IN THE midst of a police drug raid in the Hobart suburb of Rokeby last month, a 12-year-old girl was told to remove pieces of her clothing.
Strip-searched. Twice.
Police suspected she may have been hiding drugs on her person.
They alleged they found drugs and money at the residence.
In the blur of claim and counter-claim about exactly what went down inside the house, the home of the girl's grandmother, these are the facts on which there is agreement.
For a great deal more - how much clothing the girl was asked to remove, all of it or just some; whether she was made to squat or not; whether she responded to the search with terror or calm - police and the girl's mother beg to differ.
The incident has led to calls from the Australian Lawyers Alliance's Greg Barns, state Commissioner for Children Aileen Ashford and a number of politicians for a review of laws that allow a child to be treated in the same manner as an adult when it comes to strip-searches.
''It's a traumatic experience and I would want to see those children and young people protected,'' Ms Ashford said last week.
It is a review worth having.
Even more so because there is a compelling counterview, expressed by many, which goes something like: if we don't allow police to strip-search children, we are inviting drug dealers and users to use them as hiding spots for their stash.
There is also a broader question at play, one which if it has been asked has been lost in the hysteria surrounding the above.
Clearly - rightly or wrongly - we view illicit drugs as a significant danger to society.
This is evidenced by the powers we give authorities, which override rights we would otherwise hold sacrosanct - rights that protect privacy, property and dignity.
Our laws consider these substances dangerous enough that we accept the risk of trauma to a child as collateral damage in the ''war on drugs''.
And yet did we remove this child (or any of the other children present) from this environment in which she was allegedly in the direct vicinity of these dangerous substances?
It seems not. In fact, it's arguable that the law wouldn't allow it.
Surely, if drugs are dangerous enough to warrant laws that infringe so heavily on an individual's rights, then we have a responsibility to keep children as far away from them as possible. Don't we?
Something is not adding up.
That's nothing new in the war on drugs.
Massive sums of public money have been thrown into making substance abuse and the undeniable misery it brings a law and order issue, while similar sources of human suffering - alcohol abuse, prescription drug abuse, gambling addiction - are treated as matters of health and well-being.
We acknowledge some of our most heinous crimes - gang warfare, drug trade-related violence and murder - would not occur if illicit substances were part of a regulated legal market, yet we keep them on the black market in the name of public safety.
None of this is raised to promote one path over another in dealing with the scourge of drugs.
It is merely to make clear the baffling inconsistencies of the path we are taking.
Inconsistencies which make it necessary to strip-search a child on suspicion she is carrying dangerous illicit drugs but not to remove her from an environment in which police suspect such substances are prevalent.
Can we really justify one and not the other?
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