‘We are losing this fight’: Why a former St Kilda president wants drugs decriminalised

Former St Kilda Football Club president Rod Butterss has joined calls for the decriminalisation of drugs in Australia.

He told Tom Elliott the only sector of the community currently benefiting from Australia’s drug laws were criminals.

“I don’t mean to be controversial, or seen as a radical, but we are losing this fight and people are dying,” he said on 3AW Drive.

Mr Butterss, a recovering addict himself, said statistics showed 43 per cent of Australians would use drugs at least once in their lives.

He said there was no reason that number would increase, should drugs be decriminalised and regulated like alcohol and tobacco.

“We’ve seen in the past number of years that 28 different countries have gone through a process of decriminalising and the overwhelming evidence is that the usage has not increased,” he said.

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