This front page on January 31, 1999 was instrumental in leading to the Drug Summit later that year.Credit: The Sun-Herald
Rather than responding to the Coalition’s lengthy $11 million inquiry into ice – which included recommendations to decriminalise drugs found in quantities for personal use, and the use of pill-testing sites at music festivals – Minns wanted Labor to hold its own summit.
As well as decriminalisation, the summit is likely to consider whether NSW should follow ACT and Queensland’s lead on pill-testing sites.
Key Labor ministers Rose Jackson and Jo Haylen have long been in favour of drug law reforms, and both were part of the parliamentary patrons of the NSW Labor for Drug Law Reform during the last term of parliament. Other Labor cabinet members share the views of Jackson and Haylen.
The NSW government will hold initial discussions with stakeholders to determine the terms of reference for its summit, but it intends to involve medical experts, police, people with lived and living experience, drug user organisations and families “to provide a range of perspectives and build consensus on the way NSW deals with drug use and harms”.
Minns said Labor was delivering on its election promise, which was to hold a summit in its first term.
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“We know that drug use impacts individuals, families and communities in many different ways. The drug summit will bring people together to find new ways forward to tackle this incredibly complex and difficult problem,” he said.
Carr’s landmark five-day summit in 1999 followed an unprecedented number of heroin overdoses and led to the establishment of the Kings Cross medically supervised injecting centre.
That summit was sparked after a photo ran on the front page of the Sun-Herald newspaper in January 1999 showing a 16-year-old boy using heroin intravenously.