This week, we’re asking you whether you feel safe in Canberra. Photo: File.
Opinions are mixed on the impact of the ACT’s move to decriminalise possessing a small quantity of drugs for personal use. Our latest poll results indicate readers are equally unsure where they sit on the question of harm minimisation as opposed to criminal regulation.
There were fears that decriminalisation would prompt a significant increase in crime.
Rob McGuigan wrote: “I hope ACT residents like getting burgled and having their vehicles stolen because that’s coming to an ACT residence either yours or your neighbours very shortly.”
But Kevin Parker noted: “Drug use is a health problem not a criminal problem. If people commit crimes to fund their drug problem well then, yeah, give them the full hand of the law.”
We asked Do you agree with decriminalising illicit drugs for personal use in the ACT? A total of 1345 readers voted.
Your options were to vote No, drug use will increase and so will the dangers for the rest of us. This received 60 per cent of the total, or 804 votes. Alternatively, you could vote Yes, this is a social problem and criminalising it is pointless. This received 40 per cent of the total, or 541 votes.
This week, we’re wondering whether you feel safe in Canberra.
While there’s much to be resolved about how the stabbing incident at the ANU unfolded, it’s bound to prompt questions about how the person alleged to have committed the crime came to be at large on the same campus where he perpetrated an attack on students and staff in 2017.
There are always suggestions that Canberra’s approach to crime is soft – that perpetrators are treated with kid gloves, overdone levels of understanding and too much benefit of the doubt.
Police say they are understaffed and point out they lose a percentage of recruits every year to the AFP, meaning various target areas aren’t as well staffed with senior officers as the Chief Police Officer would like.
But statistically, crime rates in the ACT have been falling in recent years. The CPO also points out that external factors driving crime in other cities, like the explosion in opioid rise in Melbourne, are not an issue here.
There were plenty of comments about the perceived freedoms offered to drug addicts, compared to the level of police supervision for traffic offences. But Tim Mak wrote: “These kinds of incidences occur on a daily basis in Sydney and Melbourne suburbs. I’m sure Canberra is fine.”
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