Past Time to Decriminalize? Why Making Criminals out of Drug Addicts is a Crime! / A.J. Hendry

The boy in front of me pleaded for help.

Like so many of our rangatahi he was struggling with addiction in a world that had branded him a criminal.

This wasn’t a new conversation we were having. He wanted to change, he needed to. He knew that.

But, here we were again. Him struggling with the guilt, shame and fear that came with relapse, me, his Youth Worker, frustrated at the lack of support and help available to him.

There was so much more going on for this rangatahi then just addiction. He was mentally ill, in and out of home as a result of a breakdown in his whanau, and yes, he was also involved with the police, and the youth justice system.

Most people looked at him and saw a criminal. But, the uncomfortable reality is far more complex.

Addiction is understood almost universally by mental health professionals as being primarily a mental health issue... not a criminal one.

Yet for some reason we still lock up people who struggle with this mental illness.

I have often wondered what it says about us as a society that we are all too willing to fund a system that criminalises a person who is suffering with a debilitating illness, rather than fund the care and support they need to get better. Yet that is what we are doing.

The narrative which is spun is, "these people need to just take personal responsibility.” "They need to make better decisions". “They need to be less selfish and start thinking about others."

Easy to say...but then that’s the problem. Addiction can strip a person of the ability to make healthy decisions.

In my work as a Youth Worker over the years, I have seen my fair share of the effects of addiction on the lives of our whanau and communities.

It is not uncommon for rangatahi to present with an addiction, but when you get underneath that, the addiction is never the problem. It is always the symptom.

Addiction comes from an unmet need that exists within us. It can be a way to deal with trauma, or to cope with mental illness. And often these two issues are so desperately intertwined that there is little hope of separating them.

Regularly, in the line of mahi I do, I get parents, teachers and other professionals, bringing their rangatahi to me and saying things like, “Rich is so lazy, he just sits around and smokes weed all day! We need to sort him out!”

Yet, after sitting with the rangatahi in question, and listening to their story, it often becomes apparent that the drug is not the problem. The problem, like the young man mentioned above, is trauma, abuse, depression, suicidality, sickness.

The problem is that we have rangatahi, who do not know how to cope with their emotions. Who are overwhelmed by feelings of suicide and anxiety. Then when the adults in their lives fail them, when Youth Mental Health services turn them away, they seek help in the only place left they know to look.

The tinnie house down the street.

We then judge these rangatahi and call them criminals. Too often we exclude them from our schools, society, and even, in severe cases, from their own homes.

As the young person is punished for resorting to self-medicating their mental illness, their sickness only gets worse. They are driven further and further away from the support they so desperately need.

If you have whanau in your community struggling with an addiction. Don't judge them. Don't turn them away. Regardless of what we are often told, rejecting them won't help.

What helps, and what we need, is for someone to do the mahi to support that person to gain the skills they need to survive. For someone to stand alongside them and help them get the support they need. We also need drug and youth mental health services that keep the rangatahi’s interests at the center of what they do, rather than turning them away because they are too difficult to engage.

The rest of the world is already getting on to this. There are moves globally to shift addiction from the justice system into the realm of health. The research is clear that this is the direction governments should be going.

So, what’s holding drug reform up here in New Zealand then?

Us.

We don’t want it.

Most of us still want to believe the narrative we have been taught. The lie that druggies are just selfish, and in need of a bit of discipline.

Our government will not have the courage to make the radical reforms which are needed unless we show them that we are ready. Unless we raise our voices and say “let's do this!” If drug reform is on the table, let’s do it right.

It’s time to stop making criminals out of innocent people. Time to stop marginalizing our most vulnerable whanau due to our outdated understanding around mental health and addiction.

Let's end the huge waste of finances that go into locking up sick people and clogging up our justice system. Let’s end this grave human rights abuse. Let's be a nation that doesn’t just say they care about others, but actually shows it.

It’s great that we are having this korero in regards to weed. But, the discussion hasn’t gone far enough. Decriminalisation should apply to all forms of addiction, meth, heroin, it doesn’t matter. Marking the brand of CRIMINAL on people who are sick, is abhorrent. It's time we stopped criminalising addicts, and started putting our time, energy and resources into the health system... where it will actually make a difference.

A.J. Hendry