AUSTRALIA—While the Australia 21 report has finally concluded that the war on drugs has proved futile, the Sex Party’s rising vote has been directly linked to its policies around drug law reform, according to its president, Fiona Patten. After preferences were distributed following the Niddrie (Vic) by election last week, the Sex Party achieved almost 10 percent of the vote.
“We are the only party to campaign for the decriminalization of all drugs," said Patten. “Our booth workers have told us that there was quite a bit of feedback on the booths about our drug policies”.
The Sex Party vote has been steadily rising since it won 2.2 percent of the Senate vote in 2010. “The madness around drugs continues to escalate with the Victorian police now forming a special ‘bong taskforce,' and last week 13 police officers in Ballarat spent the entire day raiding four shops that were suspected of selling bongs,” she added. “With community attitudes favoring decriminalization, this is a scandalous waste of police resources.”
Patten said that the regulation of drugs in Australia is increasingly moving towards the tough-on-drugs model and that American drug policy dominated Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet discussions of drug law reform. In 2006, Bronwyn Bishop headed the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services, and released a report entitled, "The Winnable War on Drugs: The Impact of Illicit Drug Use on Families."
The Committee report went so far as to suggest that children of drug users be adopted.
“The recent round of prohibition on the new synthetic cannabis drugs should have seen the first steps toward a regulated system as these drugs are relatively benign but instead, we got jail sentences and fines that were more than for natural cannabis," said Patten. “When the federal government’s new ‘cannabinomimetics’ (substances that mimic cannabis) laws come on line on May 1, we will see thousands of young Australians who use these drugs for recreational purposes thrown into jail or heavily fined. We will also see increasing numbers of elderly Australians jailed and fined for using these drugs for medical and palliative purposes.”
She said that Attorney General Nicola Roxon had given the electorate more reasons not to vote for Labor by sticking her head in the sand and behaving like a social conservative.
“The ALP do not get the fact that they are bleeding votes to parties like the Sex Party because they are prosecuting ‘victimless crimes’ here and cannot relate the drug use of their own parliamentarians and party officials to the average person," said Patten. "We all use drugs of one kind or another. Ms Roxon should come clean and tell the electorate what drugs she currently uses and what she has used in the past before she makes pronouncements on other people’s behavior."
For more information on the Australian Sex Party, go here.
