He is not obliged to adopt the potential recommendations but will consider them ahead of his final report, due by January 28, and consider submissions in reply from other parties including NSW Police and the Health Department. KEY POINTS The Commissioner presiding over the Special Commission of Inquiry into the Drug 'Ice' has until January 28 to provide his final report. Closing submissions of counsel assisting the inquiry, released on Thursday, provide a guide as to his potential recommendations. Among the 104 potential recommendations identified by counsel assisting are: Developing a whole-of-government alcohol and other drugs policy that recognises the use of drugs is "a health and social issue".

Decriminalising the use and possession of all illicit drugs and referring users to an "appropriately tailored health intervention".

Urgently increasing investment in specialist alcohol and drug health services to meet "significant unmet demand" across NSW.

Expanding the use of medically supervised drug consumption rooms outside Kings Cross.

Trialling pill testing at a fixed site and potentially music festivals.

Removing sniffer dogs at music festivals and restricting the use of strip searches to cases involving drug supply. NSW was once a "world leader in developing policy responses to illicit drug use" but the state had slipped backwards and had no "formal drug policy or plan", the submissions say. The last plan expired in 2010. The NSW Drug Summit, held in 1999 against the backdrop of a heroin epidemic, led to the state's only medically supervised drug injecting centre being established in Kings Cross. "However, the inquiry has heard that, 20 years on, the gains made following the Drug Summit have stalled, and in some cases disappeared entirely," the submissions say.

A "large body of evidence" supported the view that criminalising personal use and possession of illicit drugs provided "at best a marginal benefit" while being associated with "a broad range of significant harms". Loading Under the potential recommendations, the government would appoint a new minister with a drug and alcohol portfolio and develop a comprehensive drug and alcohol policy that recognised drug use was a "health and social issue". It would also scrap criminal offences for the use and possession of illicit drugs, change licensing restrictions to allow medically supervised drug consumption rooms outside Kings Cross, trial pill testing and scrap sniffer dogs at music festivals. Medically supervised drug consumption rooms would be set up based on "local need" and would be open not only to adults but in limited circumstances to young people aged between 16 and 18, "subject to clinical assessment".

"Excluding people aged between 16 and 18 years from the service may result in highly vulnerable young people self-administering their drugs in an unsafe place elsewhere," the submissions say. Pregnant women would potentially be provided access where the likely alternative was the drug would be administered elsewhere. Uniting, the service arm of the Uniting Church, runs the Kings Cross injecting centre and backed the potential recommendations on Thursday. It urged the government "take a strong leadership role" by implementing them. "The [potential] recommendations from the inquiry are a powerful, comprehensive blueprint for a new and much needed path for NSW drug policy," Uniting senior executive Doug Taylor said. "Policymakers need to embrace a compassionate, evidence and health-based response and put behind them the years of failed policy."

The submissions of counsel assisting said evidence before the inquiry suggested "drug use, and dependent drug use in particular, often occurs in a context of broad socio-economic disadvantage" and pointed to the need for a drug and alcohol policy with a "health, public health and social focus" aimed at minimising harm. The submissions also note evidence that funding for drug policies is "heavily weighted towards law enforcement" rather than harm minimisation and other areas, and say "the equitable distribution of resources should be enshrined in policy". The decriminalisation plan would see users who were found with illicit drugs referred to "an appropriately tailored health intervention" and is premised on increased resourcing for specialist treatment services. The production, trafficking and supply of illicit drugs including ice and other amphetamine-type stimulants would continue to be criminalised. If the commissioner decides not to back decriminalisation, the submissions point to an alternative recommendation for a legislated police diversion scheme to direct drug users to tailored health services.

The submissions suggest a medically-supervised pill testing service be trialled at a fixed site and at music festivals, or solely at a fixed site. They say "the weight of the evidence received by this inquiry and the international literature supports a conclusion that substance testing is beneficial" and "consumers are never told their drug is safe". "Instead they are told that if they wish to be 100 per cent safe from illicit drugs then they should not consume any drugs," the submissions say. Sniffer dogs would be removed from musical festivals and strip searches limited to cases involving the suspected supply of illicit drugs. This is in line with draft recommendations from the coronial inquest into music festival deaths. The submissions suggest the means of administering drugs at medically supervised drug consumption centres be expanded from injecting, which is the only form permitted at the Kings Cross centre, to less dangerous alternatives such as inhalation.