‘Human Beings Have Been Using Drugs for Thousands of Years’: Helen Clark Wants NZ to Decriminalise Drugs

It’s 7am on a frosted Melbourne Monday morning and this VICE journalist is on her way to meet former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark at a community health centre.

As Chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, Clark is in Melbourne to give a keynote speech for the international Harm Reduction conference this week, where she has urged the world’s governments and organisations to fight to end the criminalisation and incarceration of people who use drugs. 

VICE met Clark for a media tour of North Richmond Community Health’s medically supervised injecting room. Australia is one of just 16 countries with facilities like this and it’s the only one of its kind in the state, recently granted permanence by the Labor State Government. 

Anyone can access the room. It’s free, anonymous and legal. Clients must bring their own substances, but they’re supplied with hygienic injecting equipment and a room monitored by nurses who watch for overdose symptoms, give clients oxygen if their breathing slows and, in rare and extreme circumstances, call an ambulance. 

In its five years of operation, the Richmond room has welcomed more than 6000 individuals, mostly using heroin, for more than 400,000 visits. 

The centre has successfully managed thousands of overdoses and potentially saved thousands of lives.

Helen Clark was impressed.

“Safe injecting is keeping people alive,” Clark told VICE. 

“I feel so appreciative that the Victorian state government has funded this. It’s public money. It’s recognising that we have marginalised populations who, without this kind of intervention, would die. 

“We need to be among the 16 countries that offer this service.”

Drug policy reform wasn’t a major focus of Clark’s 9-year prime ministership, from 1999 to 2008, but as a lifelong advocate for human rights — especially the rights of marginalised groups — Clark believes it’s a human rights-based approach to drugs we need to make the world more equitable. 

As we toured the site, we met regular users of the injecting room who showed us the many ways staff support them to access other health or social services and provide a safe, warm space.

The reception has all sorts of gear clients can pick up, from tourniquets and syringes in varying sizes to condoms and lube. 

The aftercare room provides deep chairs, puzzles, newspapers, toasties, tea and coffee, where clients can relax after dosing. 

The consulting room, complete with doctors’ offices, offers clients clinical, psychological and social services care. This can include a prescription for medications to transition them off heroin — if they choose. 

Users told us the reception, nursing and even security staff make them feel welcome. 

“What struck me with the feedback from [people who use drugs] is a service like this treats them with dignity and respect it deals with them as they are,” Clark said. 

“Drug use is happening in all communities. Human beings have been using drugs for thousands of years and that’s not going to change.

“People make a lot of choices in life and we need to work with them on what their needs are.”

Since Clark left office, New Zealand has legislated a number of progressive drug laws. Notably, the full legalisation of drug testing has no doubt made music festivals safer. It’s something she’s proud of — and something Australia doesn’t have. 

But in 2020, New Zealand voters also shot down a chance to legalise cannabis for personal use in a win for fear and ideology. 

“These are very complex and nuanced social policy issues and are not best dealt with in a referendum format,” Clark said.

“You need governments to step up to the responsibility to legislate and regulate effectively and that should create a legal market for a drug like cannabis, which is frankly not as harmful to the human body as tobacco. There’s no reason why you can’t take an alcohol or tobacco regulation model to [drugs].”

Clark said the two nations can learn from each other. In an ideal world, she wants New Zealand to follow the Australian Capital Territory, which will become the first Australian jurisdiction to decriminalise small, personal amounts of all drugs coupled with harm reduction measures like the CanTEST pill-testing site. 

“Half a century of evidence tells us that drug prohibition is a societal, economic and moral failure,” Clark said.

“Drug use continues to grow around the world, millions of people are imprisoned for drug possession, and millions more are unnecessarily contracting HIV and hepatitis C because of lack of access to effective harm reduction measures.

“You’re ahead of us with the establishment of these rooms and I would certainly encourage New Zealand and local government leaders, ministers, NGOs to get right across this to try to get a movement in New Zealand to establish these services.”

Aleksandra Bliszczyk is a Senior Reporter for VICE Australia. You can follow her on Instagram here, or on Twitter here.