New South Wales Greens push to ban sniffer dogs

The New South Wales Greens will introduce a bill to parliament calling for a ban on sniffer dog operations across the state, describing the current approach as wasteful, dangerous and ineffective.

Member for Newtown in Sydney's inner-west Jenny Leong and Greens MP David Shoebridge were joined at today's bill announcement by Australian producer Paul Mac and Dan McNamee of Art vs Science, who last year called for a ban at Splendour In The Grass to reduce overdose-related hospitalisations.

Speaking with inthemix, Mr Shoebridge said the use of sniffer dogs "does not target high-level drug dealers or suppliers. It targets young people, the poor and Aboriginal communities."

"Each year, something in the order of 10,000 people are being wrongly identified and publicly humiliated because of false positives from drug dogs," he said.

Debate over the use of sniffer dogs at music festivals in NSW has heated up in recent times, with harm-minimisation advocates arguing the heavy-handed approach could lead to panic-induced overdoses when people consume all their drugs at once.

Unfortunately, however, the Greens' bill isn't expected to gain much traction this time around, with both major parties standing behind the current policing format.

[Via: inthemix]