Drugs

Stepping out for a fun night and a few drinks sure isn’t as simple as it used to be.

In case you hadn’t noticed, an increasing number of Australian bars and clubs are introducing security technology that would be more fittingly encountered in a Police state than a casual night out for a drink in one of Australia ‘s cities.

In a dystopian display of modern surveillance technologies overtaking common sense, nowadays if you feel inclined to venture out for a dance in one of Melbourne or Sydney ‘s bars or clubs, you can expect to have your ID scanned into a computer. And in extreme cases, be prepared to have your irises scanned as a pre-requisite for entry. Talk about a party killer!

Continue reading "Stripped of civil liberties for a night on the town" »

Many smokers and, at a guess, pretty much every cufflink-wearing executive from the big tobacco companies have a habit of posturing as macho libertarians. They argue that cigarettes are a legal product, smoking is a matter of choice, and that when it comes to telling us how we can live our lives, the nanny state can go stick it in its pipe and smoke it.

This is all fine, up to a point. And that point is when smokers get sick and automatically assume that it is the job of the health system – that is, the taxpayers – to step in and cover the cost of their collapsed lungs, clogged arteries and triple bypasses.

It is a logically inconsistent position and, frankly, quite a pathetic one. If smokers and the tobacco industry are going to be hairy-chested about the manner in which they live their life, they should also be held to account for the manner of their death. I write that not as some clean-living puritan, but one of those poor sad dills who has become addicted to this stupid drug, but who is now happily (and hopefully) in the final stages of a victorious battle against nicotine, setting aside last week’s beer-fuelled regression at the office Christmas party.

Continue reading "Smoke ‘til you drop but leave the taxpayer out of it" »

The so-called Bali Boy is back in Australia. It is only a matter of time before he turns up on the idiot box for an exclusive tell-all interview, promoted by whatever ratings-hungry network shells out the cash, as a cautionary tale which no parent and no teenager can afford to miss.

It is of course a story which most Australian parents and teenagers can very much afford to miss. Most Australian parents and teenagers would not be so breathtakingly foolish as to land in a country renowned for executing the most minor of drug offenders, and immediately shell out the requisite rupiah for a bag of Balinese dope.

Outside of this majority there is a disturbingly large subculture in Australia which has been brought into focus by this case. It’s a subculture which has two notable features. The first is the extent to which cannabis use has been normalised, where it is barely regarded as a drug at all but as something which most people will smoke without consequence from a young age. So much so that we wind up with the spectacle of a 14-year-old boy standing before an Indonesian court revealing that he has become addicted to the drug, right under the nose of his parents.

Continue reading "A story most parents and teens can afford to miss" »

Rehabilitation works. Just ask Sally*, who first injected heroin at the of 15.

By 19, she was injecting four times a day and was working as a prostitute to pay for her habit. This continued until she met a social worker who referred her to a drug rehabilitation clinic.

After a tough battle with a few setbacks, Sally is able to live without heroin, and is now completing her second year of a law degree. And this is all thanks to rehabilitation.

Continue reading "It’s tough, it’s expensive, but rehab really works" »

Australia has a long standing love affair with cannabis. More than half of us have tried it, 10 to 15 per cent smoke it at least once a day and five per cent of us love it so much, we find it hard to do anything else.

Our biggest problem is that we’re passing the habit on. Sixty per cent of young people use it. And they’re starting young; more Australian 12 year olds have tried it than cigarettes.

In other words, dope is getting to kids so quick and none of the people supplying it to them are identifying the considerable risks.

Continue reading "The biggest dopes are the parents giving kids pot" »

The Indonesian courts have, to an extent, belied their reputation for handing down extreme sentences. They have sentenced the 14-year-old Central Coast boy to two months in prison; of which he has already served about seven weeks.

The courts also showed their softer side earlier this year when they reduced Abu Bakar Bashir’s sentence on humanitarian grounds.

But Australians are still on death row for drug smuggling.

Continue reading "So the Bali boy will be outta the joint by Christmas…" »

On the dirty, sweaty streets of South East Asia, you will be offered rickshaw rides and marijuana, ecstasy, or heroin; sex and sunglasses; young boys, young girls, and crappy jewellery; novelty lighters and nudie pics, and a range of other stuff you may or may not want.

In Asia, you are rich. The rupiah, dong, and baht overflow from your wallet, and you wade through districts of poverty, where the amount you’ve just spent on a night in a villa with a candelit pool is more than someone’s monthly wage. You are rich, and you can buy almost anything imaginable.

Even as a 14-year-old, in Bali for the first time – overseas for the first time - I was rich, and the locals knew it; they wanted to bargain, to barter, to plait my hair. Wanted to overcharge me for water, to shortchange me on fake cassette tapes (Google them, kiddies), and to sell me drugs.

Continue reading "Dope and dopes in Indonesia" »

Drugs are bad! Drugs are bad for individuals and they are bad for societies. This seems to be the opinion of most, but it is very hard to get to the bottom of why so many people have this view. In the case of a street drug like heroin it is quite easy to see the high cost to an addict’s life and family, but there are countless other examples where the cost/benefit tradeoff is far more favourable.

Drug use falls into three main categories: 1. Medicine 2. Enhancement, and 3. Recreation. Medicinal use of drugs is not at issue here, as society already seems to be willing to engage in honest and open discussions about the risks, benefits and side effects of drugs for medicinal purposes.

Things get far trickier when it comes to the use of drugs for enhancement and recreation.  Drug companies around the world are spending billions of dollars trying to develop drugs that will reduce our need for sleep, bolster memory power and simply make us feel happier. Do we want to live in a society where such drugs are available for everyday use?

Continue reading "What if you could give your kids some really good drugs?" »

As the bingo wings kick in and the skin starts to thin and once-vibrant veins start to turn varicose, it’s easy to romanticise youth. When we were all beautiful and effortlessly thin and full of energy.

To muster the requisite morale to swing my creaky knees out of bed in the morning I sometimes have to remind myself that it wasn’t all spring and vim, that youth business. Being young meant being poor. Walking two miles to uni in second-hand, too-big Doc Martens with homemade Posca designs. And hoping for an entry-level position that paid marginally higher than the dole.

Not today, though, oh no. Now the trendy yoof are apparently snorting mountains of cocaine! Cocaine!

Continue reading "When I was young we couldn’t even afford cocaine" »

It’s not quite as convincing as Azaria’s jacket being found near a known ‘dingo lair’, but news reports that a Brisbane baggage handler was spotted stashing his stash in a bag at the airport will give Schapelle Corby’s supporters hope.

Channel Nine news tonight brought us ‘Sue’, who says back in 2004 she was dating a baggage handler. He told her a fellow worker was surprised by a supervisor while lugging around a massive bag of weed, and he quickly hid it inside a passenger’s bag.

Queenslander Corby is still in Indonesia’s Kerobokan Prison – depressed and pleading for clemency - after police discovered more than 4kg of marijuana inside her boogie board cover on her arrival in Bali in 2004.

Continue reading "Schapelle Corby: A drongo did it, maybe" »

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit. One of the most stupid things I’ve ever done was to tell my boss exactly what I thought – after a bottle or three of shiraz. Was I obnoxious, insulting, and unprofessional? Undoubtedly. Did I mean what I said? Well, yeah, I did.

That twee-moustachioed, pint-sized fashion designer, John Galliano, has blamed drugs and booze for a 45 minute tirade in which he maintains a barely controlled wobble while declaring his love for Hitler, saying to a couple of chicks he thought were Jewish:

People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f****ng gassed.

Continue reading "ICB: Truth serum - is the veritas in the vino?" »

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.

Continue reading "Synthetic marijuana: Don’t believe the Kronic hype" »

I rattle when I walk in the morning after taking all my complementary medicine supplements.

(Tim Minchin explains his frustration at dealing with believers)

Not to mention that I reek of cat-breath from fish oil pills and of neem pounded into my scalp, and have the complexion of a ginko tree root.

Let’s face it, I’m not all that attractive but by my calculation I have fended off high blood pressure, rapid aging, flaky skin and quite possibly a number of varieties of leprosy.

Continue reading "Cat breath’s not the only side effect of complementary pills" »

Apparently one in four teenagers experiment with drugs.  Though you’ve got to wonder whether the real hellraisers are dutifully completing questionnaires or participating in whatever research it is from which these statistics are derived.

For young people involved in the advertising industry the figure increases from one in four to three in four. Of course that second figure is bollocks – or more precisely, I made it up and have no evidence for it. 

In any event, in the vast majority of cases, the one in four have their fun, push their boundaries and get away with it. Now they’re grown up: They’ve got mortgages, business cards, ABNS, golf clubs, lawnmowers, children.  And their bongs, pills or powders are safely consigned to the annals of history.

Continue reading "Will you tell your kids you experimented with drugs?" »

Stoners Australia-wide may have got excited by the idea that the Government is considering legalising dope cookies, but most people realised they were not going to get a Home Brand high.

Food Standards Australia and New Zealand is looking at whether ‘hemp foods’ should become part of the national diet. They’d have negligible amounts of THC, but plenty of other good stuff. Like boring old protein, Omega 3s and dietary fibre.

But Andrew Southcott, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Parliamentary Healthcare, immediately touched base with his inner wowser.

Continue reading "Oh Mr Southcott - what a dope!" »

I appreciate the high standard of human rights we enjoy in Australia just as much as the next person. But when it comes to the possession of illegal substances, I think it’s better to be presumed guilty rather than innocent, even if it intrudes on our basic right to a fair trial.

In 2008, solicitor Vera Momcilovic was convicted of trafficking ice found in her apartment, despite her claims that the drugs were her boyfriend’s and she knew nothing about it.

Now she’s challenging the legitimacy of the state’s drug laws in the High Court, claiming the Victorian Charter of Human Rights effectively invalidates them because they remove the presumption of innocence.

Continue reading "On drugs: Suspend rights and consider them guilty" »

I have a terrible drug and alcohol problem. For decades now, it has resulted in shame, lies and the devastation (or, at least, slight irritation) of my loved ones.

No, I don’t have an exciting, out-of-control addiction a la Christopher in The Sopranos or Nurse Jackie in Nurse Jackie.

My drug and alcohol issue is actually that I’ve never much liked taking them.

Continue reading "Sometimes, abstinence is the biggest taboo" »

On Monday, yet another young driver appeared in yet another court room to be punished for his role in the death of yet another innocent teenager. The victim in this case was 16 year old T.J. Hutchesson of Bathurst.

The name of the accused can’t be reported. In a sense the names don’t matter: for those of us looking on, this is just another episode in a long and tragic storybook of life destroyed far too young.

In a statement appearing in The Sydney Morning Herald, mother Rachael Hutchesson did not shy away from identifying the problem: boredom and booze. This is a known issue in regional Australia, and yet there is a real paucity of frankness when it comes to solutions.

Continue reading "Boredom’s a killer for regional kids" »

On a simple buzz-for-bucks basis, booze on sale at the wildly popular Summafieldayze festival is the most expensive drug on the Australian market.

Single cans of mid-strength Smirnoff vodka and lemonade were going for the ridiculous sum of $10.50; a captive market of 30,000 punters (each shelling out $140 for a ticket) was caught in the net.

For the cost of three or four festival drinks and a couple of phone calls, any half-connected ticketholder could instead score himself a measure of illicit drugs sure to get them far closer to “the happy place” place than a few pre-mixed cans ever could.

Continue reading "Festival booze: Australia’s most expensive drug" »

News that up to 21 navy sailors were allegedly running a drug ring from the Garden Island Navy base in Sydney, and that about 30 more were possibly involved in distributing the contraband, has shone the spotlight into a dark corner of military life.

With recent raids uncovering illicit drugs including steroids, heroin, cocaine and ecstasy, the extent of drug trafficking and substance abuse by military personnel is now being exposed and it is not a pretty picture.

The vast majority of navy, army and air force personnel are clean living, law abiding citizens, but for those who aren’t there are many opportunities to take advantage of their status as returning warriors and their mode of military transport to import illegal material.

Continue reading "Is the military using warships to smuggle drugs?" »

If Australian cities could be defined by an aroma, you might pick jasmine for Sydney, tropical rain for Brisbane, coffee for Melbourne. While Adelaide would probably stump for an earthy shiraz or a fragrant bunch of Ross roses, the sad reality is that for many Adelaide households the defining aroma is the sickly stench of bong water.

The do-nothing culture of Adelaide’s sizeable unemployed underclass has been defined in large part by one of Australia’s greatest public policy failures – the liberalised cannabis laws which normalised the daily use of marijuana. Equally, the explosion in the size and reach of biker gangs in the City of Churches was fuelled by those laws, which for a long time enabled a virtual franchising of backyard dope production through hydroponics.

Even today, now that the laws have been tightened, there are more hydroponic shops in Adelaide per capita than any other city in the land. One website says there are more shops here per capita than any other city in the world, including Vancouver, where cannabis is decriminalised. According to one pro-cannabis website I read this week, there’s about 40 of these stores in the metropolitan area alone.

Continue reading "How the 10-plant rule sent much of a city to pot" »

When “they” finally get around to writing the how-to-be-an-adult guide book it must include a chapter on how to be a good friend because it’s fast becoming the first casualty of being a “grown-up”.

I’m not talking about how impossible it is to see anyone that a) you don’t live with or b) you don’t work with anymore or how challenging it can be to make friends when you move to a new place or suffer through a divorce or break-up; but what happens when you hit a certain age and so many of us decide that it’s OK to just stop caring about each other anymore.

Continue reading "Why’s it so hard to be an adult and a good friend?" »

My kids love playing in parks – I think every kid does.

Swings, slides and see-saws can sometimes be a God-send for parents who need a break.

Tell the kids to go off and play and if you’re lucky, there could be five minutes of freedom in it for you too.

Continue reading "Kids, swings, parks and needles don’t mix" »

Why do the Greens hate people?

At every turn they want to reduce the quality of life for human beings or in the worst case authorise a doctor to help kill some via euthanasia.

How can any political party charged by the constitution with the responsibility of governing for the peace, order and good government of the Australian people be taken seriously when the people always come second. And be under no illusions, the Greens are part of the cobbled together Labor government.

Continue reading "A Greens dream is a nightmare for the rest of us" »

She was the mother of three children, a pretty young woman described by her family, her friends and her still-loving former husband as a very moral person who did not approve of drug abuse or casual sex.

To the eight men on that P&O cruise ship, she was the bitch who ruined their holiday.

The woman they briefly considered throwing overboard as she lay dead on the floor of a tiny cabin, having been plied with alcohol and the so-called party drug GHB, naked, humiliated, used, with no control of her faculties. Dead at the age of 42.

Continue reading "Sick dinner an insult to Dianne Brimble’s memory" »

Just over 12 months ago, when the death toll from the drug war in Mexico was about to hit 10,000, I wrote a column for our website quietly commending Australia’s casual coke-users for playing their own small role in contributing to the violence.

It was a simple bit of supply and demand economics and one which was met with scorn by some readers, who disputed any link between their decision to rack up at a Sydney nightclub and the fact that Mexicans are living (and dying) in servitude and terror at the hands of cartels.

It’s unclear how they came to be such authorities on the provenance of their drugs, but these readers asserted that the cocaine you get in Australia has got nothing to do with the cartels which have gone close to destroying Mexico.

Continue reading "How our casual drug habits helped kill 28,228 Mexicans" »

I can still remember the hope and optimism of the delegates to the Carr Government’s 1999 Drug Summit.

People with widely divergent views came together to find better ways to deal with drug addiction and the problems it brings. On much there was agreement, but the resolution to trial a medically supervised injecting centre was the subject of heated debate.

It was of little surprise that yesterday’s announcement by the NSW Government to end the “trial” status of the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Kings Cross again triggered serious discussion. Our decision was not taken lightly.

Continue reading "Why the safe injecting room is here to stay" »

This week’s article by George Galanis in The Punch was an interesting read. But, I’m afraid to say, it mistakenly perpetuated the myth that somehow it is medically safe to use performance enhancing substances in sport. 

Doping has been around as long as competitive sport itself. However, in modern history one of the major catalysts for the prevention of doping in sport was the deaths of athletes resulting directly from doping.

The reality is that athletes have indeed died during and straight after competition because they have doped. The death of Danish cyclist Knud Enemark Jensen during competition at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome (the autopsy revealed traces of amphetamine) increased the pressure for sports authorities to introduce drug testing.

Continue reading "Allowing doping in sport would put lives at risk" »

Look at the staff on football teams and it looks like half the coaching team seem to have degrees in sports science. Nutritionists and diet specialist, physios, biomechanical experts, psychologists all now play a role in elite sport activity. Clearly, we’ve strayed very far from the idea of sport as an activity based on the innate individual ability.

With all the emphasis on science, why then do we demonise some scientific breakthroughs that have been proven to enable sports people to reach their potential? I’m talking, of course, about the use of performance enhancing drugs.

Let’s face it: sport is about exploring the limits of human potential. Ingenuity, innovation, and knowledge about what make us faster and stronger—and avoiding what might do more harm than good—has always been part of sport.

Continue reading "Let them entertain us: drugs and sport performance" »

A 21st birthday, with a house full of family and grandparents. The birthday girl and all her friends come from middle class families who are supportive and loving. They all attended good schools, work casually, go to uni and have active social lives.

It sounds like a scene of suburban tranquillity, so why is the only thing going through my head is: am I only the person who’s noticed that the birthday girl and many of the friends are completely wasted on drugs?
Talking to the mum and another girl, all I can think is ‘how can she not notice? She has to know. Is she too embarrassed to say something?’

Continue reading "Youths’ code of silence on hard drug use" »

“Ben Cousins makes me want to take ice,” was the declaration of one punter into the twitterverse.

Others commented that if coke helped you get a body that ripped, it was time to get snorting.

Cousins said in the introduction of his doco Such is Life that he wanted to “send a powerful message to young people, for that matter all people, about the way drugs affect your life”.

Continue reading "The next Cousins instalment better include some remorse" »

Next time you watch election coverage and ask whether the people writing this stuff are on drugs, you can now safely say the answer is no. Julia Gillard and her press pack are officially conducting a drug free election.

As is the custom before entering Gregory Mine in Queensland, the Prime Minister’s entourage were today subjected to random drug tests through a marble lottery.

There are conflicting reports as to whether the Prime Minister herself was subjected to the piss take along with two female TV journalists, with some journalists on site claiming she was but her office saying it was an unnamed third person.

We can rest easy that all three were cleared.

The chapter has ended. The super-cut frame of Richmond star Ben Cousins won’t grace the AFL’s gladiatorial arena ever again.

The recovering drug addict will announce his retirement at 10.15am today. It’s a wise move, as Cousins has fought his demons for two years since returning to the AFL as a Tiger.

As an Eagle, Cousins was invincible. A Brownlow medallist. A West Coast premiership captain. He had looks and a body to die for. Confidence – even a smug arrogance. But as a confessed sufferer of an “addictive personality”, Cousins would always battle long-term after his comeback.

Continue reading "Drug-troubled Cousins quits footy at the right time" »

The Lindsay Lohan story is not a cautionary tale about sexuality: to present the media coverage which has surrounded Lohan’s sentencing to 90 days behind bars as an example of flagrant misogyny is a misreading of the cultural mores underlying this particularly sad episode.

This story is really about the economy of fame, the paparazzi and media consumption; not about a male/female double standard that harks back to first year Gender Studies.

The reporting of Lohan’s legal travails cannot be read as simply being the crucifixion of a young woman who dares flout conventional female norms of propriety and hem lines. The entertainment industry has been built, since movies were black and white and daring swimsuits went to the knee, on young creatures who transgress fairly standard bounds of decency and behaviour.

Continue reading "The rise of the hot mess" »

Am I the only one a little queasy over the underlying public gloat at the jailing of master criminal Lindsay Lohan?

There it is, just beneath the surface – unspoken and insidious. It’s the patriarchal desire to see a wanton woman tamed.

Disagree? Replay the Lohan case with buttoned-down Katie Holmes in the dock and picture the reaction. See what I mean? But a boozing bisexual rootrat with a spoiled tabloid reputation and cash in the bank must be brought to heel.

Continue reading "Lohan stitched up by patriarchal virgin worship" »

In the video over the jump, as the judge orders a prison term, Lindsay Lohan appears to mouth the words “She’s jailing me?” to her lawyer and then the lip goes a-quiver in disbelief.

What did Lohan think was going to happen when she had a drink while wearing a court-ordered alcohol monitoring bracelet? A bracelet which, if you remember, she was ordered to wear after breaching probation - on charges of drink-driving and cocaine possession.

Surely she couldn’t have thought the judge would roll with another story like she told in May when she failed to turn up for a court appearance, which was basically that she had been stuck in France because a dog at the Cannes Film Festival ate her passport.

Continue reading "Yes Lilo, jail tends to follow violations of court orders" »

Even if you take the Richmond Football Club’s explanation at face value, the troubled Ben Cousins’ latest flirtation with disaster proves that he still uses substances as a crutch. And he probably always will.

Following a profile on Cousins in GQ last year, I wrote that he was still in the grip of his addiction and despite all the hype about his new clean image.

He offered a throwaway remark in the interview that he could still “have a few beers” and had learned to “drink differently.” Rubbish.

Continue reading "Ben Cousins should steer clear of pills, even legal ones" »

When it comes to illicit drugs and how our society should best deal with its impact, Ken Crispin is one man to whom it is worth listening.

Crispin has been practicing law since 1972, but more relevantly, he was the Director of Public Prosecutions in the ACT from 1991 to 1994 and a judge in that jurisdiction until 2007.  So this is why Crispin has made a bit of a splash over the past week by arguing that the US lead ‘War on Drugs’ which was debated and passed by Congress forty years this month, is failing our community.

Crispin, in his recently published book The Quest for Justice, has dared to say what many Australian judges and magistrates think privately to be the case.  That treating illicit drug use as a criminal justice problem has not worked and will never work.

Continue reading "Time we had an exit strategy from the war on drugs" »

It’s been a turbulent year for the AFL, as it grapples with some of the hottest issues in the public eye. Sex scandals, the homosexuality debate, players caught out with illicit drugs – and major upsets each week on the field.

Match attendances are healthy, newspapers are overloaded with dramatic revelations of off-field disasters and the injury rate has meant some of the younger players are being rested for fear of breakdown.

Let’s talk about sex first. Now that I have your attention, the St Kilda-pregnant teen incident has highlighted the dangers for star footballers, young fans, and the potential disruption to all of their lives.

Continue reading "AFL grapples with sex and drugs and rock and roll" »

Recreational drugs will always follow athletes who have too much disposable income and too much time on their hands. The consequences have been devastating, as AFL players like Ben Cousins and Mathew Stokes know all too well.

Last week the AFL revealed that 14 players tested positive to illicit drugs last year. The drugs detected included cocaine, ice and ecstasy – known party drugs.

The drug test results generated massive online debate and according to a Herald Sun online poll, 76 per cent of people believe footballers who test positive should be named and shamed.

Continue reading "Illicit drugs + disposable income = athletes in strife" »

They are last words which nobody would want for themselves, and which no parent would ever want for their daughter.

“Daniel, I’m f…ed please get me now,” was one of the final text messages 20-year-old Cassandra Vaicekonis sent her boyfriend shortly before being found dead in a spare room at a Bondi Junction party in May of last year.

Cassandra’s death is the subject of an ongoing coronial inquest and full details surrounding her death will emerge over the coming days. At this stage we know that this intelligent and attractive young woman appears to have taken a combination of cocaine, anti-anxiety medication, painkillers, sleeping tablets and alcohol on the night of May 23.

Continue reading "Cassie Vaicekonis: Saying no to drugs is no strategy at all" »

Our national enthusiasm for deifying and excusing flawed sports stars was demonstrated again this week with Ben Cousins being afforded hero status for manfully accepting a one-week ban over his role in a fracas with a group of Richmond teammates at a Sydney hotel last weekend.

The discussion surrounding the incident – in which Cousins’ role was very limited and, up to a point, defensible – reveals a major problem with the way this troubled footballing champion’s battle with drugs and alcohol is being addressed.

It is this – the people who are ostensibly supporting Cousins still seem more worried about keeping him on the park, than keeping him away from the very environment which could drag him back into the world of drug abuse.

Continue reading "A footy club is the worst possible place for Cousins" »

Sunday mornings are usually a fairly quiet affair in my apartment until around 11am when my swollen bladder, thumping headache and noisy neighbours force me from the safety of my bed.

Last Sunday however was special as I managed the truly Olympic effort of making it downstairs to the couch by the crack of 10am. However seconds after collapsing victoriously onto the couch to enjoy this small victory I was assailed by suggestions for ‘fun things to do’ from my ever perky med-student ‘houseguest’.

Ms Gen Y was absolutely bursting with energy after her 3 hours of sleep, I on the other hand felt like Amy Winehouses’ liver, so I politely declined her invitation. She insisted. I more forcefully declined. She begged. I told her to leave me alone and flee the country - and that’s when she told me I had SCTD.

Continue reading "Why I don’t date doctors" »

The Daily Telegraph ran the story today as its Monday lead, “Drug lords hit town – cartels get rich on Aussie hunger for cocaine”.

A “generational shift” the paper explained, has pushed the demand for the drug making Australia the world’s most lucrative coke market. 

While this was surely a shock for the few Sydneysiders who haven’t stepped out to a bar, club, trendy restaurant or party in the past few years, for the rest of us, the story was more a case of no shit Sherlock than shock. Because, if you live in Sydney and are under the age of 55, chances are you will run into the drug every day if you knew what you were looking for.

Continue reading "Sydney awash with coke" »

You would think a drug that causes more than one in ten suicides, thousands of child abuse cases, and one in three road accidents would be outlawed.

Not chance, of course, because that’s alcohol. Cannabis, on the other hand, mostly causes feelings of wellbeing.

Debate over the relative harms of drugs has been raging this week. Most of the debate has been in the UK, where government drug advisor Professor David Nutt has been sacked for, in essence, arguing that drugs should be categorised according to the harm they cause. Crazy, huh?

Continue reading "Only a dope would say cannabis is worse than grog" »

Welcome to the weekend @ The Punch

Fact: on this day in 1988 sprinter Ben Johnson is stripped of his gold medal at the Seoul Olympics after failing a drug test. The video above is part one of a five part series that you can watch from here. Where do you stand on the issue of drugs and sport? Post your thoughts here.

Few things sting more than a betrayal but when you’re a teenager it’s brutal.

Having to decide who you are and who you want to be is a tough job and often your right to privacy becomes your most important weapon. Who doesn’t remember screaming matches with their parents about what they should be entitled to?

So 20 year old Jake Myerson’s reaction to his mother’s book “The Lost Child” a story of his teenage struggle with drugs - that ended with his parents kicking him out of the house - isn’t surprising:

Continue reading "Truth is the best story" »

She sits in a prison, thousands of kilometres away from her family and friends. She doesn’t speak the language and doesn’t think much of the food that’s served up to her.

Her only crime was to try and bring drugs into a foreign country to make a bit of money and now she is stuck in a foreign jail for what must seem like an eternity.

How could you not feel sympathy for her? Easy. Her name isn’t Schapelle Corby.

Continue reading "How many other Schapelle Corbys are there?" »

On the current, sickening trends, the number of Mexicans killed in the drug-related bloodshed which has paralysed the country since January 2007 will hit 10,000 within the next few weeks, or possibly even days.

To put that in perspective, an estimated 3500 people died in the 30-year period of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. It also eclipses the number of American troops killed in the War in Iraq, which at the latest count stands at 4333.

Australia’s sizeable cokehead community - even the casual users who had a discreet line in the loo last night at some groovy Sydney wine bar - should give themselves a quiet pat on the back for the role they’ve played in the deaths of these people.

Continue reading "How poseurs and clubbers helped kill 10,000 Mexicans" »

An American company has announced that it will now make available in Australia kits that will let parents test their children for drug use.

The drug testing kits use samples of hair to test what drugs and how often kids could be using them.

The company, Confirm Biosciences, has circulated a statement claiming that the new kits will put “control back in parents’’ hands

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The sole remaining daily reminder in Australia of the existence of Schapelle Corby is the plastic luggage-wrapping service at our international airports.

More than four years after her conviction on drug smuggling charges - when Corby was the only story in Australia, the only topic of discussion at the pub, at barbecues, in the office tea room - the one thing that reminds us that she even exists is the roll of industrial cling-film in our departure lounges, so you can make sure your baggage leaves our shores and arrives overseas without 4.2kg of cannabis in it.

As she prepares to celebrate her 32nd birthday tomorrow - her fifth inside Bali’s Kerobokan jail - prison authorites let Schapelle have her hair cut and coloured by a professional hairdresser, saying they hoped it would cheer her up as she continues to fight with severe depression.

Her illness may be fuelled by the knowledge that almost all of her countrymen have pretty much forgotten about her - and that unlike in 2005, when most Australians disputed her guilt, public opinion appears to have swung the other way, not just against her but members of her family.

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My grandmother is 92 years old and lives in public housing in Adelaide’s southern suburbs. She is a custodian of wonderful old Australian expressions and a woman of firm and earthy convictions. One of her convictions is that Sydney is basically a dump, “a den of iniquity” as she puts it, its harbour wasted on spivs, tarts, crooks and hookers. A morally-bankrupt dive which has never really shaken off its uncouth convict past, and where no-one of sound mind would choose to live.

I’m starting to think she might be on to something.

This might sound odd given that it’s barely a month since I penned a sweetheart’s letter to my adoptive home of 10 years by listing the 40 things I love about Sydney.

This column is about the one thing I really hate, and am hating more with each passing day. It’s not the roads, it’s not the cost of living, heaven forbid it’s not even the State Government. It’s Sydney’s out-of-control gangster culture, which in the past few months has gone from a relatively controlled background phenomenon to a full-blown cult of violence and vanity, where the authorities have been made to look like fools as the lawless increasingly act as they wish, egged on - most alarmingly - by apparently sane people who come over all giggly and start twirling their hair in the presence of drug-dealers, bikie leaders and stand-over men.

Continue reading "Crims and their clique turn Sydney into an open sewer" »

1. Drug prohibition doesn’t work. During the last half century, almost every country in the world signed three United Nations drug treaties committing these countries to minimise the recreational use of specified drugs. Almost every country expanded their police drug squads, rained gold bars on drug law enforcement and kept on increasing the severity of penalties for drug offences. What was the result? Global heroin, cocaine and cannabis production and consumption continued to soar while world heroin production doubled in the last 10 years.

Continue reading "Ten things you should know about drug prohibition" »

Australians are the biggest per capita users of ecstasy in the world, a statistic no one in their right mind can believe is one to be proud of.

Politicians routinely hatch solutions to the growing degradation of our collective intellect caused by the misuse of amphetamines but they routinely ignore a simple solution to the problem.

That solution will again be put to the nation’s police ministers and the new Federal Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor when they meet in Perth tomorrow. It involves the very simple step of regulating the import of presses used to make ecstasy tablets.

Continue reading "One simple way to take ecstasy pills off the street" »

Nothing illustrates the resilience and resourcefulness of organised crime than the story of a Sydney cocaine dealer known to police as ‘Aunty’. She is a Colombian woman in her fifties who came to Australia with her family in the 1970s. She is the face of a syndicate that has been operating for almost two decades.

Her husband stays in the background but has the necessary power and influence with Colombian cocaine barons. The syndicate imports around a tonne of cocaine every eighteen months. It is estimated to have carried out at least ten and possibly as many as fourteen importations (totalling between 10 and 14 tonnes of the drug). The cocaine is sold in bulk, primarily to networks in Sydney, but it also makes its way to other state capitals.

The retirement of some distributors and the arrest and jailing of others enabled an eastern suburbs professional surfer and dealer Shane Hatfield to progress up the drug chain. By the early 2000s he was dealing directly with Aunty. One of Hatfield’s distributors was a criminal in his mid twenties who has been given the pseudonym ‘Tom’ by law-enforcement authorities.

Continue reading "The Aussie mother behind a $30 million cocaine deal" »

Australia has the highest rate of ecstasy use in the world. Frightening isn’t it? So what’s being done about it? Like many other policy issues, the PM declared war on drugs but it is more a phoney war than a real one.

Since being elected the Government has failed to take any significant action on this major health and criminal problem. Instead General Rudd and his loyal lieutenants have sent the troops into the goldmine by introducing a new tax on pre-mixed lolly water rather than sending them to the front line and fighting the real war on illicit drugs.

Continue reading "Too giggly on alcopops to tackle hard drugs" »