Tip of the ice: Drug prohibition is not slowing the tide of illicit drug use. Credit:Nathan Patterson

The shifting drug scene is a direct result of global market forces and prohibition. Once the "squeeze" is placed on a certain type of drug, another one takes its place. Imagine you are grabbing a balloon and squeezing it, the other side of the balloon pops out. This is the result of displacement.

There's a strong demand for drugs in Australia. We are an affluent society and we like to enjoy ourselves. This may come as a shock to many people (except the third of the population who have used an illicit substance), but most people use illicit drugs because they enjoy them. Yes, drug use is "FUNctional" for many. It's highly unlikely that drug use, even recreational use, will ever be eliminated. Nearly every society throughout history has used drugs. Drugs are here to stay.

Research shows that people who use illicit drugs want certain things from their drug of choice: they want to know exactly what it is that they are taking, they want it to be safe, they would rather use something that is legal and they don't want to be stigmatised and discriminated against purely based on their drug choice. Yet the prohibition policy, in setting out to deter drug use, contradicts all of these and, in effect, leads to drugs becoming dangerous and deadly. It's not drugs that are necessarily harmful, it's drug policies.

We can no longer hide behind the scapegoating, stigma and discrimination of drug users to blatantly try to deter others from drug use when we know that prohibition is in itself counterproductive to drug safety. Statements such as "we can't arrest our way out of this", by retired Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Ken Lay, are encouraging, but very little is changing at the ground level. Drug crime statistics are still dominated by drug users and we continue to pursue net-widening laws such as those that target people at dance parties and drivers with historical drug use.