The Australian Capital Territory has legalised hard drugs including heroin, cocaine, MDMA and ice by stealth.

It had already legalised marijuana.

The Australian revealed today that the ACT’s “health” minister Rachel Stephen-Smith boasted to a room of activists at the ALP national conference in Brisbane this week of sneaking the laws through.

“We took it to the election quietly,” she was heard to say in a leaked recording.

“But we could point to our platform and say ‘it’s in there’, so that after the election we were able to work on it quickly.

“It was done through a private member’s Bill, which means it could be done much more quickly.

“If the government had tried to do it, I tell you what it would have taken two years to develop the legislation … and we would have had to deal with all this risk aversion and complexity.”

The Australian reported:

“The laws – which will come into effect from October – decriminalise the possession of 1.5g or less of amphetamine, cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA and magic mushrooms and 1g or less of ­heroin. The possession of 0.001g or less of LSD will also be decriminalised.”

This is how the ACT’s Labor-Green coalition government rolls.

The radical left and the libertarian right have given up on the war on drugs and are allowing young people, in particular, to play with fire.

Cities like San Francisco in the United States run by Democrats have become ‘Gothomised’ with drug use and crime rampant.

While drugs are of course hard to police, no good has ever come from the state-sanctioning of them.

Murder is also hard to police but society doesn’t decriminalise it.

Sadly, the Canberra Liberals did not put up a fight.

They were happy to go along with a Parliamentary report recommending the “investigation” of decriminalising hard drugs.

That was their first mistake. They should have opposed even the opening of the door to such harm.

Now they claim to have been mislead.

The Australian reports:

ACT opposition health spokeswoman Leanne Castley said the notion that the committee had recommended the kinds of ­reforms now legislated by the ­government was “incorrect” and said the Liberals had only supported the call for more investigation on the matter.

“This report called for an ­investigation,” Ms Castley said. “Certainly it didn’t give the go-ahead to introduce legislation.

“When the Bill came in, we put a dissenting report in through that committee process. It was all just so sneaky and … calculated.”

Family First looked back through the report and can find no record of a dissenting report from the Canberra Liberals.

They have certainly waged no public campaign.

Family First is gearing up to run candidates at next year’s ACT election who will fight to protect families from the radical policies of Labor and the Greens.