Australian: Health, Drugs, and Alcohol - Article Example

Substance abuse is a growing menace in Australia and not just among Aboriginal populations. Over the years there have been a great deal of discussions regarding efforts that the government needs to make in order not to lose another generation of Aboriginal children to drugs, which in the Aboriginal community, amounts mainly to alcohol. This is not to suggest that Aboriginals do not abuse other drugs but traditionally White society used alcohol as a bait to weaken Aboriginals. Now, after many decades thanks to the despondency in Aboriginal communities no one needs to lead Aboriginals by the hand to the killer drug, alcohol. The feelings of alienation and powerlessness makes many Aboriginals drown their sorrows in alcohol, which often means drinking excessively, and beyond the point where one has any semblance of personal control. People in mainstream Australian society also drink alcohol but the use of alcohol is not a problem in non-indigenous societies to the same extent as they are in Aboriginal communities. Other drugs such as the so-called party drugs such as Speed, however, are increasingly being tapped by young non-Aboriginal Australians as they continue to choose lives of almost perpetual pleasure fuelled by drugs. This paper compares the patterns and trends in the use of alcohol (and other substances) by non-indigenous and Aboriginal people in Australia. Alcohol was introduced to Aboriginal communities by Europeans who came to Australia several centuries ago. For many decades, alcohol has contributed to the decimation of Aboriginals in the same way that government neglect has led to their dwindling numbers. In recent years, however, quite apart from the alcohol itself some incidents stemming from alcohol use such as rape and physical abuse have combined to focus the minds of Australians on the growing menace of substance abuse. According to the crown prosecutor for central Australia, Nanette Rogers, “The volume [of sexual assault] is huge and I don’t have a single file in my room that is not related to violence…Seventy percent of the cases are violent crimes against women. The practice comprises homicides, grievous bodily harm, adult sexual assaults and child sexual assaults.” She cited an example from 2003 where a man raped a seven-month old baby girl whom he had taken from a room of sleeping adults” (Collins 2006 12). In this particular case, when the mother awoke she noticed that there was blood on the clothes of her baby but she was too drunk to fully understand what might have happened. In another case, a two-year old girl had to be surgically treated following a rape by a young man. “Her mother and father had been drunk at the time of the assault” (Collins 2006 12). Children in Aboriginal communities are victims of violence on a continual basis and they see violence almost as a matter of course, a daily reality. While women are often at the receiving end of the violence they are sometimes too scared to speak up, prompting one Aboriginal elder, Margaret Kemarre, to say that “I think the grog is taking away all our families, it is really destroying us” (Collins 2006 12). For those in non-Aboriginal communities the problem of substance abuse mainly relates to young people. Whereas for many Aboriginals the use of alcohol may stem from a feeling of powerlessness and despair the opposite is true for those in mainstream Australian society. Many of the young people who abuse alcohol and other drugs come from the suburbs. As Paul Lampathakis and Tessa Heal explain in the article “Amphetamine epidemic taking a grip,” “Alcohol abuse is well known for leading to violence and road deaths, but speed binges add psychosis and paranoia to violent urges, leading to extreme behaviour – as doctors, nurses, police and welfare workers have been experiencing first-hand” (Lampathakis & Heal 2006 50). For non-Aboriginal youth, in addition to alcohol, which is a staple of sorts when it comes to clubbing, attending music festivals or just enjoying a house party, a host of drugs such as amphetamines have become very common, especially since heroin started to be scarce about six years ago. As Lampathakis and Heal (2006) report, Mainly girls, bust also boys, as young as 15, are trading sexual favours to get the drugs that either help them fit in with peers or, in some cases, merely make them feel normal and able to get through the day. Relationships in ordinary middle-class suburbs have been ripped apart by partners driven to violence or psychosis because of amphetamine habits. And these drugs, which can come in crystal or powder form, are easy to obtain. They are dealt out of homes in affluent and poor suburbs to the richest of our young people as well as the most impoverished, in fast-food outlet car parks, in clubs, in pubs – even in schools. (Lamapathakis and Heal 2006 50) For non-Aboriginal youth abusing alcohol and other drugs the wake-up call has come from the flagrant nature of the abuse which includes the sale of glass pipes used to smoke crystal methamphetamine in delis and convenience shops in cities such as Perth for as little as $20. Some states such as Victoria and South Australia have banned these pipes but in other places they are freely available even though the drugs that they are supposed to be used with are banned. This prompted one police sergeant, Kevin Tinley, to note that such an approach sends mixed messages to young people. In other words, if the drugs are banned then the paraphernalia used to indulge in them ought to be banned as well. For those who are familiar with drug use patterns in Australia over the years it is not surprising, for example, that some girls exchange sex for drugs. “Carol Daws, director of the drug and alcohol-treatment centre Cyrenian House, said exchanging sex for drugs was not new, but users were now much younger. People are not in a position to make good decisions when they are using at an early age. (We have) reports of a range of women talking specifically about exchanging sex for drugs…and women get into some relationships because men are dealers” (Lamapathakis and Heal 2006 50). It must be emphasized that part of the reason that alcohol abuse among Aboriginals gets such a high level of publicity is that though fewer Aboriginals, apparently drink compared to their non-Aboriginal counterparts, those among the Aboriginals who drink do so excessively (Gray et al. 2000). It stands to reason that for both Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals, alcohol abuse is the baseline for substance abuse, with Aboriginals mainly suffering from alcohol abuse and non-Aboriginals feeling greater effects from the other substances that are often used above and beyond alcohol such as the so-called party drugs. As reported in the report, “What works? A review of evaluated alcohol misused interventions among Aboriginal Australians,” Gray et al. note that since the 1970s treatment has been the intervention of choice in Australia for Aboriginals who abuse alcohol. Such treatment programs are often offered in conjunction with some counselling services and most are based on principles such as those espoused by Alcoholics Anonymous. In research conducted by O’Connor and Associates in 1988 on behalf of the Western Australian Alcohol and Drug Authority it was found that “few clients achieved the goal of continuing abstinence. Importantly, however, programmes that included residential facilities or ‘dry camps’ gave clients ‘time out’ from drinking, enabling them to improve their health status” (Gray et al. 2000 12). Another finding was that many of the intervention programs were continually strapped for money, hindering their efficacy. The lack of certainty of success regarding many of the programs mentioned above is not surprising. The drinking problem is quite often a symptom of greater problems in the life of the abuser. In other words, intervention strategies that do not take into consideration the underlying reason for which some individuals drink are doomed to failure from the very beginning. Another problem was that the issue of success of treatments was ill-defined among the intervention agencies. Treatment, which simply views alcohol abuse as a form of disease, is an effort in the right direction but the mixed results it has garnered so far make one wonder the extent to which the treatment model should be expanded. Another model that has been used as a common intervention for alcohol abuse is that of health promotion. This perspective assumes that people who abuse alcohol do not have the necessary knowledge of the potential dangers of this drug and that armed with the proper information the abusers will shape up. Health promotion activities might include having participants attend classes or engage in recreational and sporting activities. Some health promotion activities have been criticized for having too much of a top-down approach, which enervates rather than empowers the people that the program is supposed to help. Research that has been done regarding the efficacy of the health promotion regimes have yielded mixed results, a reason why a number of acute intervention programs have sprung up among Aboriginal groups. Some of the acute intervention programs are aimed at harm reduction and thus “include night patrols, sobering-up shelters and personal injury prevention initiatives. Of these, only sobering-up shelters have been subject to any evaluation. The impetus for the establishment of sobering-up shelters came with the decriminalization of public drunkenness in various jurisdictions” (Gray et al. 2000 14). When drunk individuals are placed in shelters there is the benefit to society of having such people under monitoring, for their own good and for that of society as a whole. As reported by Gray et al (2000), the benefits of using shelters was not lost on the police who found that they had less paperwork to do. In fact, “In Halls Creek, Western Australia, in the first 15 months of its operation 78% of people detained for public drunkenness were diverted to the sobering-up shelters” (Gray et al. 2000 14). In the case of Aboriginals whose history with alcohol date back quite a few years there have been efforts to cut off the supply of alcohol to them. Such programs date as far back as the early 1800s and continued through to the 1970s. “This was only partially successful and – as part of moves to grant equal rights to Aboriginal people – was abandoned. Nevertheless, in recent years, various Aboriginal community organizations have called for the re-imposition of prohibitions or other supply reduction measures at the local level” (Gray et al. 2000 15). Some states have declared some public places so-called “dry zones,” where people are not allowed to drink. The supply reduction model is an attempt at understanding people who feel compelled to use drugs and may be better than the use of incarceration, which adds to the burdens of the court system and possibly leaves the victims with a court or criminal record that might hamper their future efforts to lead productive lives. In the case of non-Aboriginals it has never been felt that extreme measures are necessary to prevent people from using alcohol. Even though non-Aboriginals who use alcohol may also be harmed in similar ways to Aboriginals, non-Aboriginals generally start out with greater resources in the community in terms of opportunity and family and social support so the effects are hardly ever as bad although there have been incidents of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and other similar problems reported in non-Aboriginal communities. As noted above, for non-Aboriginals control of the use of substances such as methadone, speed, and ice, have been at the forefront of those who want to reduce dependence on drugs. Across Australia there are programs focusing on various drugs and their control among particular population groups. In Sydney, for example, there more than 10 public methadone programs (Caplehorn et al 1998 505). While minimization strategies are at the heart of methadone programs and other similar drug related programs “many people working in methadone maintenance programs have difficulty with harm-minimisation strategies and feel the primary objective of treatment should be abstinence from all opioids, including methadone” (Caplehorne et al. 1998 505). It is probably no accident that staff of methadone programs feel that abstinence is the surest way for users to get their lives back. Reduced use of drugs, while better than large doses, nevertheless maintain a kind of hold on the users who may have difficulty holding on to jobs or maintaining relationships. All the various methods and models that have been tried to deal with substance abuse problems among Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals alike show that society is making an effort. But the efforts, especially in the past, were disconnected from the realities on the ground. The case of Aboriginals in Australia who drown themselves in drugs including alcohol is not a matter of harm reduction or supply reduction. These are people who have been robbed of everything that are meaningful to them, notably their land. Moreover, they are looked down upon and feel trapped from all sides since the society in which they now find themselves is unwilling to provide them with basic opportunities that will make it possible to maintain their dignity. When people are at the end of their rope, hopeless and in despair, it takes a great purchase on hope to make an effort at maintaining a positive life. When people are without a shred of hope in their lives it is not uncommon for them to indulge in self-destructive behaviour. The problem of alcohol abuse among Aboriginals is hardly unique to the Australian context. In Canada and the United States where native populations were equally decimated and robbed, the problem of alcohol abuse persists. What is interesting is that the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the looters have found common cause with the Aboriginal populations. While young Aboriginals drown their sorrows in alcohol young non-Aboriginals celebrate their wonderful lives by popping pills and injecting various other substances into their bodies. The end result is that both the oppressed and the oppressor find themselves in drug-induced stupor, hardly a great state in which to contemplate the future of wide and wonderful Australia. Bibliography Caplehorne, John R. M. et al “Changing attitudes and beliefs of staff working in methadone maintenance programs.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, Vol. 22 Issue 4 (Jun 1998):505-508. Collins, Padraig. “Report reveals abuse epidemic in Aboriginal communities.” Irish Times (May 18, 2006):12. Corder, Mike. “In the heart of Olympic City, slum highlights Aboriginal woes.” Times-Picayune, (May 28, 2000):A 3. Gray, Dennis et al. “What works? A review of evaluated alcohol misuse interventions among Aboriginal Australians.” Addiction, Vol. 95 (Jan 2000):1. Lampathakis, Paul & Tessa Heal. “Amphetamine epidemic taking a grip.” The Sunday Times (Mar 5, 2006):50. Read More