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Letters - Re Local MP calls for street drinkers to be moved into Wet Centres

In your June 2006 edition, you ran an article ‘Local MP calls for Street Drinkers to be moved into Wet Centres’. It will be interesting to see if your paper is more interested in providing the ‘Harm Minimisation Industry’ mantra with an unchallenged forum than providing balance reporting on the treatment of addictive behaviour writes Ross Smith in this letter in the July 2006 edition of the South Sydney Herald.

The prominence and treatment that this submission receives will answer the question of balance. Wet Centres and Medically Safe Injecting Centres are both places for the consumption of substances to feed an addiction. The only variation is the substance being consumed. Both have the same two basic failings – they do not address the cause of the addictive behaviour, nor do they address the effect of the addictive behaviour on those around the addict. Centres do not put the food back on the family dining table, they do not stop the disruptive behaviour towards the community, they do not stop the domestic violence and abuse, they do not stop the street violence, they do not stop the physical and mental degradation of the addicts and their families. The member for Heffron and the member for Bligh both seem to have overlooked the community, and the adverse effect on the community caused by the addictive consumption of alcohol, in their desire to champion the right of the addict to pursue their addiction and to be protected whilst doing so. Their message is that the individual is more important than the community and the families that make it up. This is a sad value judgement to send to the spouses, partners, children, uncles, aunts, grand parents, relatives and cousins of the addicts – those who bear the immediate brunt of the behaviour of the addict whilst pursuing their addiction. I also notice that the Redfern Legal Centre, so keen to criticise moves to protect the community, does not propose any moves to protect the community from the actions of the individual. I would be interested to hear their reasons as to why the families of those effected by the addiction should continue to suffer the results, i.e. the assaults, abusive behaviour, economic deprivation to name a few, whilst the addict is encouraged and supported to continue their addictive behaviour. The most successful rehabilitation program in the world that operates in every country in the world is based on the addict first recognising that they have a problem and then wanting to fix the problem. It is called Alcoholics Anonymous. It has been successful for many decades, maybe for longer than the State members for Heffron and Bligh have been alive. The Alcoholics Anonymous model has been successfully applied to many other forms of addiction, substance, chemical and psychological based. Do the two politicians and legal centre involved value the individual more than the community that they are meant to represent, or has the ‘harm minimisation’ industry got three more converts at the community’s expense? Why are the two politicians and legal centre involved not advocating for proven rehabilitation programs instead of proposing the facilitation of ongoing addiction at the expense of the greater community and all those around the individual addict?

Ross Smith Strawberry Hills