Dr. Trevor Bradley

And as long as there's really good oversight mechanisms and there's really good evaluations attached to these programs, I really don't see what the problem is.

Yeah, well, in a sense, I can understand that.

But what it does, it's a very reductive kind of position to take.

The whole gang situation is a lot more nuanced and complex than that.

And, you know, I go back to the point that do we just cut these entire communities off from society?

Do we pretend that, you know, they don't exist?

They will continue despite all the punitive measures introduced by this coalition government.

Gang membership numbers are up, not down.

And we know that meth consumption rates are up and by a very significant degree.

So we are just cutting off our nose to spite our face, I think.

when we refuse to work with gangs or when we refuse to fund programs that are gang-related or are targeting gangs.

Yeah, very, very short-sighted as far as I can see.

We need to work with those communities, not against them.

You know, it doesn't mean to say that government funding is facilitating gang activity.

It's very specifically targeted at things like problematic drug use reduction, harm reduction.

If we can make some progress in that area, then that will have spin-off benefits as well in terms of the reduction of things like domestic violence and general types of violence that we know are associated with problematic meth use.

So it just seems to me that we have a coalition government that's talking about getting crime back under control and making communities safer or feel safer.

And this is an opportunity to make a contribution to that, which is just being cut off.

Absolutely.

Absolutely, if we can through the use of government funding assist some people to reduce their consumption or abstain completely,