Former Magistrate David Heilpern said that making low level cannabis busts is a common preoccupation for police these days, in a similar manner to prior practices involving arresting people over sex work or partaking in gay sex once was, which were useless acts of turning a policing profit whilst enforcing Christian morality in an aggressive a manner as possible.
“That is not public priority, that is policing priority” Heilpern expressed.
”In effect, what parliament has done by keeping cannabis illegal is empower the police to set their own priorities that put child sexual abuse, domestic violence secondary to these ongoing drug offences. In my 22 years as a magistrate, I never issued one warrant for a domestic violence offence. I never issued one warrant for a child sex offence” Heilpern set out. “It was all drugs. This is the policing priority that we have allowed to exist”.
Heilpern pointed to the wider use of drug laws in regard to policing bikie gangs and he expressed that the whole dilemma around those groups is simply about drug prohibition, and that if prohibition was removed then those issues would disburse, as would many of the other harms associated with drugs.
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3 September, 2024