Brian Watters the Anti-Christ?

The Piers Perspective: Brian Watters

Hard line on drugs is a labour of love

ACADEMIC theorists who believe drug addiction is a victimless crime and can be resolved by harm minimisation are wrong, Brian Watters tells PIERS AKERMAN.

     these guys are the wrong ones... for a start addiction isn't a crime...yet...taking, making, buying, selling or even give it away and you can be busted but so far the bastards haven't made having a habit a crime... but  the enlightened pair who are responsible for this right wing moralist drivel have shown their hand early...the way they would have it even thinking about drugs would be illegal..

oh, and what exactly has brian watters retired from, cause it sure ain't the salvation army..

The Federal ALP's soft approach to hard drugs will be a key election issue, but Prime Minister John Howard's hard-line zero tolerance approach has the support of one of those who knows the despair of addiction, retired Salvation Army major Brian Watters.

    we live in hope that drug policy will be an election issue but latham is just as likely to advocate  even tougher tactics to win the votes of people who believe the nonsense written by journalists like piers and buy the moralist zero tolerance prohibition line that bryan watters is whispering in john howard's ear...

Major Watters, the chairman of the Australian National Council on Drugs (ANCD), has spent a lifetime dealing with addicts at the coal face.

   For much of his life, he has worked with drunks and drug addicts and is driven by his experience with countless numbers of families devastated by the scourge of drugs and alcohol.

 He has seen the corpses of those who have died of drug overdoses, the bodies of those who have suicided in despair, and has brought comfort to the children, the parents and the grandparents of those struggling with their addictions.

He has no time for the academic theorists who claim that harm minimisation policies may work and he has less time for those who claim drug abuse is a victimless crime. He has seen the damage wrought on communities by those too selfish to understand that their actions affect everyone around them.

    the point that they miss here is that brian watters talks of harm minimisation, which may have been thought up by academic theorists but harm minimisation is a watered down version of harm reduction that links it with supply and demand reduction ...harm reduction was  a grass roots concept developed by users for users: it accepts the reality that drug use exists and makes no moral judgment on that use, but seeks to lessen the potential harms that may be associated with  using, many of which are caused by the government policies of prohibition and zero tolerance policing and interdiction of drugs (the supply and demand reduction of the academics) but call it what you want harm reduction works, it saves lives and lessens suffering.

and dont think as users that we haven't seen the corpses, and all the other effects and victims of the war on drugs...their blood is on the hands of the prohibitionists.

He is, however, also a man of compassion and a man of learning, with a degree in sociology and a major in medical sociology. His wife Margaret, a family and addictions counsellor, is also deeply involved in his work.

Reasonably, he says harm minimisation in itself was not a bad concept, but in its true form it was designed to help drug addicts not only minimise the harm they caused themselves while moving towards becoming more drug free, but also to minimise the harm they caused to their community.

       yes, real reasonable.. we don't know what definition of harm minimisation mr watters has before him but we don't remember any mention of moving towards being drug free or blaming users for causing harm to the community... but with god behind him, not to mention johnny howard , he can do what he wants we suppose...but we do remember that harm minimisation is merely a watered down version of harm reduction, the first of the backward steps after the few gains made during the late 80s, early 90's ... so government money is directed away from harm reduction, and rather than concentrating on lessening the harms associated with drug use the government, whipped into a frenzy by advisers from the moral majority and terrified of a populace that soaks up disinformation like this article, insists that services based on grass roots harm reduction and users rights are failing and closes them down, no doubt planning to replace them with a drug free australia...hah!    

 the greatest irony is that many of the tragedies that brian watters describes are caused or magnified by the harassment of users that is demand reduction and the heavy handed drug laws and police powers enacted to reduce supply.

Harm minimisation proselytisers today have perverted those goals.

well no,... you guys took our goals and twisted them and now you want to dispose of the remnants...

"Drug addicts are not necessarily people from abusive backgrounds," he told me in Perth, where the Prime Minister announced a further $6.5 million funding for community groups dealing with drugs.

"Addicts are just as often from very pampered, wealthy backgrounds, but they are saddled with some angst or trauma they aren't dealing with and they try to wipe out the reality.

we hate to disappoint you bryan but some of us do it cause we like taking drugs....

"The Alcoholics Anonymous organisation has a saying that the problem is not in the bottle, it's in the man. We try to get addicts to respond to their problems."

      we say the problem is inherent in an authoritarian society run by uptight christians who think they have rights on our bodies, and where a poorly informed populace is fobbed off by a pathetic excuse for democracy every three years... but they do get the australian dream as a reward ....unless they're poor, black, asian, gay, young , old , disabled,  etc etc ... this is a decent god fearing anglo dream of god queen and country were having here....

Major Watters has looked at the so-called evidence put forward by harm minimisation advocates and has no hesitation in declaring it flawed. Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty supports his view.

AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty

In the minds of both men, harm minimisation practices such as the embracing of the Kings Cross drug injecting room do little more than provide addicts with a drug market.

"The ambulance call-out rates have dropped in Cabramatta and increased in the Cross," he said.

    brian forgets that the NSW Police have virtually declared martial law in Cabramatta... maybe people have moved somewhere else.

"The number of ODs in the injecting room is greater than on the street.

     but none of them died... or isn't this important piers...but the injecting room was a token effort that should be repeated 100s of times across the country but ending prohibition would be the best way to reduce overdose, stop the Hep C epidemic, improve users general health, empty the jails, the courts and the police cells and save the government and piers' beloved taxpayers a shit load of money.

"The aim must be to get people off drugs, not support their on- going destructive and illegal activities. There hasn't been one referral from the drug injecting room to the largest treatment organisations in NSW – We Help Ourselves, Odyssey House and the Salvos," he said.

"Drug addiction is not a victimless crime. It destroys parents, families, kids and loved ones."

     by making  "getting people off drugs'  the aim, harm reduction is compromised...users want harm reduction but brian watters morals say we cant have it and so we suffer the consequences...the destruction isnt caused by drugs , its caused by making them illegal...the facts about prohibition are well known even if these people ignore them...its prohibition that leads to inflated prices, bad quality, damaged health, life destroying jail terms, needless O.D.s, criminal control and corrupt police...its prohibition that that destroys  parents, families, kids and loved ones.

Major Watters said he was tired of hearing people say it was their "right" to decide what they did with their bodies when the same people were often the first in the queue to grab social security benefits.

"It's pure selfishness," he said. "They just don't feel they need to contribute anything to society, just take from it."

     same old christian right prejudices.. you'd think hed know better when a salvo drug service in melbourne reported last year that at least 30% of their clients were  working in regular employment... really brian we don't all drive round with a shottie in the back seat and a balaclava in the pocket looking for a seven-eleven to rob... some of us are too busy selling hot shots to eight year olds at the school crossing...

A member of a traditional Labor family (Major Watters knew the widow of the iconic former Labor prime minister John Curtin during his youth), he is an unlikely supporter of the Prime Minister, but he firmly believes that Mr Howard's approach is correct.

"During the Depression my father bought flour at cost and baked bread for the unemployed in Perth," he said. "The big bakeries fought him and tried to prevent him obtaining flour, but he kept going. He used to ride on the bakers' union float in the Labor Day parade until he died of alcoholism."

Major Watters almost became a journalist, but was forced to make the choice between working on Sundays or playing cornet in the Salvation Army band.

Major Watter's cornet - courtesy NAP intelligience team

"My wife jokes that I have always been a magnet for troubled people," he says. "If I'm riding on public transport it always seems that those with problems come and sit beside me."

He is particularly upset by the government funding (nearly half a million dollars) that flows to drug users' groups.

He says the money was meant to assist in disease prevention and help prevent the spread of HIV AIDS, but it is now being misused to promote a political agenda designed to achieve the legalisation of drugs.

The extra funding announced on Tuesday by the Prime Minister will go to almost 90 small organisations around the country, with most receiving about $80,000. Major Watters says that money will be extremely important to those in need.

"We're seeing grandparents picking up the pieces and struggling to look after their grandchildren who have been abandoned by their parents," he said.

"The addicts in their iniquitous soul-destroying world of substance abuse don't understand the love and hope we have invested in them."

    what we users do understand is that you would sacrifice our health, our human rights, our freedom and our lives on the altar of abstinence to achieve your goal of saving us from drugs...maybe if you weren't caught in that moral rut you might listen to the saner opinions of people who are on the receiving end of your policies...

because  your cure, "the war on dugs' , causes more harm than drugs do and it doesn't even work

so end the war on drugs now and end the needless suffering of users.