Following a referral from the Minister for Health and Aged Care, in August 2024, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care, and Sport commenced an inquiry into the health impacts of alcohol and other drugs (‘AOD’) in Australia.
In September 2024, GLaD researchers made a submission to the inquiry. As we noted in our submission, Australia ranks fifth out of 30 countries in its performance on drug policy, according to the Global Drug Policy Index. The Index rates performance according to a range of measures, and allocated Australian an overall score of 65/100. Although Australia does well on some measures, it scores poorly on others, including:
- equity of impact of criminal justice responses (25/100);
- imprisonment for non-violent drug offences (25/100);
- decriminalisation (33/100); and
- equity of access to harm reduction (33/100).
In March 2025, the Committee released an issues paper, which stated that:
Noting the breadth of the terms of reference, it was not possible to produce a final report addressing all the aspects of the inquiry prior to the expected dissolution of the House of Representatives for the 2025 Federal Election. In acknowledgment of the significance of this issue for the Australian community, the Committee has produced the issues paper to provide an overview of the evidence and to inform work underway by the Government to update the National Drugs Strategy [which is currently under review].
The Committee considered the impacts of AOD policy on marginalised populations. Regarding the prison population, the Committee noted our ‘evidence that there is at present an inequitable gap in the provision of harm reduction and prevention services in prisons’ and that ‘the lack of NSP, it is suggested, runs counter to the Australian Government target to end HIV transmission and hepatitis C by 2030’ and to the United Nations’ Mandela Rules, to which Australia is a signatory. Regarding LGBTIQ+ people, the Committee noted our submission ‘that AOD services do not adequately meet the demand for specialist LGBTIQ+ service provision.’
The Committee also considered impacts on the AOD workforce. It noted the point made in our submission that ‘employing people with lived and living experience in the AOD sector contributes to more effective services and better outcomes for people accessing services, their families, supporters and communities’, but that workers with lived experience also face stigma and discrimination.
The Committee devoted a significant portion of their issues paper to stigma. This included ‘the use of language and its potential to perpetuate stigma and harm’ in relation to AOD and people who use them, points raised in our submission. Relatedly, the Committee also considered the decriminalisation of personal drug use and its correlation to stigma. The Committee concluded that ‘an in-depth investigation of decriminalisation initiatives is a critical step in informing future policy in this area.’
The Committee will consider completing a full inquiry report into the health impacts of AOD in Australia in the next Parliament and we look forward to engaging further on this issue.