN
Interviewed by JESSICA MUTCH

JESSICA I want to start off by asking you about this UN meeting we’ve just been talking to Peter Dunne about. If you could get one outcome from that, what would you like to see at this meeting of global leaders in this field?

LANCE Yeah, look, there’s a couple of conversations going on there. Obviously there’s this whole discussion around how the global approach to the war on drugs is going to go forward globally. But I think from a New Zealand perspective, I’d really like that we consider this discussion that the minister finished on around the decriminalising – what is essentially a health problem – that we focus the resources the we have and our efforts on addressing especially low-level drug crime, as we call it at the moment, around health support, social services support, to ensure that we can help people that are perhaps good people making perhaps wrong decisions to not end up being bad people. And I think that’s going to be beneficial for the individuals; that’s going to be beneficial for the communities they live in; I think it’s beneficial for our country.

JESSICA Because talking on a personal level, you did take a very hard-line stance on drugs. What made you change your mind? What changed for you?

LANCE Yeah. I guess certainly what I don’t want to see, and I’m sure Hone doesn’t want to see, is hash cafes opening up in the main street of Kaitaia. We don’t want to see our young, vulnerable people being exposed to opportunities to access what is still a health problem, which is drugs, drug use. Now, if we consider cannabis as one of the first rungs on the ladder of substance abuse, then we certainly want to be pushing that in people’s faces, so I’m not in the business of supporting legalisation. And, actually, recently I’ve discovered that legalisation and decriminalising the low-end drug problems is not the same. It’s actually quite different. So I’m still hard line on the fact that we shouldn’t be legalising, we shouldn’t allow it to be legal to possess, use and supply/manufacture these drugs. I also believe we should come down heavily, like the minister said, on violent-related crimes where people may have drugs in their system. That shouldn’t change. The manufacture and supply, to help pedal drugs to our kids, should also be dealt severely.

JESSICA Because that violence aspect of it you’ve experienced first hand with your mother when you were young.

LANCE That’s right.

JESSICA Can you explain to me what happened and how that shaped your perception.

LANCE Yeah. So I shared that with someone recently because some feedback on an article was, ‘Oh yeah, you’re just going to let more Antonie Dixons get around and chop people’s hands off with Samurai swords and things like that.’ And that’s ridiculous. My experience personally was as a 4½-year-old, which is only, like, two years after the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 came into effect, was being at home with a 9-day-old brother, and some guy, high on probably PCP at that time, comes into our house, beats up my mother in front of us and is carrying a butcher’s knife around the house, and we think we’re all going to get killed. First example of home invasion that I ever experienced and witnessed, and if I was to go back then, I would say certainly that violent aspect of that crime, that should suffer the full weight of the law. But I’d also raise the question, ‘What could’ve been done from a supportive measure?’ Because actually the person who did this had a health problem – they had a mental health problem. So what did we fail this person on that led him to get into this violent situation with us, which impacted dramatically? I mean…

JESSICA Because lots of people would say, after an experience like that, ‘Lock them up. Forget about them.’

LANCE Yep.

JESSICA How is your stance softened and evolved over the years? And what made you come to this – taking more of a health approach?

LANCE I think witnessing people coming into my clinic on a weekly basis. Mums that are addicted to P, that have got three or four children that are being cared for by their parents. The only option we have to support them is to send them to court or, to be honest, send them to one drug counsellor that’s overloaded that can offer one aspect of support for them, which is their drug addiction. But it doesn’t deal with the fact that they have actually got a mental health problem like depression or anxiety, because they may have suffered sexual violence or physical abuse in their past. It doesn’t help support budgeting and relationship issues that person brings to the table, so you can’t just look at the problem in isolation and say it’s a drug problem. It’s a global health issue going on there. And if we don’t address it, we’re going to have children born to drug-addicted mums. We’re going to have children raised by drug-addicted or affected parents and if we don’t help these parents and these households, we’re going to have a generation of children, New Zealand children, that are going to cause us significant distress.

JESSICA How much, on a daily basis, would drugs be a part of your clinic, when you’re treating people and talking with people in Northland? How dominant is drugs in that community?

LANCE I think in any community like mine – which is socially deprived, has significant issues, socio-economic issues, geographic isolation – all those things that could also exist in South Auckland, it’s a common problem. My concern is we probably don’t see enough of it. I think we have a lot of people that have-

JESSICA Is that because people don’t want to come forward?

LANCE The fear of stigma, the stigmatisation of ‘I use drugs because I have some other health problem that’s driving our social problems’. So I don’t think we see enough because we one, it’s a criminal matter, so morally they might think their doctors are going to judge them; two, I don’t actually have the resources to offer anyone that asks me, not meaningful resources. I don’t call referring a person to a single drug counsellor as meaningful resource and option for people. So if we had significant services and support that we could offer people, I think we would see a lot more people coming forward asking for that.

JESSICA The system seems to be failing young Maori men in particular. How concerning is that, and have you seen that first hand?

LANCE Yes, absolutely. I see that because I see the guys coming out of prison that have tried to reintegrate into society, and honestly, some of them have been in- it’s a slippery path from the time they were caught carrying an ounce of marijuana by the police, and they went through a criminal system - they got arrested, they got locked up in the Kaitaia Police Station overnight; they then fronted up to Greg Davis, the local judge, for the conviction or the charge of possession, possibly even with intent to supply because they had 29g of marijuana, which is just over the legal definition of ‘intent to supply’. And then it’s just a slippery slope, because these kids get engaged in the criminal system, and if you treat a person like a criminal, they’ll end up like a criminal. Now, my final point on that matter is that I actually believe our current legislation, which criminalises low-level crime, acts to support racial profiling. A police officer can stop and search someone on reasonable grounds to suspect they have marijuana. That could be just a whiff of something; it could be anything. You don’t have to subjectively prove that to the judge. You can just say, ‘Oh, I thought that person carried drugs.’ Now, I actually think that contributes to the racial profiling that goes on in New Zealand.

JESSICA What impact do you think, though, decriminalising cannabis would have? Do you think that’s going to help those problems that you’ve just outlined?

LANCE Certainly it will give us more resources. If we spend 85c in the dollar on enforcement and the judicial process that follows on low-level drug problems and 15c in the dollar on the actual support these people need, then we can flick that around, and we can actually make sure that the dragged, P-addicted mother that’s got three or four kids has significant support that we currently can’t offer to ensure that she can be the mum she’s capable of being. I don’t believe they’re bad people; I think there’s probably bad history, and there are some bad decisions. But I think we could change things if we change our thinking. Now, in 1975, 40 years ago, we got the model right. The Misuse of Drugs Act is not the Crimes Act. It’s within the Ministry of Health, administered by the Minister of Health. So 40 years ago, we got it right – it was a health problem. I think we lost our way over the last 40 years, and we’ve made it a criminal problem. I think we should go back and look at it. The drug problem is not going to go away. We need to find a solution.

JESSICA Peter Dunne spoke to us earlier and said decriminalising is not something that they’re looking at the moment. The only way to do that, I guess, is to get into power and change it yourself. Politically, you were joking with Hone Harawira before. Would you look to go into politics? Is that something you’d be interested in doing?

LANCE This discussion, this issue is not about a political bandstand. It’s-

JESSICA But aside from that, is that something you would be interested in in future?

LANCE No, no. No, I think we need a movement of people. We need a conversation that’s generated in public that actually says, ‘Let’s be sensible. If things aren’t working, why are we banging our heads against the walls continuing to do it?’ It’s going to cost our country money, and it’s going to cause our country harm if we don’t pull our head out of the sand and do something different.

JESSICA Personally, just to sum up, how frustrating is this issue for you? How much time of yours is dominated by dealing with this?

LANCE Look, I’m always frustrated by systems that don’t change, systems that are stagnated. And you can talk about health systems; you can talk about justice and police systems. This example of drug problem, I think it’s frustrating. I think it’s demoralising, to be honest. If we don’t change what we do and clearly what we do doesn’t work, then it doesn’t get me out of bed in the morning. So we have to change when change is needed.

JESSICA And we will leave it there. Thank you very much for your time this morning. Dr Lance O’Sullivan.

LANCE Thank you. Kia ora.

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