The National Drug Strategy and Indigenous Australians: Missed opportunities and future challenges

Abstract

In 2003 Jim Rankin gave the 11th of the Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs (APSAD) Annual Orations in his name in which he took a long look at Australia�s response to substancerelated problems [1]. Jim identified what he called Australia�s pivotal opportunity to develop effective policy responses from 1985 onwards through the National Campaign against Drug Abuse (NCADA), later known as the National Drug Strategy (NDS). Jim Rankin also identified our failure to work effectively with Indigenous people to prevent what he called the �ravages of substance use�. Here, I focus on the early years of the NDS and its impact on alcohol and other drug prevention and treatment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.This is not the whole story of what has eventuated since then, but is an important part of it. The question I would like to explore is whether, in the case of Indigenous Australians, we made the most of the pivotal opportunity that presented itself in 1985?