Matt Noffs says Queensland ‘can’t arrest its way out of the problem’ and supports decriminalisation

The experience of drug prohibition in Queensland, where police charge more users than anywhere else in Australia, shows the state “can’t arrest its way out of the problem”, says a leading social worker.

The chief executive of the Ted Noffs Foundation, Matt Noffs, said he hoped to lobby local politicians about following interstate moves away from the “war on drugs” and reducing the burden on law enforcement.

Drug arrests in Queensland have long dwarfed those elsewhere, reaching 32,391 of a national total of 92,882 in 2013-14, with NSW next on 25,738 despite its larger population.

Most of the Queensland arrests were drug consumers (28,389), although police also arrested nearly as many dealers and producers (4,002) as in NSW (4,124).

Noffs said senior police figures, including the head of the NSW drug squad, as well as the former federal police commissioner Mick Palmer, had come to the conclusion that prohibition was a failure and “decriminalisation is absolutely a sensible way forward”.

The Ted Noffs Foundation has operated five youth drug treatment centres, called “street universities”, in Queensland since late 2014; the greatest demand for its services is in Brisbane’s south.

There it found that ice (crystal methamphetamine) was the most common drug of main concern among clients (35%), reflecting trends in NSW and the ACT. But overall in south-east Queensland cannabis was the most common problem drug, being the main concern to 38.3% of clients who ranged in age from 12 to 25. This was followed by ice (33%) and alcohol (16.3%).

Indigenous people were over-represented, making up 23.8% of clients against 3.6% of the state population – as were males (78%).

Noffs said social disadvantage was a key factor in drug dependency.

“They’re already involved in crime, they’ve been kicked out of school, kicked out of home, they’ve grown up in dire circumstances,” he said.

The foundation’s notion of youth centres take inspiration from the “rat park” experiment carried out by the Canadian psychologist Bruce Alexander.

Alexander, in answer to addiction research that found rats in a box chose heroin-laced water over pure water to point that they overdosed, re-created the experiment in a more stimulating environment.

Rats also given access to wheels, coloured balls, good food and other rats to mate and play with did not succumb to addiction.

Noffs’s street universities feature recording and dance studios – with raucous hip-hop a common soundtrack – alongside its residential treatment facilities.

“We are seeing different approaches by state, and we should be helping law enforcement in Queensland work to find new solutions around drugs, certainly around drugs and young people,” Noffs said.

“I’m going to quote Ken Lay, the head of the national ice taskforce, and say we can’t arrest our way out of this. Queensland can’t arrest its way out of this.

“We have a strong history of training and helping police work in this area because street arrests and throwing people behind bars is a waste of police time.

“I’d also like to talk to politicians up here about how they could effectively move in the way of other states around how they deal with drugs and look at how they can reduce those [arrest] numbers.”

Noffs said decriminalisation began with laws giving police more discretion to “caution and fine people … so they’re not hamstrung by a situation where they have to arrest people”.

The end to the war on drugs would enable police to effectively regulate black markets, as in the case of tobacco, he said.

“Despite the fact tobacco’s legal and we regulate it better than any other place on Earth, we still have a black market,” he said.

“But it is so tiny, so insignificant, that police can apply the right amount of pressure and control that black market. It’s easy for them. But asking them to regulate the black market for ice is absolutely irresponsible of us because they can’t do that.”