Johann Hari: "What Australians have been told about ice is really misleading and wrong." Credit:Eddie Jim "Methamphetamine addiction is a real tragedy but we have to step back and look at the facts. Only 15 per cent of people who use ice will become addicted. That's about the same rate as alcohol." Last week, Assistant Minister for Health Fiona Nash issued a statement saying ice "destroys brain function, mental wellbeing, general health, employment, relationships, lives and families" and that legalising it would be "madness". It came in response to calls from the head of Geelong's ice taskforce to decriminalise the drug, and administer it to addicts in supervised clinics. Hari, whose international bestseller Chasing the Scream charts the 100-year war on drugs, said Nash's claims were overblown and indicative of the ongoing hysteria surrounding the drug debate.

"In the 18th century it was widely reported that if you drank too much gin you will spontaneously combust, which sounds ridiculous, but actually it's not that far off what we're reading now about ice and how it can give you superhuman strength," he said. Hari said that Nash's assertion ice is dangerous because it contains poisons such as sulphuric acid and lithium was actually an argument for legalisation because under a regulated system the drug would have less impurities and be safer. "There are places that have tried what your government is doing and all those places saw addiction get worse," Hari said. The 36-year-old, who was in Australia last week for a series of sold-out talks, is part of a growing movement of reformers, doctors and law enforcers who insist we must radically overhaul drug policy. There are places that have tried what your government is doing and all those places saw addiction get worse. Johann Hari.

In an epic journey to the heart of the drug trade – from the slums of Mexico to the crack dens of New York – the British journalist found that scare tactics and tough law and order strategies have led to more crime and increased suffering. Dr Alex Wodak, president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation and former head of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, agreed. He believes the system is broken. "The government's own surveys show that 91 per cent of Australian drug users say ice is easy to obtain. The figures are similar for other drugs. We have seen the market get bigger and more dangerous," he said. And he slammed Tony Abbott's recent $1 million "dob in a dealer" national hotline, saying it "was distraction therapy for a government on the ropes" designed to "scare the living daylights out of parents". Dr Wodak called for urgent funding for prevention and treatment. "Addiction must be treated as a health issue not a criminal matter."

Across the world, an increasing number of jurisdictions are adopting this approach. Ken Lay, Victoria's former police chief commissioner and head of the federal government's ice taskforce recently said of Australia's ice scourge, "we cannot arrest our way out of this problem." Border security measures have also been shown to fail, according to Hari, who said Tony Abbott's plan to stop drugs entering the country had been successful in only two places – Taliban Afghanistan and Maoist China. Even in a totalitarian police state the drugs did not stay out for long. "I can totally understand why anyone who loves an addict would be angry, I've been there, but if you indulge that anger and build policies around it more addicts die and more people become addicted," Hari said. While expressing sympathy for independent Senator Jacqui Lambie who recently told federal parliament of her son's ice addiction and called for forced rehab for addicts, he said 99 per cent of addicts relapsed within a year in countries where this was adopted. "All the evidence shows us that places that have built policies on love and compassion and reconnecting addicts see far more people turn their lives around and get better."

Connection the key to recovery for addicts This, for Hari is the crux of the debate. What he discovered in his three-year, 50,000-kilometre odyssey turned his idea of addiction on its head. And it has huge implications for the war on drugs. Like many, Hari believed the prevailing wisdom that drugs contain powerful chemical hooks which inevitably lead to dependency. The theory came from early 20th-century experiments in which caged rats were given two water bottles – one with water and the other laced with heroin or cocaine. Invariably the rats preferred the drugged water and would compulsively go back until they overdosed and died.

But Hari questioned the chemical hooks theory, wondering why hospital patients who are routinely given high-dose medical heroin for pain relief simply stop upon discharge, with very few going on to develop addiction. He found the answer in a 1970s Canadian experiment called Rat Park. This time instead of being left in sparse cages the rats were offered clean or drugged water in a caged playground of coloured balls, wheels, playmates and abundant food. They showed little interest in the drugged water and none became addicted. "It's not the chemical that's your cage. The overwhelming reason for addiction is the pain and isolation the individual feels. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It's human connection," Hari said. In places where compassionate drug policies have been adopted the results have been astonishing. Portugal, which had one of the worst drug problems in Europe, decriminalised all drugs in 2001. The money saved on punishing addicts was used to fund comprehensive treatment services, job creation programs and training courses to reintegrate users back into the community.

It led to a 50 per cent drop in injecting drug use and huge reductions in street crime, addiction, overdoses deaths and HIV transmissions. Greens leader Richard Di Natale, co-convenor of the Australian Parliamentary Group on Drug Law Reform, recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Portugal and has called for bipartisan support to replicate its drug policy in Australia. Fellow co-convenor and Liberal MP Sharman Stone backed the move, saying it would put criminal drug gangs out of business. Di Natale, a former GP who worked in the drug and alcohol field, said he believes that exploring less punitive drug policies was no longer politically toxic. Indeed, when Hari was in Sydney last week he was surprised to find during an interview with Alan Jones that the right-wing shock jock mounted no argument against his drug reform propositions.

"There is definitely a shift within opinion makers and law enforcement officials who recognise we need to try a different approach but unfortunately there is still some very rigid, last century attitudes in the parliament," Di Natale said. "Psychoactive drugs are with us and they're not going away. The challenge for us as policymakers is to minimise the harm. At the moment we have a policy approach that actively creates harm and it's responsible for a huge waste of public money." Hari has had his own addiction struggles. In 2012, he left his job as a columnist at The Independent after it was revealed he had plagiarised other journalists' work. At the time he was suffering depression and hooked on prescription drugs. He does not attribute the medication to his very public fall from grace – a period he describes as "devastating and humiliating" – and has expressed deep regret for his actions. In an attempt to regain trust, the audio for every interview in Chasing The Scream has been posted online. The response to the book has been overwhelmingly positive, with top law enforcement officials, doctors and political commentators saying it offers a roadmap out of global drug misery. One of the greatest success stories has been in conservative Switzerland where heroin was legalised in 1994, allowing addicts to access the drugs only in clinics. Addiction dropped and not a single heroin overdose death has been recorded since the policy was introduced.

Opponents of legalisation told Swiss president Ruth Dreifuss it would lead to anarchy. She noted that the current system was anarchy. The war on drugs creates a war for drugs. "Dreifuss won the argument by saying, we have unknown criminals selling unknown chemicals to users in the dark in a system filled with violence, chaos and disease," Hari said. "Legalisation means restoring order to that anarchy. It means bankrupting the criminals and bringing the addicts into nice clean clinics where we turn their lives around." Now, 70 per cent of the Swiss population say they would not go back to the old system. The country's top police officer, once the leading opponent of legalisation, is now a supporter. None of his initial fears have come to fruition. As Hari puts it, "Regulate and the drug trade goes from Breaking Bad to A Country Practice." For Alex Wodak, the way forward for Australia is clear. And it starts with compassion.

"We've spent 100 years hating people who use drugs and it's time we realised that's failed and we should treat them as human beings, as our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters. We should treat them as us." jstark@fairfaxmedia.com.au Follow Jill on Twitter