CAHMA executive director Chris Gough now has a stable life after years of addiction. Photo: Mitch Lamb, CAHMA.
Chris Gough has been taking methadone tablets for 20 years – and says they have saved him.
“It took me a decade to stop using heroin after starting the methadone program, but now – now I’m stable,” he says.
“I haven’t used heroin in over five years, and it’s allowed me to hold down a job, be a good family member, and just have a stable life again.”
It’s two years since the ACT became the first Australian jurisdiction to decriminalise small amounts of illicit drugs, including cocaine, heroin, ice and MDMA.
Mr Gough, executive director of the Canberra Alliance for Harm Minimisation and Advocacy (CAHMA), joined community members, families, alcohol and drug service providers, and advocates at an annual ceremony remembering lives lost to overdose in Canberra.
The event also highlighted the work that remains to be done.
“This year’s Penington Overdose Report revealed that 2272 people have died in the last year — this is the equivalent of losing more than a Boeing 737 full of Australians each month — and 80 per cent of this overdose toll is accidental,” said Alexandra Hogan, Uniting NSW/ACT social justice lead.
“Every overdose death is a tragedy for the community, and every overdose death is entirely preventable. There are sensible, evidence-based and fair solutions that we know will save lives and help keep the people we love safe.”
Since the October 2023 law change, Canberrans caught with “personal use” amounts of illicit drugs have been fined or referred to drug counselling rather than facing criminal penalties.
“The idea behind it is that it’s a health – as opposed to a criminal justice – approach to drug use,” Mr Gough explains.
“It’s not necessarily meant to decrease overdose rates, but what it is meant to do is keep people out of the criminal justice system, because one of the harms people experience using drugs is getting a criminal record, and they start hiding their drugs instead of seeking help for it.”
However, the policy remains controversial.
The 2025 CAHMA Remembrance Day marked 30 years of the annual ceremony. Photo: CAHMA.
Last week, Canberra Liberals Deputy Leader Jeremy Hanson tabled a motion in the ACT Legislative Assembly calling for the repeal of the decriminalisation laws. He cited increases in drug-driving detections, drug-related hospital presentations, and non-fatal overdoses as evidence that the laws had not reduced harm.
Data shows cocaine use is up about 70 per cent since decriminalisation, heroin use up 30 per cent, and methamphetamine use up 40 per cent. There have been 16 suspected overdose deaths so far in 2025 and more than 1100 drug-related emergency presentations in 2024-25. Drug-driving charges are also up more than 20 per cent since 2022-23.
“I think decriminalisation on [the] whole is something that hasn’t worked, and the data is indicating that very, very, very plainly it hasn’t worked,” said Alex Caruana, president of the Australian Federal Police Association.
However, the same data has been criticised as not telling the whole story.
“For example … with regards to emergency department presentations, what you find is that the ambulance presentations have stayed stable,” David Caldicott, clinical lead at Pill Testing Australia and CanTEST, told the ABC.
“So more people are presenting to emergency departments under their own steam [after using drugs], and that probably suggests that they’re looking for advice, and they’re less scared than they have been.”
The ACT Government has contracted the University of NSW to evaluate the consequences of the law change, with results expected in March 2026. Researchers hope to interview people who have been stopped by police after being found with small quantities of drugs.
For now, Mr Gough says his own experience – and examples overseas – show the ACT is on the right track. He also rejects claims that decriminalisation incentivises drug use.
“It seems when you first look at it, that it’s a fairly obvious thing that would happen. But, in reality – and the evidence is in on this one – that decriminalising drugs actually doesn’t increase drug use,” he says.
“And the reason is, people are already using these drugs, and by criminalising them, we’re not actually stopping them. A lot of people do this kind of risk-taking when they’re young, and so having a drug that’s illegal is, in some way, almost adding to the appeal.”
More data on drug-use rates in the ACT will be available from March 2026. Photo: CAHMA.
Back in 1991, former ACT health minister Michael Moore proposed a trial that would have supplied heroin to 40 users in the ACT over six months to help wean them off it. The plan had the support of Chief Minister Kate Carnell but was ultimately quashed by Prime Minister John Howard.
Since then, several European countries, including Switzerland and England, have opened legalised drug consumption rooms with “really high success rates”, Mr Gough says. Over two decades, Switzerland has seen a 64 per cent drop in opioid-related deaths, alongside a significant reduction in new HIV infections.
“People stop having to commit crime to fund their heroin dependence, and then from there, their lives stabilise and they tend to stop using drugs altogether – that was the whole idea,” he says.
“The system in the ACT has really just formalised what ACT Policing were already doing—and that was diverting people with simple possession away from the criminal justice system and towards drug treatment.”
Visit the University of NSW to register your interest to help evaluate the consequences of the law change.
