Of course this will make crime "escalate" it will drive drug addicts into the "closet" meaning instead of being honest and truthful they will lie. The problem with the so called "war on drugs" is that it drives many who would otherwise seek help to hide and not get help out of fear of being arrested for their addictions when they seek rehab or programs of recovery. This "law" will do much the same, giving yet one more reason why people should "hide" their addiction. Once they lie to hide their addiction to collect welfare they will be afraid to seek help thinking they will lose their welfare because they lied about their addiction. This will drive many to stay in a life of addiction, hiding and cowering out of fear of punishment. Societies need to come into the 21st century and see drug addiction as a medical issue, not a legal one. They also need to legalize and tax and regulate those drugs, providing pharmacies who will sell the drugs - drugs that are processed and manufactured in government regulated factories where purity, and the potential deadly by products are controlled, and safely dealt with. Taxing and selling legal variations of many drugs will, ultimately, lead to taking money from crime and terrorists who do sell and deal in drugs because it is very, very profitable. The reality is that 25 years ago a 1/4 gram of speed costs $25.00 (US) Today it costs $25.00 (US) for a 1.4 gram of speed on the street. While everything else has suffered huge inflationary mark-ups in price, meth has not. This tells us that meth is super cheap to manufacture thus there is no real impact on the materials and production of meth even though the price of everything else is through the roof. The reality is that a 1/4 gram of speed costs something like 50 cents to make - all else is pure profit. That profit is highly attractive to organized crime and terrorists. If the government manufactured and sold meth (as example) it could sell it for $10.00 1/4 gram and break the banks on every terrorist organization and crime syndicate that manufactures and sells meth. Times that times pot, heroine, coke, etc, etc, etc....

only if your a liberal voter are you going to believe its not going to go up...john howard is a fool if he thinks it won't ...just another piece of American arse about thinking he has brought in ...FACTS not 1 thing the U.S. has done in its so called war on drugs has worked ...not 1 and the billions it has wasted so why is Australia starting to follow the U.S. ...bloody joke it is but its on us !!...so no this will not work and the crime rate WILL go up ...its the same as this fools gun laws ...never gunna work and they haven't !!