{"id":10545,"date":"2021-03-05T06:33:09","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T06:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=10545"},"modified":"2021-03-05T06:33:09","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T06:33:09","slug":"greens-renew-call-for-drug-law-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2021\/03\/05\/greens-renew-call-for-drug-law-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"Greens renew call for Drug Law Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian Laywer\u2019s Alliance\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawyersalliance.com.au\/documents\/item\/2064\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cDoing More Harm Than Good: The need for a health-focused approach to drug use\u201d<\/a>\u00a0report clearly shows that a national approach to harm minimisation is long overdue.<br \/>\n&#8220;The legal and medical sectors have been saying for decades that treating drug use as a criminal matter, rather than a health issue does not work&#8221;, Australian Greens Health spokesperson Senator Rachel Siewert said today.<br \/>\n&#8220;Criminalising drug use does not stop people from using drugs, it exacerbates harm.<br \/>\n&#8220;Addiction and substance abuse is a health issue and we as a community need to treat it that way.<br \/>\n&#8220;Stigmatising people with punitive approaches rather than addressing the underlying issues only drives people further from the help and support they need and causes further harm.<br \/>\n&#8220;If we want to assist people with addiction and substance abuse issues we need to take a harm minimisation approach and penalise dealers not users.<br \/>\n&#8220;This report also highlights that people are still struggling to access medicinal cannabis which for many people is one of the few things that give them quality of life.<br \/>\n&#8220;People should not be denied quality of life just because the Government hasn\u2019t got their act together to legislate a regulatory model that actually works and means that people can access the treatments they need. &#8221;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian Laywer\u2019s Alliance\u00a0\u201cDoing More Harm Than Good: The need for a health-focused approach to drug use\u201d\u00a0report clearly shows that a national approach to harm minimisation is long overdue. &#8220;The legal and medical sectors have been saying for decades that treating drug use as a criminal matter, rather than a health issue does not work&#8221;, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2021\/03\/05\/greens-renew-call-for-drug-law-reform\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Greens renew call for Drug Law Reform&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}