Abstract
Drugs are a significant and long-standing health, social, economic, and policy issue in New Zealand. Drug use continues to rise, despite largely prohibition-based policy settings. Drug use remains a ‘wicked problem’, as it is complex, stigmatised, and has strong moral and value judgements attached to it. Responding fairly and effectively to drug use and harm therefore remains challenging.
Significant policy inertia exists in New Zealand, and there is an apparent unwillingness for many politicians to engage in this debate, potentially due to concerns about community or electoral backlash. But, given that the Government spends nearly half a billion dollars each year responding to drug use, and that the total cost of drug harm to New Zealand is estimated at nearly $2 billion per year, it is essential that our policy settings are aligned with the evidence and best practice.
Policy interventions to respond to the issues of drugs are often described using the ‘four-pillars’ model:
- - Law enforcement or supply reduction: actions intended to reduce the availability of drugs, e.g. customs, policing, and criminal justice processes.
- - Prevention: actions intended to prevent people from starting using drugs, e.g. through early intervention or education.
- - Treatment: reducing demand among those already using drugs (through treatment for use disorders).
- - Harm reduction: strategies aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with drug use, e.g. provision of sterile injecting equipment, or drug-checking, or provision of naloxone (a medicine used to reverse opioid overdoses).
Faced with an increasing and more volatile global drug supply, the efficacy of the prohibition model is being challenged, and new drug policy settings are being trialled internationally. Both the evidence and public opinion on the best way to respond to drug use and harm have evolved, with health-based approaches that emphasise prevention, treatment and harm reduction alongside supply reduction becoming increasingly used. To help inform an overdue update of New Zealand’s drug policy settings, it is important to be aware of public opinion on these issues.
The aims of this project were, therefore, to understand the views of New Zealanders on how the Government funds responses to illegal drugs, by:
- 1. providing an estimate of how money is currently allocated to different areas of drug policy in New Zealand (the ‘drug budget’)
- 2. finding out the preferred funding allocation (‘willingness to pay’) from a representative community sample
- 3. using a ‘deliberative workshop’ method, with a group of citizens, to test the value of deliberative democratic processes for drug policy.
The research found that law enforcement receives 68.2 per cent of drug policy funding, with treatment receiving 24.8 per cent, prevention receiving 5.5 per cent, and harm reduction receiving 1.4 per cent. The total amount of money spent proactively responding to illegal drugs in New Zealand in 2022/23 is estimated as $489,468,763. This represents 0.3 per cent of total crown expenditure in that year, and a per-person spend of $95.
This can be compared to Australia in 2021/22, which had an estimated spend of $5.45 billion, equivalent to 0.6 per cent of government expenditure and a per-person spend of $210. In Australia, funding proportions were; 64.3 per cent to law enforcement; 27.4 per cent to treatment, 6.7 per cent to prevention, and 1.6 per cent to harm reduction. While the proportions of funding in Australia are similar to New Zealand, the overall amount of funding is significantly higher in Australia
In contrast to actual spending, when a representative sample of New Zealand citizens was asked how they would like $100 of their tax spent responding to illegal drugs, they wanted significantly more spent on prevention and harm reduction, and proportionally less spent on law enforcement (see Figure 1 below).
Community preferences allocate almost two-thirds of funding towards a health-based approach to drugs (collectively: treatment, prevention, harm reduction). This shows that the New Zealand community want more investment in these areas of drug policy.
Notably, there is strong and consistent support for increased spending on prevention across all demographic groups, irrespective of political preferences. This presents a clear opportunity for cross-party consensus on a more effective response.
Figure 1 – actual funding (as a percentage) compared to community preferences for funding allocation (as a hypothetical $100 of tax).
Historical analysis of New Zealand’s drug policy settings dating back to the 1960s demonstrates that the will and preferences of New Zealander’s have not been reflected in our drug laws. There have been multiple reviews recommending that the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 be repealed and replaced with a health-based approach to drugs.
Internationally, deliberative democratic processes, such as Citizen’s Assemblies, are increasingly used for complex policy issues, including drug policy. These processes improve democratic participation and are intended to ensure the will of the people is reflected in Government policy. This research trialled a deliberative group learning process with a group of citizens in Christchurch, who then produced a consensus statement, which strongly supported a health-based approach to drugs. This serves as a promising example of what could be achieved in New Zealand using deliberative democracy for drug policy reform.
The conclusion reached through all three phases of this research is that there is a significant gap between current funding allocations and community preferences. This research clearly shows the views of the New Zealand community are significantly closer to a health-based approach to drugs than what might be currently perceived by politicians and policymakers. Therefore, there is an opportunity for our politicians to follow the evidence and move towards a health-based approach to drugs. Crucially, this research shows they would be supported by the community in doing so.