\u201cThe minor furore that has erupted over cigarette smoking in detention is entirely misplaced,\u201d said Ian Rintoul, from the Refugee Action Coalition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe far bigger problem is the government\u2019s mandatory detention habit which is THE major health risk confronting asylum seekers. The cost of the government detention addiction is extraordinary \u2013 presently estimated at $772 million for 2010-11. At over $2 milllion a day, it is costing 500 times more that the $4000 a day that detainees are spending on smokes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFar worse is the addiction to prescribed psychiatric drugs and sleeping pills that are simply accepted as a routine feature of the detention centres, so aptly described as \u2018factories of mental illness\u2019. Refugees are too often left with life-long mental health problems because of detention. They mental health risk of detention has far greater consequences for their lives than cigarette smoking.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many cases, it is the boredom and anxiety of detention that pushes people to begin smoking in detention.<\/p>\n
\u201cAsylum seekers have committed no crime and are without any income. They are as entitled as the rest of the community to choose to spend a tiny allocation of their detention points on shampoo, deodorant or cigarettes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAllowing asylum seekers to live and work in the community is the far cheaper, healthier and humane option to mandatory detention. The money presently wasted on detention could go to community services needed by refugees and everyone else. It is time the government kicked its very unhealthy detention habit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThe minor furore that has erupted over cigarette smoking in detention is entirely misplaced,\u201d said Ian Rintoul, from the Refugee Action Coalition. \u201cThe far bigger problem is the government\u2019s mandatory detention habit which is THE major health risk confronting asylum seekers. The cost of the government detention addiction is extraordinary \u2013 presently estimated at $772 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-press-releases"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/311091"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}