Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The deaths of two young people, two other lives under threat and harm done to many others at this weekend's Defqon festival at the base of the Blue Mountains highlight that our current approach to drug policy is not enough. My heart goes out to the families who thought their children would come home safely after a festival of music and they haven't. And I feel for police who bear the responsibility for enforcement when they say they can't be in every person's head all the time. As much as we hope that our children and their friends just didn't take drugs, generation after generation have shown us that they will make decisions that are high risk.

Adriana Buccianti, whose son died four years ago, puts it well:

Prohibition doesn't work. We've done the dogs, we've done the police, we've done the 'don't take it'. We've arrived at a point where we need to do something different.

We can never stop trying to educate about the dangers of drug use. But if we can't convince our kids not to take drugs, what we can do is empower them to reduce the risk. We should take the advice of health and justice experts, of parents who've lost children, and of the research, and start a serious conversation about pill testing and amnesty bins that give people a chance to dispose of drugs without fear of prosecution. Our message should not be based on fear and punishment but on making sure that it's never too late to make a good decision that could save your life.