Rules and Practices: The "British System" in Australia

The article discusses the implementation of legislation concerning "dangerous drugs" in Australia from the 1930s. Although these laws and regulations clearly prohibited their consumption for non-medical purposes and their prescription "merely for the purposes of addiction," a system developed which nevertheless allowed the continued maintenance of addicts under medical supervision and remained in place until the 1960s. Contrasts are drawn between the image of evil drug use, which was addressed by legislation and condemned by politicians, and the reality of addiction in Australia, which was in practice tolerated and treated as an illness rather than as a vice. The existence of this double standard is used to highlight the fact that the reality of drug use and drug enforcement cannot simply be gleaned by interpreting laws: their administration and the social practices with which they must interact often change and modify their effect in a complex manner.

The Question of Maintenance: Alternative Approaches

While politicians and policymakers are in danger of ignoring the historical reasons for the development of current drug laws and the contingency of their social construction, legal historians are in danger of evoking too simple an explanation. It is easy to assume, as most writers in this area do, that legislative form corresponds to social reality. But, at times, certain practices and kinds of behaviour continue regardless of the words of the law. Changing the law does not always change the world. It is important, therefore, not only to seek answers to questions concerning the growth of legal structures, but to recognise the complex interaction between laws and society.

For reasons more to do with the interpretative and formative power of institutions and the pressure of international influences, than as a reaction to any real or perceived "drug problem," Australia had developed by about 1930 a system of control over "dangerous drugs" broadly similar to that of other English-speaking countries (Manderson supra and sources there cited). It would however be a mistake to understand drug use in Australia purely by a consideration of this legislative structure. In doing so one would be misled both in relation to who were drug users, and how they were treated. The reality of drug use in Australia, perhaps as late as 1960, was concealed rather than explained by legislation.

One central issue that arose throughout the world in the administration of these new drug laws was whether it was legal for doctors to prescribe "dangerous drugs" not for the treatment of disease, but simply to "maintain" the addict on a controlled dose of their drug of addiction. In the United States, the Harrison Act 1914, 38 Stat 785 (USA), ostensibly a revenue-gathering measure, was soon used by the Treasury Department to enforce their belief that addiction was immoral and had to be stamped out. The prescription of drugs to addicts to ease or prevent the pain of withdrawal was forbidden by regulation, and "clinics" which had been established after the passage of the act to provide a legal source of drugs for users, were forcibly closed. In 1919, the Supreme Court in Webb v. USA (1919) 249 US 96 held this regulation legal, reasoning without hearing medical argument, that opiate maintenance was not a legitimate medical practice, and therefore, not permitted by the Act. Clearly, the treatment of addicts was not seen to be a medical question at all. The Internal Revenue Service and later the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) enforced this policy vigorously; as the power and influence of the FBN grew under Harry Anslinger, the image of the addict as evil and degenerate triumphed. Drug users were to be punished, not treated (see Musto 1973; Helmer 1975; Lindesmith 1965, 1978; Peyrot 1984).

In Britain, a similar (dispute arose as to whether the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920 10 & 11 Geo V c.40 (UK) should be used to prevent the medical prescription of drugs to addicts. The Rolleston Report (1926), established by and adopting the medical perspective of the, U.K. Department of Health in opposition to the line being pushed by Malcolm Delevingne at the Home Office, laid down guidelines on drug policy that were to entrench the autonomy of doctors for forty years. Central to those guidelines was its rejection of the law enforcement approach to addiction (Parsinnen 1983:183-194, Berridge and Edwards 1981:288-290). The report concluded that habitual drug use "must be regarded as a manifestation of disease, and not as a mere form of vicious indulgence" (in Berridge and Edwards 1981:288). In contrast to the United States, the report therefore insisted on the right of a doctor to treat addicted patients in any way they chose, including by maintenance. Addiction to heroin or morphine was not prohibited if the user's supply was authorised and supervised by a doctor. It is this practice, which survived unchanged until the second Brain Committee Report (1965), which came to be known as "the British system."

The same issue required bureaucratic interpretation in Australia as overseas, indeed the provisions adopted by various Australian states by 1930 suggested a rejection of maintenance as legitimate medical practice more strongly than the words of either the Harrison Act 1914, 38 Stat 785 (US) or of The Opium and Narcotic Drug Acts (Can) prior to 1929 (see in particular The Opium and Drug Act SC 1911 c.17; The Opium and Narcotic Drug Act 1923SC 1923 c.22; contrast The Opium and Narcotic Drug Act 1929SC 1929 c.49 s.16(2)). The 1927 New South Wales Government Gazette No. 120, 30 August 1927, r.22; Dangerous Drug Regulations1930 (Vic), Gazette No. 12, r.16):

A medical practitioner...shall not

(a) knowingly give a prescription for a drug merely for purposes of addiction

(b) knowingly supply or administer a drug merely for purposes of addiction.

Nevertheless, the interpretation which this regulation received depended upon the class of the addict in question.

The late 1920s saw the emergence in Sydney and Melbourne of a small underclass culture of cocaine use, especially among prostitutes who, although principally prosecuted for cocaine possession, were involved in the organisation of the traffic too (see Sydney Morning Herald 11 May 1928:6; 26 September 1928:12; 1 May 1930:8; 8 August 1929:13; 19 January 1929:22; 30 November 1929:19; 2 August 1930:10). As McCoy has discussed (1980:117-140), outcry over their use led to the enactment of the New South Wales Police Offences Amendment (Drugs) Act 1927 Geo V No. 7, which made the prosecution of users easier by criminalising not just sale but mere possession, and increased penalties around the country. "Why not shoot them?" interjected an honourable member in debate on amendments designed to "toughen up" the law as it effected cocaine sellers in Victoria in 1925. "It might be desirable," agreed Dr Argyle, adding with some regret that "it is not done in civilized countries" (Victorian Parliamentary Debates 1925:115). The leader of the Labor party, Mr. Prendergast, was not behind his opposite number in his condemnation of drug addicts (Victorian Parliamentary Debates 1925:506):

Their very natures have been changed, and they have made themselves objectionable to the whole community . The habit is one of the worst possible with a human being. A victim of drunkenness is not to be compared with a drug fiend.

The Development or Legal Maintenance in Australia

In contrast, while cocaine use among prostitutes and "the underworld" attracted media attention and severe penalties, the maintenance of a sizeable number of middle-class addicts continued as a settled policy requiring the connivance not only of state law enforcement agencies and health departments, but the Commonwealth government. It is important to emphasize in this context the role of the Commonwealth Department of Health as an outsider institution committed to a non-law enforcement approach to drug control. Although the Commonwealth had no legislative competence over the sale or use of drugs, its exclusive power over import and export gave considerable leverage, since no "dangerous drugs" were manufactured or grown in the country and everything, therefore, had to be imported. The importer was required (Commonwealth of Australia Gazette No. 71, 12 September 1914, cl.4), inter alia, to "give an undertaking, in writing, that he will be responsible for the making of reasonable inquiries . . .with a view to assuring himself that such goods are intended for medicinal use only."

In practice, the delivery by importers to chemists or doctors of unusually large amounts of morphine or heroin required the approval of the Customs Department in consultation, following its establishment in 1921, with the Department of Health. Doctors who wished to prescribe large quantities of heroin or morphine to their patients, either to treat a serious illness, to maintain addiction at a steady level or effect a gradual withdrawal, were obliged to get the approval of the Commonwealth Department of Trade and Customs, acting on the advice of the Director-General of Health Dr. Cumpston.

It was the status of the Health Department as advisor, without a vested interest in the promotion of enforcement as the correct way to treat drug problems, which ensured that the department consistently approved such applications and rejected the treatment of applicants as criminals or drug fiends. In contrast to Canada (Solomon and Green 1982; Green 1979; Small 1978), the Department of Health was assigned a role of advice without power. It had no laws to enforce: importation was dealt with by Customs, while health laws were a state responsibility. Removed from questions of law enforcement, it maintained that "the drug problem" was medical and not criminal, and that the solution did not necessarily lie in more laws and tougher penalties.

The Department of Health self-consciously operated as a source of alternative views concerned with the welfare of users and not the legal structure of control. Many of the applicants needed morphine or heroin not because of any chronic pain, but because they were addicted. The department's policy (Director-General of Health Dr. J. Cumpston, 8 February 1922 in Australian Archives (ACT):CA17; CRS A1928, 290/8, Morphine and other Narcotic Drugs, Supplies to local Medical Practitioners (1921-1935)) was that, provided the addicted user was being prescribed the drug by a medical practitioner and being supplied by only one chemist, the additional amount of the drug needed to fulfil their requirements was maintenance was seen as an appropriate treatment within the discretionary authority of individual Practitioners.

For example (Australian Archives (ACT):CA 17; CRS A1928, 290/8, Morphine and other Narcotic Drugs, Supplies to local Medical Practitioners (1921-1935)), one patient of a Dr. S__ was originally prescribed 240 grains of morphine in 1922; this was raised to 480 grains (one ounce) the following year, 600 grains in 1925 and slightly more in 1928. The patient consumed "under careful supervision" at least an ounce of morphia per month for at least ten years. Whatever the purpose of the original prescription, she or he was addicted to morphine. Yet no determined attempt was made to lessen the dose, and no questions were raised about their addiction.

Of the patients specifically referred to in the surviving Commonwealth files, who were in turn only a proportion of those actually dealt with by the department, at least ten--over half--were doctors. In the early years, doctors appear to have been entitled to "treat" themselves without interference. Under the policy stated by Dr. Cumpston in 1932, however, "medical drug addicts" were not permitted to continue in practice, and could no longer prescribe for themselves. Later, it was also recommended that the drug being prescribed for them (usually morphine) should be reduced at the rate of 5 % per month (Australian Archives (ACI'):CA17; CRS A1928, 290/8, Morphine and other Narcotic Drugs, Supplies to Local Medical Practitioners (1921-1935)). This policy was never enforced. Dr. E___, for example (Australian Archives:CA10; CRS A425, 42/2168 Prohibited Drugs Addiction), who had first taken morphine on the field of Gallipoli during the first World War, continued to consume it, "half [out of] habit and half necessity." Despite fitful attempts to give it up, and lapses in which he secretly tried to obtain more than he was allowed, the maintenance of his addiction was still continuing as late as 1940.

In response to this flexible approach, the Department of Trade and Customs, whose role in the field of drug policy was indeed concerned principally with law enforcement, at times raised objections. In 1931, Dr. Cumpston's policy was queried following the enactment of state regulations which declared that a medical practitioner was not to "knowingly give a prescription for a dangerous drug merely for the purpose(s) of addiction." This squarely raised the issue of whether maintenance was to be considered illegal, in line with the U.S. model. The Department of Health, however, decided that the regulation which prohibited prescribing "merely for the purpose of addiction" did not interfere with the discretion of doctors to treat their patients in any way they saw fit: maintenance did not constitute prescribing "merely" for the purpose of addiction. Although Dr. Cumpston advised (Australian Archives (ACT):CA17; CRS A1928, 290/9, Morphine and other Narcotic Drugs, Supplies to local Medical Practitioners (1921-1935)) that in the case of what he termed "a pure drug addict," efforts should be made to reduce the patient's drug dependence, no attempt was made to actively enforce the instruction. A 1929 file note relating to the relevant New South Wales regulation clarified the point (Archive Office of New South Wales, Chief Secretary Special Bundle, 5/5413):

When the Regulations were framed the view was held, after very careful consideration, that the position would be met by providing a means by which the "addict" by becoming a "patient" could obtain whatever quantity of the drug his medical adviser [sic] considered necessary for his requirements.

The same kind of regulation that was used in the United States and Canada to suppress maintenance was in Australia interpreted in such a way as to justify it. The particular patterns of drug use in Australia and the dynamics and values at work within administrative institutions both combined to allow the continuation of a "pre-modem" system of drug control despite the radically different and modem control system, which a reading of the words of the legislation alone might suggest had replaced it.

The issue of the maintenance of addiction was again raised by the Department of Trade and Customs in the 1937 case of Mrs. G__ (Australian Archives:CA10; CP723/1, Papers relating to narcotic drugs 1929-1959, Submissions & c). Customs sought a gradual reduction in the dosage prescribed to her, against the wishes of her doctor, who insisted that "it would be inhuman to deprive this patient of a prescribed allowance," The Department of Health again defended the doctor's right to prescribe, significantly quoting from the Rolleston Report. It was concluded that "it would appear that undue pressure would tend to drive Mrs. [___] to seek sources of supply which might not be so readily ascertainable." Even as the development of tough penalties and strict controls was justified in the press and in parliament by reference to the evils of the addict and the vice of addiction, addicted users from respectable society and an earlier era found protection and legitimacy. The reality of middle-class drug use was far from the words of the law and of politicians.

Unsurprisingly, the policy of maintenance in Australia, especially as it related to medical addicts, was not publicised or publicly discussed; police officers and judges seemed unaware of its existence. In answer to a League of Nations questionnaire in 1936, Senior Constable Brown, reporting to the Victorian government, stated (Public Records Office of Victoria, VA860, VPRS 3992, 37/176) that:

I know that nearly every prostitute in Melbourne is a drug addict and the use of cocaine is prevalent amongst these women and the criminal class ... I am informed that no member of the above professions [doctors, dentists, vets and chemists] is known as an addict of any drug.

Another survey circulated among the states on behalf of the League of Nations the following year elicited the categorical reply from the Tasmanian premier that there were "nil" addicts in the medical profession. Yet the Commonwealth files discussed above, which seem little more than a sample of the actual cases dealt with by the government, specifically discuss at that time two Tasmanian doctors, including a surgeon at Hobart General Hospital (Australian Archives (ACT):CA7; CRS A981, League of Nations Opium 31; see also Australian Archives (ACT):CA17; CRS A1928, 290/8, Morphine and other Narcotic Drugs, Supplies to local Medical Practitioners (1921-1935)).

Maintenance After World War II: The Changing Reality

The application of a double standard to the addictive use of drugs was by no means a uniquely Australian phenomenon. The 1920 Report of the American Public Health Association's Committee on Habit Forming Drugs, having first expressed the need for sympathy and patience in the treatment of addicts, went on to say (quoted in Courtwright 1982:139) that "vicious, degenerate and criminal types should be handled on [that] basis ... and treated ... in places suitable to their personal or class characteristics." Likewise U.S. Surgeon General Rupert Blue (quoted in Courtwright 1982:142) distinguished between "legal or medical addicts" whose habitual use stemmed from illness or infirmity, and who were entitled to continue to receive supplies of morphine on prescription: "The second class may be called 'drug addicts' or dissipators. . . These are the real addicts, and include psychopaths, neurotics, and criminals." It seems that, despite the ostensible inflexibility of the Harrison Act, many medical addicts continued to be supplied on prescription by their doctors, and that this practice was endorsed by the American Medical Association (Courtwright 1982:140).

The situation which prevailed in Australia, however, is distinguishable because medically-maintained addicts formed a sizeable proportion of all illicit drug users; the maintained population included not just persons suffering from acute or chronic illness for whom habituation was a continuing side-effect, but also people whose drug consumption now only served the purpose of feeding their addiction; and the program of maintenance required significant and at times express government involvement. The situation in Australia fell half-way, then, between the explicit policy of the United Kingdom and the ad hoc approach adopted in the United States. Yet the fact that "the British system" operated in Australia has never been publicly recognised, preoccupied as analysts have been by the words of legislation abstracted from the meaning administrators gave them and the social reality in which they operated.

The maintenance of addicts survived virtually unchallenged during the 1950s. The comptroller-general of Customs, F.A. Meere, indicated how common drug maintenance was, when he wrote in 1955 that (Australian Archives (ACT):CA10; CRS A425, 55/2477 Drugs and Addiction) "very few addicts other than opium addicts obtain their drugs from illicit sources. Most addicts to refined drugs obtain their supplies under medical supervision." The majority of these addicts, as before the war, were over fifty; almost none were under thirty-five. In most states, moreover, the proportion of medical professionals registered as addicts remained high. Of the nineteen additional addicts notified by Victoria from 1954-1957, for example, eight were members of the "medical and allied professions" and sixteen of the forty-three noted in total (see Australian Archives (ACT):CA18; A1838, 933/3/1 Drugs general, Annual Report by Australia; Public Record Office of Victoria, VA 860, VPRS 4723, 62/H3586 Narcotic Drugs; Archive Office of New South Wales, Chief Secretary General Correspondence 1959, A59/927 Annual Report).

The extent to which maintenance was subject to government control varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In New South Wales and Victoria, the question of prescribing drugs of addiction for the purpose of maintenance was a matter within the sole discretion of the medical practitioner involved, subject to the supervision exercised by the Commonwealth government. The premier of New South Wales explained in 1947 (Australian Archives (ACT):CA10; CRS A425, 58/23165 Narcotic Drugs--Addiction in Australia) that "there is no power [under State law] that they shall institute disintoxication ... At best they may become stabilised on a certain dose." In Tasmania, according to a 1950 Customs' memo (Australian Archives (ACT):CA10; CRS A425,58/2090 Prohibited Drugs--Control of), there was "no policing or enforcement of the law relating to narcotic drugs at all."

In Queensland the policy of the maintenance of addiction under medical supervision was more institutionalised, openly acknowledged and far-reaching in its scope than elsewhere in Australia. The Poisons Regulations of 1940 (Queensland Government Gazette No. 118, 15 November 1940, r.54) specifically acknowledged and provided for "treating a drug addict [with] rational supplies of any dangerous drug . . . at [the Director-General's] discretion." This institutionalisation extended not only to white middle-class addicts, but also to a substantial number of aging Chinese opium smokers. Since opium prepared for smoking was illegal to possess, use or import under Commonwealth and state law, these Chinese users were supplied instead with tincture of opium (laudanum). In 1955, for example, there were thirty-four Australians of European descent receiving morphine, pethidine or, in a few cases, methadone under the control of the Queensland government, and sixty-eight Chinese (Archive Office of New South Wales, Chief Secretary General Correspondence 1959, A59/927; Australian Archives (ACT):CA10; CRS A425, 58/2090 Prohibited Drugs--Control of; Public Records Office of Victoria, VA 860, VPRS 4723, 62/H3586 Narcotic Drugs).

In the history of white Australia's dealings with other races this was a tolerance breathtaking if not for its extent, then for its rarity. Chinese opium smokers, having been hounded and prosecuted for over half a century, were finally left in peace not because of any new understanding of the dangers of opium, far less because of any change in the law, but simply because their declining numbers made them no longer a threat. Administrative practice proved flexible enough to treat the aging smokers in a new way while the operative legislation remained unaltered.

In the light of this policy, the Queensland government was therefore confidently able to assert (Archive Office of New South Wales, Chief Secretary General Correspondence 1959, A59/927) that "all known addicts receive their supplies from licit sources by licit means and no problems arise in policing of authorised supplies. "This last comment was by no means hyperbole. The lack of enforcement activity in Queensland was remarkable. In the decade from 1956, there were only two cases of prosecution for trafficking in or illegal possession of dangerous drugs (Premier's Department (Qld), In-letters--Batch 58: Traffic in Opium and other Drugs, Part 2). The confidence of the Queensland Department of Health in the effectiveness of its tolerant approach was fierce. In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, the policy of legally supplying addicts with drugs of addiction, followed to a greater or lesser extent throughout Australia, came increasingly to be discredited. By 1966 the Commonwealth clearly viewed it as an anachronism and wrote to the Queensland director-general to query the information in the latest annual report that twenty-six (non-Chinese) addicts received supplies from "licit sources by licit means. " The director-general replied (Premier's Department (Qld), In-letters-Batch 58: Traffic in Opium and Other Drugs, Part 2) "the information previously submitted was correct and does not require confirmation." In other words, the Commonwealth government was being told to mind its own business.

Nonetheless, the practice of maintenance did decline through the 1960s, not because of changing laws but the changing profile of drug users. By 1967 in New South Wales, and a few years later elsewhere in Australia, the day of the middle-class, middle-aged therapeutic addict was gone: only one recorded "addict" that year was over fifty years old, and 93.33% were under thirty-four. The new drug user was young, used drugs recreationally, and most often smoked marijuana. Statistics for other states, such as Victoria, were almost identical by 1973. The categorisations used by the Commonwealth in providing its annual report to the United Nations also changed dramatically. "Medical and allied professionals" accounted in 1973 for none of the addicts brought to the attention of the government; the category of "housewife" had disappeared altogether and instead the government noted the number of "students" and "unemployed" (Public Records Office of Victoria, VA 467; VPRS 1163, P68/2246 Control of Drugs; Public Records Office of Victoria, VA 860; VPRS 4723, 62/H3586; Public Records Office of Victoria, VA 467; VPRS 1163, P68/2246 Control of Drugs; Public Records Office of Victoria, VA 695; VPRS 6345, Z79/IV Poisons Act 1962).

Police activity at the same time rose markedly. According to McCoy (1980:261) New South Wales police arrested nine people on charges relating to the use or possession of drugs of addiction or prohibited drugs in 1959, thirty-one in 1965, ninety-eight in 1966 and 1,151 in 1972.

Legal maintenance was unable to cope with the changing demography of drug use. Maintenance of heroin addicts by the legal prescription of heroin was impossible following the Commonwealth government's absolute prohibition of the importation of heroin in 1953 (Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 25 June 1953). Maintenance, which implied addiction, dependence and withdrawal, was inapplicable and nonsensical in the case of cannabis. In addition, morphine, pethidine, heroin and opium maintenance had perhaps operated successfully in Australia because of the small number of people with which it had dealt. In most jurisdictions it had operated without direct government supervision and with little public or political recognition of its existence. The small number of people who were dealt with in this way made such an approach workable. But with increased drug use in the sixties, a low-key, personalized treatment modality based on individual medical discretion became impractical.

Furthermore, medical maintenance, whether controlled or merely tolerated by state governments, had dealt almost exclusively with either middle-class therapeutic addicts or again Chinese opium smokers. Young cannabis and heroin users, on the other hand, aroused quite different reactions. Their use was intentional, and therefore, an immediate affront to the rule of law; it was recreational and therefore a challenge to medical dominance over drugs. Their very youth branded them as external to the loci of power in society. The drug use of these people challenged the medico-legal drug control club as their morphine-dependent parents never had. The rhetoric about drug laws, which had always assumed that drug users were criminal and deviant, now began to correspond more closely with reality. By 1972 there were only twenty-four legal addicts in Queensland left and, although as late as 1968 some legally maintained addicts remained in Victoria, the following year the practice ceased entirely (Public Records Office of Victoria, VA 695; VPRS 6345, Z79/IV Poisons Act 1962).

Conclusion

Prior to the 1960s the image of criminal, deviant, recreational drug users did not correspond with the reality of drug use. Regardless of the way in which drug laws were justified, drug use kept largely to established nineteenth century patterns. The administration of drug legislation recognized this and established procedures by which middle-class therapeutic addicts continued to have access to the drug of their choice under medical supervision. Although drug legislation in Australia was broadly similar to that enacted in Canada and the United States, its interpretation by administrative bodies was very different.

Four general points can accordingly be made: First, it is impossible to understand what a law "means" simply by reading it. How a law operates in the community, and indeed how the same laws operate in various communities, is often a different matter altogether. Second, laws do not just exist in the abstract. They are enforced and given substance by organs of government, and that reification is itself a vital act of interpretation which effects the actual meaning of laws. Neither is this interpretative function in any way neutral. It is governed by the historical circumstances and perceived objectives of those seized of it. In Australia, as in the very different history of the United States drug laws, bureaucracies "made" laws by interpreting and putting them into effect, and they did so as a function of their own exigencies and as a product of their own partial perspective.

Third, the passage of legislation does not magically change social behaviour. Sometimes reality has a way of obdurately continuing, although some piece of paper has tried to legislate it out of existence. As Mr. Conroy pointed out in the Commonwealth Parliament when the first controls over the import of heroin were instituted (Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates 1905:1778):

Honorable members, in spite of the experience as to the futility of laws for putting down the evil habits of the people, are, nevertheless, ready to pass an Act for the prohibition of the opium traffic in the full belief that the evil will at once disappear.

The history of twentieth century drug laws has been to a large extent governed by the assumption that if only we make laws tough enough and thorough enough, undesirable drug use can be wiped Out. The "war on drugs" has been fought on paper. But people's lives are lived in flesh and blood, and the durability of their social practices should always be borne in mind.

Finally, the existence of the "British system" in Australia is relevant to the current debate on heroin policy, and in particular in respect to whether its legal use under medical prescription can be made to work. Certainly it is true that the same demographic changes in the United Kingdom led to the recall of the Brain Committee and the modification of doctors' freedom to maintain their addicted patients. But, unlike Australia, heroin maintenance has not been totally abandoned. In this respect, the "outsider" status of the Commonwealth Department of Health proved to be its Weakness, for it did not in the 1960s have the power to impose its independent vision of drug policy upon the government. The attitude of the Customs Department prevailed. While outside the narrow furrows of bureaucratic thought, the Department of Health was also, ultimately, outside the corridors of power. This suggests that the decline of legal maintenance in Australia was not necessary or inevitable but, like its rise, a product of contingent institutional dynamics.

It may also be argued that the maintenance of addiction in Australia worked only because of the small numbers involved. It is certainly true that the great expansion in users in the 1960s made the ad hoc system in place unacceptable. However, that was a consequence not of the system itself but of the essentially covert manner in which it operated. The "British system" could not go on the same way, not because it could not handle the numbers, but because it could not handle the publicity. Legalized maintenance, openly operating, would not face the same problems.

In fact the central reason for the demise of maintenance in Australia was simply the social unacceptability of "new" users. Neither the medical profession nor the bureaucracy were prepared to treat young, poor, unemployed, criminal, or otherwise deviant users with the same respect which they willingly accorded those who were middle class and middle aged. The same prejudice which at first gave "respectable" users, a process by which they could continue to feed their addiction despite the language of the law, finally defeated the process itself. That prejudice remains the problem. The, operation of the "British system" in Australia shows not only the hypocrisy of the operation of drug legislation, but the fact that drug maintenance, if viewed as unproblematic, can work. It was and remains a question not of practicalities, but of our attitudes. Are we prepared to treat all drug addicts, regardless of their background, past, or problems, as individuals undeserving of punishment and worthy of care?

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Desmond Manderson, B.A. (Hons), LL.B. (Hons), is studying at the institute of Comparative Law, McGill University. Much of the research for this paper was completed when the author was engaged as a Visiting Fellow in the Department of History, ANU, under a grant provided by the Australian Department of Community Services and Health, National Campaign Against Drug Abuse, Research Into Drug Abuse Grant Scheme, for whose assistance the author is greatly appreciative.