It can make you paranoid and irrational, prone to making stupid decisions with bad consequences, and can ultimately cause serious harm. Yes, it’s the moral panic over drugs. The latest burning issue is synthetic dope.
Kronic (or Puff, or Voodoo, or Kaos) was happily crossing the counter of many a hippie herbal high store until the mining industry realised its employees were using it to rort their drug testing systems. Often sold as incense, it’s made from herbs sprayed with chemicals that mimic the effects of marijuana.
WA quickly moved to ban Kronic, so people in possession now face fines of up to $100,000 or 25 years in jail. Victoria is planning to follow suit. Then South Australian pollies, with a burst of speed so surprising it makes one suspect performance enhancement, managed to prohibit the drug the very day after The Advertiser published doctors’ calls to make it illegal.
So now we have a hodge podge of laws across the nation – a schizophrenic mess of jagged inconsistencies, untethered from any rational grounding.
Drugs are such an easy target for politicians. The getting tough approach fits seamlessly with their worship of working families, caring for the kiddies, and cracking down on all the nasty junkie types. Many of them and their constituents probably smoked an innocent summer spliff themselves, but the haze of time has washed away their sense of perspective.
Kronic, like marijuana, can have terrible effects. These include high heart rates, paranoia, anxiety, restlessness. People are ending up in hospital with nausea, vomiting. There is one case in NZ where Kronic may have been a factor in a fatal car crash. It’s possible that Kronic is more potent than much homegrown dope, which can also trigger psychosis.
So put it in plain packaging, restrict its sale to adults, stop advertising. Make people aware of the health threats. Don’t threaten to put people in jail.
Making another drug illegal is inconsistent, impractical, and downright stupid.
It’s inconsistent because of the number of legal substances that are more dangerous. Alcohol is always the most obvious example. Alcohol can kill people slowly and surely or devastatingly quickly. It tears at society’s fabric, can ruin families, leads to violence and car accidents and destroyed internal organs.
Yesterday’s Australian reported that thousands of children are suffering from foetal alcohol spectrum disorder; brain damage from their mothers’ drinking habits. Emergency rooms overflow on weekends and holidays as people hurt themselves and others.
Then there’s cigarettes, abuse of legal narcotics; a thousand ways people can make themselves ill.
But inconsistency is not the biggest problem with outlawing Kronic – putting drug offenders in jail is far more dangerous.
The number of young people incarcerated for illicit drug use is increasing; the latest statistics from South Australia show the number of juveniles locked up has more than doubled. And that means more people entering the revolving door of the justice system, graduating from low-level drug use to more serious crimes.
Jail does not help these people in most cases. In most cases it is the worst possible outcome.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy says the war on drugs has failed. The group, comprising 19 prominent commissioners, says the war has empowered organised crime gangs, and failed to help individuals or societies. Where one source of drugs is closed down, others pop up to immediately replace them.
In their major, recent report, they called on governments to “end the criminalisation, marginalisation and stigmatisation of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others”.
Our headstrong governments, high on their own tough-on-law-and-order resolve, are firmly striding in the other direction.
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