A new report shows that just 1.4% of the annual drug budget is for harm reduction, rising to just over 30% when combined with treatment and prevention.
The rest, almost 70%, is spent on law enforcement, despite a survey in the report showing the public want to flip this 30:70 ratio.
This is one of the key findings of a new report, New Zealand’s Choice: Funding our Drug Policy, published today by the Helen Clark Foundation.
It comes in the 50th year of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, long considered no longer fit for purpose, and as methamphetamine consumption has skyrocketed.
It also follows a recent Drug Foundation report calling for decriminalisation of drug use, and a rewrite of the law with a focus on health.
The Government has already ruled this out, saying it would be counter to its stated goal of toughening law and order.
This continues the decades-long practice of politicians treading cautiously when it comes to drug policy, due in part to fear of voter blowback.
“The key message from my research is that there is a lot of community willingness for a health-based approach,” said Dr Rose Crossin, Otago University population health senior lecturer, and the new report’s lead researcher.
“This gives our politicians a lot of room to move, and to move with community support.”
The report is the first of its kind to break down the annual drug budget into four areas, finding roughly two-thirds is spent on law enforcement, 25% on treatment, 5% on prevention, and only 1.4% on harm reduction.
It then asked people, in a representative survey, how they would allocate $100 of taxpayer money. The result was $36 to law enforcement, $24 to treatment, $25 to prevention, and $16 to harm reduction.
Compared to what currently happens, this would be a 400% increase in the share of the drug budget for prevention, and a 1043% increase for harm reduction.
Survey respondents also wanted a similar share of the total drug budget to be allocated for prevention, regardless of political leanings.
“My research shows that those who support the current Government still want to see significantly more investment in treatment, harm reduction and prevention than what is spent now,” Crossin told the Herald.
Shrinking the law enforcement share of the budget would be incompatible with the current legal settings, so she recommended keeping it the same and lifting spending in the other three areas to align with community preferences.
This would bring the total drug budget as a share of government spending closer to what happens in Australia, where it is currently more than double the spending here.
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark, in the report’s foreword, said: “The research underlying this report suggests that the public want to see more investment in non-enforcement approaches. Its fundings encourage the design of more humane, evidence-based, and cost-effective responses to drug use”.
Based on similar methods in Australia and the European Commission, the report categorised spending from the annual drug budget into four key areas:
The report estimated the annual drug budget in New Zealand to be just shy of $500 million a year, representing 0.3% of total Crown expenditure. This amounts to a per-person spend of $95, or less than half that of Australia ($210).
Through a representative poll of 1195 citizens in May this year, the research then dived into how New Zealanders wanted the drug budget to be divided.
Instead of asking whether more money should be invested in certain ways, as previous polls have asked, respondents were given a hypothetical $100 of taxpayer money and asked to allocate it as they wished.
“Community preferences allocate almost two-thirds of funding towards a health-based approach to drugs (treatment, prevention, harm reduction),” the report said.
The respondents were split on whether drug use should be treated as a criminal (47%) or a health issue (46%), with 8% unsure.
Those who preferred a criminal response unsurprisingly wanted a greater share of funding for law enforcement, but both the health and criminal camps had similar thoughts about the appropriate share of funding for prevention.
This was similar to the preferences of those who supported the Coalition Government, compared to those who backed opposition parties. The former group also wanted more money spent on law enforcement than on a health approach, but both groups wanted similar allocations for prevention.
“Both groups of respondents allocated less to reducing supply, and more to prevention and harm reduction, than what is actually spent now,” the report said.
“There is strong and consistent support for increased spending on prevention across all demographic groups, irrespective of political preferences.
“Increasing access to harm reduction services will become increasingly vital, as the global drug supply becomes more volatile.”
The poll didn’t ask about changing the law or decriminalising drug use, so the research shows what can be changed within the current legal settings.
“The current environment doesn’t stop us from investing in treatment, prevention, and harm reduction,” Crossin said.
READ MORE: Decriminalise, depoliticise, destigmatise: Durg Foundation report says drug laws are ‘colossal failure’
Crossin also considered why there has been no change to drug policy for decades, despite an abundance of new research.
“I was interested in deliberative democracy which asks the question: what do lay people, for want of a better word, actually think?
“How do they engage with this topic, and once they’ve learned more, do they still want the status quo or do they want something different?
“Deliberative democracy is being seen as a way of overcoming some of the inertia around those big policy challenges.”
For the report, a group of 10 Christchurch retirees met for seven workshops with support from guest speakers.
Before the workshops, seven of the 10 said their primary view was that drugs should be a health issue, while three were unsure. This increased to nine out of 10 by the end of the workshops.
“One notable pattern that emerged from the final survey was that individuals tended to spread their funding allocations more evenly across the four drug policy pillars, after they had learnt more,” the report said.
“This suggests that participants concluded that all four drug policy pillars are important, rather than allocating their funding to only one or two.”
Crossin acknowledged the group was not a representative sample; she chose retirees because she thought they might be less open to discussing the topic because of their age.
“Are they able to engage and do their minds change through learning more? The answer was yes, and when they did, they came up with nuanced, thoughtful, empathetic responses.
“It showed me that people can ask really tough questions, and have a debate over this in a way that was quite positive, working towards consensus,” she said.
“Because it worked so well, it led me to recommend that we hold a citizens’ assembly on drug policy, similar to what Ireland has done recently.”
Report recommendations for the Government:
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Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.