E&OE.........
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, the General and I have just had a very valuable meeting. I've
extended an invitation to him to visit Australia. Nobody has a greater
overall focus on the drug issue in the United States than does he.
I therefore think his views on the issue would be very interesting
in Australia. We've talked about the various policy approaches in
our two countries and there's a great similarity of approach. He has
a particular but it's not obviously the limit of his interest, particular
interest in effective campaigns against drugs in sport. The discussion
I've had with him has reinforced in my own mind that we have the right
balance in Australia in seeing the drug problem is not being in any
way sold or mitigated by throwing up one's hands and giving up the
fight.
Legalisation is not the path to dealing with the problem that the
balance between education, effective interception and enforcement
and adequate investment in treatment. I was interested in what he
told me about Drug Courts in the United States, which is very similar
to the diversion policy that's being adopted in Australia and now
being implemented in cooperation with the State Governments. So I've
particularly welcomed the discussion that we've had General and I
certainly would welcome your visiting our country at some time that's
convenient to you because this is a world wide challenge and there's
a lot that we can learn from each other.
McCAFFREY:
Well thank you very much Mr Prime Minister. I must add that I've been
trying to get to Australia for some 50 some odd years now.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we'll do something about that.
McCAFFREY:
Who said something can't come out of these conferences? Let me first
of all thank you for the chance to share with the Prime Minister our
own thinking on our National Drug Control Strategy and you know these
ideas are not revolutionary, they're commonsense. We have based them
on some hard work by really three people in the US Government: Janet
Reno our Attorney General, Donna Shalala our Health and Human Services
Secretary and Dick Riley the Education Secretary and that's really
the heart and soul of what we are doing. We're trying to keep young
people off drugs until they're 18. We've got another 4 million Americans
that are chronically addicted. It's a huge problem - 5 per cent and
a half of the population but it's really the heart and soul of a lot
of the damage in America. The criminal justice system, the welfare
system, the health system. We're trying to effectively pull together
treatment and these other social systems and finally I told the Prime
Minister I was very impressed by his own delegation at Lausanne, Switzerland
during the International Olympic Committee. You know the central part
of what we're doing is trying to prevent chronic drug abuse but there's
this huge opportunity we have, the world community, to prevent what
is increasingly going on around the world which literally hundreds
of thousands of young people believe that to compete and win in national
or international competition you have to get involved in chemical
engineering of the human body. With disastrous results as we saw in
East Germany with steroid use, well now it's well beyond that. Artificial
testosterone, blood packing, just a tremendous challenge. And these
drugs are available over the internet whether you're in Uganda, Australia,
the United States so many of us went to Lausanne to the IOC to demand
reform, to ask for an independent testing agency for testing 365 days
a year to save samples so that future technology could unravel cheating.
And we want to do this not just to make sure that the record of the
top 100 swimmers on the face of the earth is ethically sound, we want
to do it because they're models for the human spirit and I think Australians
are better organised on this whole issue that almost anybody I've
listened to. There's a tremendous amount of interest and here in the
United States how can we guarantee both in Sydney and Salt Lake City
international competition that's based on raw human talent and spirit.
And so I've accepted the Prime Minister's invitation to go and learn
more about their own approaches to this.
I might add it's an approach that obviously can't be based simply
on interdiction, like the world is awash in heroin. I told the Prime
Minister we probably have 800,000 Americans using heroin out of 270
million of us, but they do incredible damage. We think they use 11
metric tonnes of heroin and we're reasonably sure the world produces
360 metric tonnes. So the world communities got a problem and the
damage it's done and meanwhile it's worse than it is and I would argue
in the United States and Australia where the world owes a global effort
to confront this situation.
So again, Mr Prime Minister, thanks for your leadership and I look
forward to a visit in November.
PRIME MINISTER:
A couple of quick questions.
JOURNALIST:
Did you canvass any new issues, any new strategies that could be employed
in either country on heroin in particular?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I think it's fair to say that we agreed that one or two strategies
that are in the air in Australia are not desirable such as heroin
shooting galleries. Neither of us thought there was any merit in going
down that path.
McCAFFREY:
I might add to that if you'd permit me. One of the things we are most
proud of, we have finally gotten a decent level of investment in our
National Institute of Drug Abuse, Dr Alan Leshner, and his colleagues.
About 600 some odd people. They are doing some absolutely breathtaking
research to deal with the consequences of drug abuse and its prevention.
But the last thing any of us believe one should do is give one of
these suffering creatures a heroin addict who is somebody's baby to
leave them with the addiction. Now, it would be like pouring alcohol
into an alcoholic. Drug treatment and therapeutic intervention can
work. We have got good studies that show you can take a tremendous
number of these people and break this behaviour. And that's what would
seem to me we owe the chronic drug abuser.
JOURNALIST:
In the same recent edition of the Washington Post that published
your very articulate article strongly opposing the legalising of drugs
like marijuana, it was reported in another story, the same edition,
that the US Army is now allowing the use of peyote for religious purposes
provided that none of the native American church soldiers who use
peyote are allowed to handle nuclear weapons. Now, I have.
McCAFFREY:
That piece is very encouraging.
JOURNALIST:
Do you believe peyote using US soldiers should be allowed to use other
weapons like sting missiles or stealth bombers and should they be
allowed to participate in the Olympics and that's a first part?
McCAFFREY:
Now, that's a question I rush to avoid. I don't know what to make
of all this. I mean, to be honest I shouldn't comment on a policy
I haven't studied. On the surface it looks goofy, it got wrapped up,
I am sure, in some very detailed legal issues that are based on Constitutional
principles. We absolutely do not believe that.we are so proud we are
having a drug-free armed forces, we don't want them using psychoactive
substances, we don't want them smoking cigarettes and we don't want
them abusing alcohol. And that's really the only useful [inaudible].
PRIME MINISTER:
Sorry, I have only got a limited amount of time. I apologise but I
have got to go and make a phone call in a minute.
JOURNALIST:
I am sorry, I have a question that doesn't have anything to do with
drugs but instead with the PNG. I have learned that you have been
discussing with IMF and World Bank regarding PNG and I am just wondering
that the, you know, that a country that was the first..
PRIME MINISTER:
Where are you from, what's your..
JOURNALIST:
Oh, I am sorry. My name is Mark [Inaudible], I am with the Economic
Daily News Taiwan. Australia was the first country in Pacific Asia
to warn the, you know, Chinese missile exercise in '96 and now it
is the country that first.the country to warn that the PNG's decision
to establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan will bring insecurity
to that area. That [inaudible] a strong protest from Taiwan. I am
just wondering that, can you share some of the discussions with IMF
and the World Bank on PNG's economic situation? And also your relationship
to Taiwan?
PRIME MINISTER:
Most of our discussion was about the internal situation in Papua New
Guinea. I don't know that I want to get in, at this gathering, into
a detailed discussion of that issue. I made some comments reaffirming
what is a longstanding Australian Government policy in relation to
recognition and the maintenance of a one China policy and also the
reaffirmed, the value we place on our longstanding and very good commercial
relationship with Taiwan.
JOURNALIST:
Are you satisfied, Mr Howard, that President Clinton and his advisers
are sufficiently alert to the dangers of the situation unfolding in
East Timor and what would you like to see them do?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I think it's fair to say that our discussion today we spent
more time, apart probably from the issue of lamb, we spent more time
talking about Indonesia and East Timor than any other issue. And I
know that they are very engaged in what is happening in East Timor.
I offered some views about what I believed was happening in Indonesia
proper. I have expressed my views on that before and the views I have
expressed publicly on that are consistent with the views that I expressed
privately to the President. And I thought as a result of our discussion
today he and the other senior members of the administration who were
present had a very detailed idea of what I and the Australian Government
thought about what was happening in Indonesia, what needed to be the
response of other countries and what was happening in East Timor.
Both of us were very seized of the need to remind the Indonesian Government
constantly of international attitudes towards their handling of the
situation in East Timor. One more question and then I really do have
to go and take a phone call.
JOURNALIST:
Could I ask General McCaffrey. In Australia quite a lot of money and
effort is already going into drug education and research and other
aspects of trying to counter the drug problem. Do you have any ideas
about what further can be done that might cause some sort of breakthrough
on this front?
McCAFFREY:
Well, of course in November I'd be very keen on learning more about
what the Australians are doing in their existing programmes and their
own thinking. We have an array of approaches we are taking. That is
the heart and soul. The central component of the National Drugs Strategy
is a reduction of drug abuse to include alcohol and nicotine by American
adolescents. So that's a central piece of what we are doing and there
is a series of programmes and education, health and human services
designed to minimise that. And they all begin with parents, homeroom
teachers, coaches, pediatricians. It's community level action. And
we are starting to see a pay-off. We are finally seeing the beginning
of the turning of the curve we believe. We have got to stay at it
for 10 years.
PRIME MINISTER:
Look, I really must go, I have got to make a phone call.
JOURNALIST:
Just on the lamb.
PRIME MINISTER:
I am lambed out. We have dealt with lamb at some length. I mean, my
view is well known, it has not changed, it's adamant but I don't know
that I can add anything.
JOURNALIST:
Are you preparing a retaliation against the United States?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, what form do you think that should take?
JOURNALIST:
[Inaudible] focussed here on alcohol and tobacco with children. Should
that be something that Australia can..
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we do it now. In fact Australia has probably been more successful
than any country in the world in reducing tobacco use. We still have
a long way to go. And it is part of it. I mean, one of the things
I have always found perplexing is that some of the people who are
the staunchest supporters of discouraging people from using tobacco
are amongst those who believe that you go in the other direction in
relation to marijuana and other drugs and I find that puzzling. Anyway,
I really, I must go.
[ends]