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NEWS: Courier-Mail - The Drugs Scrouge


Man who lent phone for meth deal jailed
Article from: The Courier-Mail
March 31, 2009 11:00pm

A YOUNG drug user who allowed his mobile telephone to be used in methylamphetamine deals was jailed for 15 months on supply charges.

Anthony James Wagner, 20, faced the Supreme Court in Brisbane yesterday on drug supply charges, which carry a maximum of 20 years' jail.

Wagner was caught by the wide definition of "supply" in Queensland's drug laws as he was an intermediary in the sales.

Police found text messages relating to drug dealing on Wagner's phone after they spoke to him in Brisbane's Queen Street Mall last May.

Justice Margaret White sentenced Wagner to 15 months' jail with a parole eligibility date of July 14, taking into account three months he had spent in custody on remand.

Barrister Colin Reed, for Wagner, had asked for the sentence to be suspended.

Mr Reed said Wagner's family had rallied around him in an effort to help him beat drugs.

Justice White told Wagner she hoped he could beat drugs.

Wagner pleaded guilty to three counts of supplying drugs, two counts of stealing and one count of possessing a mobile phone used in drug dealing on various dates between May 23 and September 5 last year.

Prosecutor Lilly Brisick said Wagner had six previous convictions for possessing drugs.

Courier-Mail
 

No import controls as pill presses flood into Australia
Article from: The Courier-Mail
Matthew Fynes-Clinton and Michael Crutcher
March 31, 2009 11:00pm

PILL presses capable of pumping out thousands of illicit drugs are flooding into Australia with no import controls.

As ecstasy use explodes across the nation, a federal-organised crime-fighting source has told The Courier-Mail of a former NSW outlaw biker who alone imported up to 100 presses.

He said intelligence had tracked the arrival of 149 presses - destined for use in the manufacture of ecstasy and other illegal tablets - at Australian ports between 2004 and 2007. "All of those have just disappeared into the community," he said.

The admission comes as a senior chemist reveals the dangers to children exposed to poisonous drug labs.

And, as The Courier-Mail's special investigation continues, we reveal how drugs are sent routinely through the mail and the ease with which people can obtain drug recipes from the internet.

The source said pill presses could be bought for $2000 over the internet from Taiwan and China.

Made-to-order punches and dyes were included to create the tablet logos and looks demanded by illegal pill users.

The machines were often then sold into the black market for as much as $30,000.

"Even one of the little ones that punch out 6000 pills an hour - at $10 to $15 a pill (wholesale) - it's a hell of a lot of money," the source said. Some companies were offering false documentation with the presses. "They'll describe them as mixers or machinery, because there's a tariff code with Customs of 'machinery general'.

"But until there's a commonwealth register or a licensing regime, (the importers) don't have to do anything. They just send their credit card details.

"And the next thing, the press lands on the doorstep."

The source blamed the Federal Government, saying no moves had been made to ban the presses despite a history of reports on the problem by intelligence agencies and government-commissioned consultants.

"The Government's been sitting on its hands for three years over making these machines prohibited imports," he said.

A spokeswoman for Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus confirmed there was no ban on importing the pill presses. He said there were no plans for a review of the policy.

Courier-Mail
 

Addictive drugs and their impact on users
Article from: The Courier-Mail
March 31, 2009 11:00pm

LIVE CHAT: Don't be fooled: get the lowdown on a range of addictive substances in our live chat with drugs expert Dr Mark Daglish

Drugs expert Dr Mark Daglish responds to your questions about amphetamines (and other addictive substances) and their impact on users.

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Drugs expert Dr Mark Daglish

Link
 

A son so violent parents had to move
Article from: The Courier-Mail
April 01, 2009 11:00pm

SIX months ago, after M assaulted his dad for the second time, my husband packed ice on his face and said, "I can't do this anymore. I can't live this way."

So we sold our family home of 20 years, the place I imagined we'd live the rest our lives, and moved to another part of Brisbane with our daughter. We keep the new address secret from our son.

Having made the move, it's been really good to be able to breathe again. When you're living with a person who's on drugs, you never get to calm down. It feels like your heart's in a vice and it's being squeezed tighter and tighter.

My son is 26. He first tried speed in Year 10, but began taking it regularly about two years ago. Speed, and ice.

I never met violence in my life before speed came into our lives. But M became like a tornado that whacked in and whacked out and left everyone thinking, "What the hell justhappened?"

He'd nick off for days at a time, then go to bed and crash for a day or two. But it's the coming-down side ... when he'd wake and be angry, and to release that anger, he'd punch something. He'd punch holes through the walls and doors. He once threw a rock through the window.

M had had a history of problems, but initially, I was wondering, "What's going on?" This (hostility) was a new pattern.

But then I noticed he was wearing long sleeves on hot days. Why do you do that? Because you're hiding your injection site. Eventually, I saw the puncture marks. His elbow pits ... both of them were gone.

Then you've got these additional worries. Because he's still the thing that you and your husband have made, your perfect human being, or once was, and you're thinking, "Now you've left yourself open to AIDS, Hep C, or God knows what else."

And for M, speed automatically triggers extreme delusional and paranoid thinking. Because we found out a few years ago he has schizophrenia.

Not everyone who uses ice and speed has schizophrenia - they might just get the paranoid thinking, without hearing voices reaffirming it.

But for him, it aggravates his symptoms ... one night he tossed himself off the top of a five or six-storey building.

His best friend had come to town and they'd gone out and hit a variety of drugs and alcohol.

The drugs had made him feel so terrible and the voices in his head were saying such horrible stuff, that he just wanted to end the voices.

He landed in a garden bed that was next to the concrete and smashed bones in his feet and cracked vertebrae, which all healed.

Of course, as soon as he was well, he wanted to get together with his mates and it was back to the drugs again.

Even when we do talk now, meeting somewhere or speaking on the phone, I say, "Well, what's the chance of you going down a different path?" And he just says, "It's not happening, Mum. I love drugs."

He suffered from depression as a very young boy, which we could never get to the root of. And certainly, by Grade 8 or 9, everything was hitting the fan. He was irritable and we were constantly being phoned by the school about behaviour issues. Something was seriously wrong.

One day, around Year 10, I found out what it was. I followed him to school and he was just outside the school boundary, with a group of others. They all had bloodshot eyes from a freshly-smoked bong.

Dope-smoking was the beginning of it. I reckon marijuana triggered M's schizophrenia - and then led to the other drugs, including ecstasy. Nobody starts off shooting meth up their arm. It's just all little steps.

I believe kids who've got involved with drugs young ... they stay mentally arrested at whatever age it was they started.

So, to a large extent, M still thinks and behaves like a 14-year-old.

I don't want to cut him off. He's smart and can be funny and nice. The ingredients of a good and functional person are there, and without him, there's a hole in our family. But in the last psychotic episode, he just walked through the door without warning and started thumping into his father.

When he's our boy, I can recognise that. But when he's not our boy, there's somebody else inside those eyes.

* - as told to Matthew Fynes-Clinton

Courier-Mail
 

Children used as pawns
Article from: The Courier-Mail
Matthew Fynes-Clinton
April 01, 2009 11:00pm

WHEN Sue, 63, watches over her two grandchildren, she feels joy, protectiveness - and a cautious optimism.

But if she lets her mind drift beyond the soft pink faces to her own daughter's childhood, she gives herself a mental kick.

"Their mother was a lovely, helpful, gorgeous little girl," she says, "and it would be very easy to become melancholy. But I won't go there. If I go down in a heap, who's going to look after them?

"No," she says, her voice rising, "when you hear your child is on drugs, it is the most gut-wrenching thing. But when you know there are two beautiful children involved, it beggars belief. How could anyone do that?"

In December 2004, following the protracted involvement of police, child safety workers and the courts, Sue and her husband Bill were granted permanent guardianship of Hayley, 13 and Anna, 6.

The girls' mother - Sue and Bill's middle child, 38-year-old Mia - is, or has been, addicted to marijuana, speed and alcohol.

With the little contact they have these days, Sue says she's never exactly sure where on the gauge of drug abuse Mia is pointed. However, she's come to expect the worst.

The Brisbane southside couple are among hundreds of Queensland grandparents, all with drug-addicted children, who are definitely not living the extolled superannuants' dream.

But pushing retirement back to raise a family a second time around has its own rewards. In any case, it's far preferable to the nightmare that went immediately before.

Maree Lubach, co-founder of Gold Coast-based KinKare, established in 2002 to help grandparents responsible for rearing grandchildren, says 90 per cent of the group's members have children with a drug or alcohol problem.

"And before looking after your grandchildren (becomes a reality), there's dealing with your own adult child's addiction ..." she says.

"Living with them abusing you or being aggressive towards you. Getting calls in the middle of the night threatening suicide and to take the kids with them.

"Having things hocked behind your back to pay for the drugs. Nearly every one of us has had our houses broken into.

"And then there's the people they owe money to in the drug scene, knocking on your door and demanding (cash).

"It's a frightening experience."

Mia's downward spiral began inside the home she shared with her de facto husband and their child Hayley, then 2. "I'd call in and there'd be empty spirit bottles everywhere and absolute cretins from one end of the place to the other," Sue recalls.

"Mia had had a good job, but she'd stopped working.

"One night, I went over there late and she was on the couch passed out and Hayley was wandering round the house looking for food.

"Mia woke up and her eyes ... you have no idea ... she was absolutely off her face. She came and grabbed me by the throat and punched me in the back of the head twice."

About the same time, Sue learnt from one of her daughter's distressed friends that Mia was "doing speed". "I said to her, 'You're joking.' And she said, 'No, she injects it between her toes'."

In Sue's mind, another late-night incident would confirm Mia's addiction to methamphetamine.

The drug, either in the powdered form of speed or the higher-purity, crystalline ice, is renowned for sparking acute episodes of aggression and delusional paranoia.

"This time, she rang up calling me a so-and-so, and said, 'Someone's come in and written on the wall, You're dead, slut - in blood'. So I went over ... and there was nothing on the wall."

Sue and Bill turned fraught over the welfare of Hayley. Thus began a long and not-always smooth relationship with the Child Safety department.

"Hayley had told them she'd seen syringes on the floor," Sue says.

"And Mia was always threatening to kill herself and Hayley, rather than let us have her.

"But the big problem was, Mia's a very smart girl. Whenever Child Safety officers went out to visit her, she'd (somehow) present well."

By now, Hayley's sister Anna, born to another father, was walking.

"One day, thank God, Hayley had the presence of mind to turn around on her way to school as Anna was about to cross a main road," Sue recounts.

"She'd let herself out of the house because her mother slept all day, crashing out after the drugs."

Finally, aged 8, Hayley sobbed in her nanna's lap, asking: "Can you take me to the department?"

The long-term guardianship - until the children reach 18 - has been formalised through the Family Court. Before that happened, Bill had been semi-retired and Sue intended to remain in her career for a few more years. Both have since quit.

"We'd planned to travel," she says. "But the children didn't ask to be born and they deserve the best you can give them.

"Bill's a self-funded retiree, we get a carer's allowance of $900 a fortnight and are OK financially.

"Mia? That's the big question. I don't know why she chose this way. She still has some contact with the kids, but that's another thing with druggies, they think they own their children.

"You don't. You owe your children."

*Names have been changed

Courier-Mail
 

Stirred to get radical
Article from: AAP
By Jane Fynes-Clinton
April 01, 2009 11:00pm

THE smiling face of teenager Blair Vaina beaming from Tuesday's The Courier-Mail and her mother's honest account of what led to her death from drugs moved me to feel outrage, fear and, yes, brought me to tears.

The story was shocking because, while drugs are not directly in my life, Liz Vaina's account showed drugs are indiscriminate in delivering disaster or tragedy.

When you have children about Blair's age, reality bites and the enormousness of Vaina's love for her daughter and the pain of her loss reverberate.

Vaina's story also brought into sharp relief the hopelessness of the drugs situation in Queensland, as highlighted in this week's The Courier-Mail campaign.

It is clear that unless something radical happens, beautiful Blair will not be the last Queenslander to die from drugs. Not by a long shot.

It is going to take a huge shift in thinking, because the platform from which most plans of attack against drugs are launched - the justice and legal system - has been shown to be ineffective.

As US president, Richard Nixon was the first to officially declared a war on drugs, calling drugs "public enemy No.1" in 1971.

Since then, politicians of all colours have taken on his approach and it has been a vote-winner: they identify drugs as an enemy of the people, demonise them and those who use them and follow up with forceful law-and-order solutions as a way to defeat them.

In Queensland, we have more conservative processes in place than ever, with a multitude of laws and measures such as drug tests on the roadside and sniffer dogs at music festivals.

But illicit drugs have never been more evident and, as the series this week has shown, they are getting more dangerous. The Federal Government proudly says it has pumped more than $1 billion into its Tough on Drugs Strategy since its launch in 1997.

It says it is a "balanced and integrated approach to reducing the supply of and demand for illicit drugs".

In 1998, the United Nations General Assembly called for a drug-free world by 2008. Millions were spent and strategies mostly aimed at controlling supply were implemented. The result? The extent of drug use in developed nations and drug production in developing ones have never been greater.

The complexities of the webs drugs weave because they are illegal have never and will never be fixed with the system of fining, penalising or jailing.

The truth - a terrifying thing to admit - is that none of what we are doing now is working. And because of the funding focus on tough law-and-order measures to try to control, important strategies are being neglected.

Drug Arm's chief Dennis Young wrote in these pages about the crying need for more funding for non-government agencies to offer the treatment, prevention and education programs.

I don't think it is realistic any more to believe we can stamp out most illegal drug use. The terrible cycle of crime, violence and hopelessness can only be stopped with a radical move, a brave step towards looking at the problem in its entirety, not just whether the effects of drug-taking need to be quashed or punished.

Perhaps we need a person like former Californian judge James Gray, who this week in the Los Angeles Times renewed a call for the legalisation, regulation and tax on the sale of marijuana. He said if that plan were successful, the Government could then move on to apply the same strategy to other drugs.

Gray said his frustration was born from 25 years on the bench, where he found he could send offenders of crimes that were alcohol-related to detox or rehab programs, but not those involved in drugs cases. He said the only way to break the crime-and-violence cycle was to bring it out into the open.

"Anyone who wants illegal drugs can easily get them, but doing so may put them in harm's way," he said. "Wouldn't it be smarter to sell the drugs at government stores, so advertising could be outlawed, taxes collected on one of California's biggest cash crops and drug gangs eradicated?" he said.

Gray's model would see half the revenue generated from taxing and regulating drugs ploughed back into drug prevention education.

It is a radical idea, but one thoroughly thought through.

It is refreshing that in some places, the strategy for dealing with the drugs scourge is shifting. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, admitted this week that the US hunger for drugs had in part brought about the drug cartels' killing spree in Mexico. Acceptance of responsibility is the first step in change.

I find myself torn, like so many parents. In principle, I don't want drugs legalised because I don't want them to be accommodated or accepted in our society. But I want safety, surety and help for those who use drugs and these things cannot be available while drugs are illicit and their content is often unknown and uncontrolled.

The war rages. Politicians posture and issue threats, police enforce laws and strategies to deal with drugs rain down while the casualties - dead and semi-alive - pile up.

The winners of the current system are the dealers, the gangs, the low-lifes who make the stuff and their business, social and financial networks.

There must be a better way.

For now, it is the rest of us, the law abiders, who are the biggest losers.

Courier-Mail
 

Reality comes close to home
Article from: The Courier-Mail
By Rory Gibson
April 01, 2009 11:00pm

YOU know how some people advocate taking teenagers to the orthopedic ward of a hospital before they get their licence so they can see the carnage caused by driving drunk or too fast?

While they are there they should slip into the psychiatric ward and see what fate befalls many drug users.

The Acute Observation Area of the Mental Health Unit at Princess Alexandra Hospital is a scary place.

R-rated too, because they won't let in anyone under 18. It is no place for kids, and tough for an adult to stomach.

It is a prison really, with a high level of security. You are asked to put anything that could be used as a weapon - keys, pens, cigarette lighters - into a locker before you can mingle with the patients.

There's only a few plastic chairs and tables in the "recreation" area where most of them spend their days smoking, the boredom interrupted only by nurses plying the haunted individuals who inhabit this place with medication to keep them calm. They fire up their durries using a push-button lighter, similar to those in cars, which is embedded into one of the walls.

"It doesn't stop people shoving their fingers into it though," my brother shrugs during my recent visit.

D is there courtesy of repeated bouts of drug-induced psychosis, brought on by his fondness for injecting the drug speed, more specifically crystal meth, or ice as it is known.

It is not his first time in the mental health unit, but it will be his longest after he was taken there by police last month following an incident in the city in which he drove his car into the foyer of some city council offices in a bid to destroy a sculpture he believed was a symbol of a secret global conspiracy.

To his psychotic way of thinking, it was up to him to warn the rest of the world about the so-called Illuminati and the Freemasons, who control everything we do and wipe out humanity - except for a select band of conspirators - every 5000 years or so as part of an Earth-cleansing ritual.

Over the past three years I have watched with increasing helplessness as my brother lost his grip on reality, his thriving building business ended in a flurry of litigation and debt, his girlfriend fled interstate and his young children grew bewildered at what was happening to him.

As his need for speed grew, those things that anchor a person in a community - family, friends, self-respect and regard for the law and the property and peace of mind of one's neighbours - were shredded in a crazy whirl of nightmarish delusions.

With nowhere to live, he took up residence in our mother's backyard shed, content to get high and nurture his conspiracy theories by trawling the internet for evidence and communicating only with other freaked-out individuals convinced the end was nigh.

The stress that arrangement heaped on our mother was immense. A pensioner in her 70s, her health suffered as nearby residents took offence, understandably, at my brother's psychotic and at times frightening behaviour.

The police became frequent visitors as mum desperately tried to find someone, anyone, in the Queensland health system who would help her son.

Late last year the police had him admitted to the mental health unit, again, after an altercation with mum in which she feared he would turn violent.

After a few weeks they let him out, with promises that he would be monitored. That certainly happened for a short while, but then his case officer just stopped turning up, no doubt swamped by an oppressive workload. Soon he was back taking drugs, making life hell for all those close to him.

Those who care about him live in dread that any minute we will receive a phone call informing us that he has harmed himself or others, or worse, taken his life or been gunned down by the police.

One morning in February I was pulling into a carpark at Currimundi on the Sunshine Coast for an early morning surf, when the radio news carried a report about a man crashing his car into a city building and then fleeing the scene.

As soon as the newsreader said that the driver was believed to have mental health issues and the police were still looking for him, a nagging fear began to grow in my core.

Then I heard my mother's voice on the radio. She had rung the station to assure everyone my brother was not violent, and to have a crack at the mental health policies in Queensland that had so far failed him and us.

The police found D later that day sitting quietly on a park bench at The Gap, and back to the PA he went.

He's not alone though. The Mental Health Unit is full of people with drug-related mental health problems.

When I visit him, I am struck by the fact that D appears to be the most "normal" person in there. One patient stares at me the entire time I'm there. Unnerved, I ask D why that patient was there.

"She stabbed someone," he reveals in a neutral voice, as if it's quite natural that one would do such a thing.

The people at the frontline of this horrible war - police and health workers - are exhausted and frustrated at having to deal with psychotic drug users.

Drug counsellors will tell you that unless a user really wants to give up, no amount of treatment or incarceration will stop the destructive habit. D acknowledges this, but he hasn't decided whether he wants to stop using. His story, like all those involving drugs, will most likely have a sad ending unless he can pull himself from ice's grip. I hope he does, because I never want to visit him in that hospital again.

* Rory Gibson is a senior Courier-Mail journalist

Courier-Mail
 

Figures show surge of addicted babies in Queensland
Article from: The Courier-Mail
Matthew Fynes-Clinton
April 01, 2009 11:00pm

A DRUG-ADDICTED baby is born in Queensland hospitals almost every two days, latest figures reveal.

Queensland Health records show that in 2007,159 infants were born with "neonatal withdrawal symptoms" as a result of their mothers' drug addiction.

Ten years ago, the number was 89.

Mater Mothers' Hospital neonatologist Paul Woodgate said most of the babies were delivered to mothers on opiate-replacement therapy, such as methadone.

Withdrawal symptoms, which could last in the babies for several weeks, included "discomfort, tremors and jitters".

The babies were treated with morphine or sedatives.

However, Dr Woodgate said statistics could underestimate the true extent of infant drug withdrawal.

"If you were looking at the number of babies who are being monitored for potential withdrawal, you could double the figure," he said.

"And then if you look at those babies where there has been heavy (maternal) cannabis or amphetamine use, but they wouldn't go into a special care nursery - but be kept in hospital for a few extra days - you would double the figure again."

Dr Woodgate said the Mater had been bracing for an explosion in withdrawal cases involving children of mothers addicted to methamphetamines such as speed and ice.

He said that, while the fears had not been realised, 8 to 15 per cent of clients at the Mater's specialised antenatal clinic for drug-dependent mothers were methamphetamine users.

"It's a significant part of our clinic," Dr Woodgate said.

Child Safety officers say they see growing numbers of women from Logan and Ipswich maternity hospitals who report amphetamine-type drug use.

Dr Woodgate said babies born to meth-addicted mothers tended to "crash", similar to a speed-user after bingeing.

"They're quiet, neurologically depressed, sleepy, hard to rouse. They don't wake up and cry spontaneously."

While most recovered in a few days without medication, Dr Woodgate said there could be grave outcomes.

"We know that children whose mums are heavy methamphetamine users are at increased risk of antenatal delivery complications," he said.

"There's evidence of an increased risk of stillbirth and premature delivery. They're more likely to be smaller babies.

"But with these babies, there's lifestyle factors as well. With mums who have significant methamphetamine problems, everything else is a disaster.

"They're in and out of jail and malnourished, and so the babies are at (added) risk because of the poor general health in the environment."

However, studies had not yet been done to ascertain whether babies of methamphetamine addicts experienced long-term difficulties.

Mater researcher Ann Kingsbury said many drug-users who fell pregnant were "wracked by guilt" and determined to "work towards having a healthy baby."

Courier-Mail
 
Rogue chemist employs the internet to spread the word
Article from: The Courier-Mail
Matthew Fynes-Clinton
March 31, 2009 11:00pm

A CLICK of the mouse and 206 pages of Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture, 7th edition, by "Uncle Fester", drops on the hard-drive.

A seconds-long process, and there is my manual for mind games; my 26 chapters to enlightenment (apparently).

Funny that the journalist describes downloading old uncle fester's guide, has a big coloured picture accompanying the article with the url plainly visible, then goes on to mention how possessing said document is a felony. Nice work there Matthew Fynes-Clinton, way to incriminate yourself and let everyone who reads the courier mail know just what guide to look for if they ever want to cook themselves some amps.... free advertising for uncle fester's guide?
 
C'mon guys! This has got to have been the quietest thread about the biggest piece of negative publicity i've seen on these boards!!

Get angry! Flood the journalists inbox with positive information and links.invite him, CHALLENGE HIM to see what its really like...

the Courier has declared war on us, in essence, we've all been lumped in as a single group, made to be as bad as the worst 1% of us, slandered in the press...

and not one peep?

Ideas, comments, ways to correct imbalance? The CM has served, the ball's in our court. Its as much a PR campaign as any other...

Pleas dont tell me i'm the only one seething after reading a week of lies lies lies lies?
 
Pleas dont tell me i'm the only one seething after reading a week of lies lies lies lies?

It's sensationalist journalism. That's there job though, no one would buy papers if they were all about rainbows, lollypops and sunshine.... The problem is too few people critically analyse mass media and just accept it as truth :(

Did you read the daily letters to the paper that were published? They were all either "legalise drugs completely to remove the criminal element and spend money on education, rehabilitation, harm minimisation, etc" (yay!) or "drug users should burn in hell! On with the war on drugs!"

Don't get me started on the war on drugs. Certain poltical elements of the US are only just accepting that their little crusade is directly related to the thousands of deaths in north mexico in the last couple of years...

It's ridiculous that here in Ausralia, where we have the highest recreational drug use per capita in the world, that we're still taking this tough on drugs stance.
 
It's sensationalist journalism. That's there job though, no one would buy papers if they were all about rainbows, lollypops and sunshine.... The problem is too few people critically analyse mass media and just accept it as truth :(

Did you read the daily letters to the paper that were published? They were all either "legalise drugs completely to remove the criminal element and spend money on education, rehabilitation, harm minimisation, etc" (yay!) or "drug users should burn in hell! On with the war on drugs!"

Don't get me started on the war on drugs. Certain poltical elements of the US are only just accepting that their little crusade is directly related to the thousands of deaths in north mexico in the last couple of years...

It's ridiculous that here in Ausralia, where we have the highest recreational drug use per capita in the world, that we're still taking this tough on drugs stance.

Yeah, I understand the paper sensationalises issues to sell more papers, and yes I've been onto the CM site.. but there's only a handful of responses there..

I'm just surprised that the general response has indeed been, 'meh' thats all.

Surely we can use the momentum thats been generated for our benefit, instead of the hysterical 'drugs are bad' getting all the press....

thats all, really..
 
...and it continues.


Dad steals kids' presents
Thursday, April 2, 2009
© The Cairns Post

HE stole his children's Christmas presents, four cars and strangers' money - all for drugs.

In a crime spree that lasted weeks, and went from Brisbane to Atherton, Jason Jay Larner racked up 22 charges, including four of fraud, six unlawful use of a motor vehicle, two burglary, one unlawful entry, one enter a dwelling and one of wilful damage.

Yesterday, the Cairns Magistrates’ Court heard Larner, 30, went on a rampage after he was told his child – who was born nine weeks premature – would die.

In one of the more bizarre crimes, Brisbane-based Larner pushed a security camera away as he unsuccessfully tried to steal money from a payphone.

He later cut the line to the phone in an attempt to steal the it.

Larner admitted, among other crimes, to ditching a stolen Holden at Smithfield before throwing the keys into a rubbish bin.

He also told police he broke into a safe at the Atherton Hotel and stole more than $1500 in $1 coins and $5 notes.

But police caught up with Larner at Cairns airport as he tried to fly to Darwin to see his mother, on February 4.

He had already bought a ticket.

Larner said he went on the rampage because he "just wanted to shoot up on heroin" after he heard about his baby.

At the start of the spree, he had stolen his children’s Christmas presents in Brisbane to feed his addiction.

Magistrate Trevor Black said he was giving Larner the "chance of your life".

"How low can a man be if he steal’s his own children's Christmas presents?" he said.

Larner was already in custody for a breach of parole for dangerous driving and obstructing police in 2008.

He was sentenced to three years’ jail but his parole eligibility date was unchanged, set for March 31, 2010.

Cairns Post
 

Sad answers to Rosie Bebendorf's life of questions
Article from: The Courier-Mail
Michael Wray
April 02, 2009 11:00pm

SEARCHING for lessons in the short troubled life of Rosie Clentie Bebendorf was never going to be easy for her parents.

She was complex but fragile. Happy and sad. Dearly loved, yet all alone. A charismatic friend and an "absolute monster".

Yet somewhere in this muddle of facts and clues, anecdotes and memories, truth and fiction, lies the path of a woman who battled life and herself for 28 years and two days but lost out when two ecstasy pills poisoned her body early on New Year's Day.

Many people – police, her friends, psychologists, and drug experts – have an interest in retracing Rosie's tortured path towards those little pills.

But none as much as her parents, high school teachers Gerry and Neville.

Rosie was the eldest of their three children, so named because it sounded "pretty".

Thorns

And as Mr Bebendorf told 200 mourners at her funeral in January, she inherited many characteristics of the flower at the root of her name.

Beautiful and fragile, she was full of thorns: anxiety, bipolar, borderline personality disorder, bulimia, anorexia and drug addiction, he said.

"However the rose bush is a strong and hardy plant and Rosie was a tenacious fighter who survived the harsh conditions of her environment, struggling for friendships, a career and purpose in life," Mr Bebendorf said.

"It is a sad and seemingly unjust irony that when Rosie was once again beginning to make progress in fighting her demons, had friends around her who loved her for herself and her frailties, that she tempted fate once too often and this time did not get away with it."

Well before Rosie's death, the Bebendorfs began navigating the seemingly impenetrable fog of their daughter's life, searching for answers to the dark moods and anger suffocating her happiness.

"We knew when she was about 15 or 16 that something was wrong but she wouldn't go for help or diagnosis or to a psychiatrist," said Mrs Bebendorf as she sat in the family's comfortable Dutton Park home, on Brisbane's southside.

"She actually functioned pretty well throughout adolescence until 21 or 22. She was a very, very clever girl and hid a lot of stuff.

"Even as a little girl she was really up and down, really lacked self esteem and was bullied a lot."

School days were tough, shifting between Brisbane and Winton, struggling to make friends and watching the few she had move away.

Despair

Disappointment grew into despair at Brisbane's All Hallows' School.

Time after time Rosie "just missed out" on extra-curricular activities that could have launched her into the elusive "cool" group.

Rosie, a creative and artistic child, developed an eating disorder and told the school's guidance counsellor she wanted out.

She moved to Holland Park High School and life improved. She made friends and her marks lifted. But mixing with a new crowd she took cannabis for the first time.

After school, Rosie drifted in and out of university and worked a succession of jobs as a personal assistant and in call centres.

Mrs Bebendorf said at "exactly 23 Rosie tried amphetamines for the first time".

"She said that when she tried amphetamines it felt really good but she knew she'd never be the same again and could never be right," Mrs Bebendorf said.

Mrs Bebendorf, who does most of the talking, accepts she did all she could but is nagged by the thought that maybe she missed too much.

Bad breaks

Mr Bebendorf gets frustrated as he lists some of the innumerable small breaks that went against Rosie.

The boyfriend who didn't call the ambulance as soon as Rosie passed out on New Year's Day. The court-ordered drug diversion program that lasted 10 minutes.

The private hospital that turned Rosie away because she was too noisy. The public hospital that refused her because she wasn't psychotic enough.

She ran out of chances on that New Year's Eve when she went out to celebrate. The end result was a tragedy and a series of questions that may never be answered.

"On the night, the police have told us that there were reports she was already under the weather, already something, alcohol or whatever, so whoever sold her that stuff or gave it to her, she was already you know . . . ," Mr Bebendorf said.

"Smashed," said Mrs Bebendorf.

Mr Bebendorf continued: "So they're giving her something that is potentially fatal to a person who is not in a condition to decide whether they should take it or not."

The Bebendorfs do not know from where Rosie got the pills. She was out with a new boyfriend.

"She died at his place at Gordon Park. I don't know what time they got home but she died about 6.30 in the morning," Mrs Bebendorf said.

"She sort of passed out and I think he put her in the bath or something and she came to and then she just went to bed and went to sleep and that's when she started fitting.

"Then he called the ambulance."

Mr Bebendorf laments that the ambulance was not called the moment Rosie showed problem signs.

"It mightn't have made a difference but it would have been nice. Everybody's got a bloody mobile phone on them these days," he said.

Grief

The following months have been a time of learning and grief for the family.

Mr Bebendorf has lost patience with harm minimisation advocates who tell young people that if they must take drugs they should at least take them with a friend.

"What's the good of that if the friends doing it, too?" he said.

Mrs Bebendorf, however, believes "harm minimisation is better than nothing".

Since Rosie's death they have offered to help improve publicity for Life Education, a healthy living program for school children that is seeking government funding.

Mrs Bebendorf said they had seen positive results from the program in their time as school teachers.

She said it took a holistic view of drugs, viewing them as one of the many potentially hazardous choices children needed information about to live safe and healthy lives.

"I really have no solutions other than 'don't take them, they're not good for you'," she said.

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Pharmacist fears thieves will turn to guns
Article from: The Courier-Mail
By Greg Stolz
April 02, 2009 11:00pm

THE last time robbers entered Davinder Bansal's Gold Coast pharmacy looking for key amphetamine ingredient pseudoephedrine, they used a car to ram-raid their way in.

The next time, Mr Bansal fears, they'll be packing guns.

Mr Bansal says the Pharmacy Guild's Project, STOP, which provides strict controls on the sale of pseudoephedrine-based cold and flu tablets, has been highly effective in clamping down on "pseudo-runners".

As a result, he says, amphetamine manufacturers are becoming more daring in their efforts to get their hands on pseudoephedrine.

On a Sunday morning about three months ago, just after 5am, a small blue car reversed down an arcade in the Robina Town Centre and straight through the doors of the pharmacy Mr Bansal manages.

The occupants stole about 80 packets of cold and flu tablets before fleeing as quickly as they had arrived. It was one of a rising number of pharmacy ram-raids across southeast Queensland.

"If they are brazen enough to carry out a ram-raid in a major shopping centre, what's next? Will they start turning up with guns? That's my concern," Mr Bansal says

.

Mr Bansal believes drug companies need to investigate ways of making pseudoephedrine harder to extract from cold and flu tablets.

But he also says more needs to be done to tackle the drug problem at the grassroots.

A born-again Christian, he believes a "tough love" approach is needed.

"Whole communities overseas have been transformed through the power of prayer," he says.

"I think we also need a zero tolerance approach to drugs, right from when kids first start experimenting with them. Singapore has a zero tolerance and hardly has any crime, so they must be doing something right.

"But people turn to drugs because they want to be loved, and we still have to love them. Prison ministries are good in that respect because if you can instil Christian values in the inmates, you can prevent them re-offending."

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Former addict shares battle to get clean
Article from: The Courier-Mail
By Alison Sandy
April 02, 2009 11:00pm

"I WOULDN'T be here if it wasn't for rehab - I'd be dead."

Paul, 41, is well-dressed, articulate and friendly, but his eyes have a haunted look and appear tired, with deep dark lines underneath.

He only agreed to this interview to help others, but does not want to be identified for fear it would bring more pain to his family and friends.

"It kind of just gets embarrassing - I get a bit ashamed because I feel silly," he says.

Paul, who is now a writer, grew up in Brisbane in what he describes as an upper to middle class family. He attended a GPS school and his father is a respected businessman.

"It (drugs) doesn't discriminate," he says. "I mean, rich, poor - there's no difference."

Paul has been clean for almost 10 years, but at one time, he was using every waking minute of the day.

"This sounds crazy, but for me it was kind of all over by the time I was about eight.

"It was sort of like I knew where I was going, because I didn't think I was right, or good enough, or could fit in, or do what the mainstream expected.

"I didn't really know what mainstream was, but the defining thing for me was I can't stop."

By the time he was 14, he was drinking and smoking cannabis. He progressed to amphetamines, speed, cocaine and heroin.

"My day was, wake up, go for a leak - second thing I do is have a cone, because that was the cheapest, most available drug.

"That would stop me being sick and that's what it's about. After a while, it's not 'I'm high', it's just 'I'm just not sick'."

As an addict, his life was stressful "like a ticking clock".

"I'd have to use that time to go and get some more money, so I'd steal something I could use and go and pawn that. I'd find enough money to get the next available drug, which was speed.

"That would give me two hours in which I could go and get the money, now $200, to get me some smack which I need to hold me for about four hours before I had to get some coke.

"I'd have to shoot that up every 15 minutes for the rest of the day. By then it was about 5 o'clock so I'd have to get some ecstasy or something and then I could sort of have some fun.

"And then about 3 o'clock I'd just be in a coma and wake up and go 'f---, I've got to do it again'."

Paul says he felt no remorse during those years and would lie to everyone including his parents.

"They'd say, 'just stop, your life's falling apart around you, just stop it. We love you, please just stop it'.

"And your heart's going 'yes I see what you mean, it's broken through my denial. Yes, I will stop, yes I do want to stop with all my heart. I do want to stop'.

"But you just can't, the next day or the next three days, it would be like, 'well maybe I can just have a sip, or have a beer, or maybe the problem was pot or maybe the problem was smack'."

However, it was his mother who eventually got him back to Goldbridge - a rehabilitation clinic on the Gold Coast and it was 10th time lucky.

But it was not before his mum threatened to turn him over to the police.

One day after he had stolen another car, his mother said: "If you don't take that car back then I'm going to call the police and you're going to go to jail."

"I knew she wasn't kidding, I knew she wasn't going to enable me any more," Paul reflects.

By this time, he'd been in and out of rehab for about three years.

"I thought if I stopped using drugs, the colour would dissolve from the world, everything would be black and white.

"I thought my lungs would implode - I thought I wouldn't be able to breathe. And that didn't happen and I thought 'all right, now all I've got to do is deal with this f------ s---'."

After four days clean, Paul says he felt "insanity of massive proportions - everything melting down".

"I really thought I was, underneath it all, the devil. And then something just went click in my brain, I went insane.

"I'd been insane for a long time obviously, but something just went, 'I had it all, but it still wasn't enough'."

Recovering addicts at Goldbridge aren't allowed to come and go as they please, but they can leave any time they want. Paul nearly did that, but knew his options were limited.

He went through the 12 steps and discovered consequential thinking.

"There's no quick fix," he said.

"I go to between three and five NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meetings a week.

"There's no way I would be clean now if it wasn't for meetings. It's my church, my therapy and my community.

"There are other people there like me so we can talk."

Now Paul lives on the Gold Coast and volunteers with Goldbridge once a week.

"NA says that has to be something spiritual, because it's a spiritual disease. I have to believe in something bigger than me, because I can't do it myself.

"We were just so lost, we were so lonely. To me it's a revelation, you know. That's why you have to help other people."

When asked whether he was happy, Paul answered immediately: "Yes, just like normal people.

"I believe that I've got friends and I've got love and I've got my family back and I've got hope. That's the most important thing - hope."

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Did they ever find out what was in those pills? I can't imagine MDMA would kill her like that.
 

Queensland chemists stop pill runners using mapping tool
Article from: The Courier-Mail
Matthew Fynes-Clinton
April 02, 2009 11:05pm

A BOUNTY of $100 a packet. That's what spurred a so-called "pseudo-runner" to try buying cold, flu and sinus tablets from 120 southeast Queensland pharmacies over 41/2 months last year.

But as this exclusive video reveals, he was secretly tracked by an electronic mapping system - his swath through Brisbane's suburbs graphically displayed in real-time.

His success rate was poor: suspicious pharmacists from Beenleigh in the south, west to Redbank Plains and north to Strathpine, refused to sell him medication on 108 occasions.

Still, each new day held the promise of a jackpot.

The cold-and-flu brand - containing pseudoephedrine - most favoured by illicit drug-makers costs $13 for 12 tablets.

At $100 for each pack collected, runners stand to profit by up to 669 per cent.

They pass the tablets up the supply chain to organised crime heads for dispersal to contracted "cooks" in clandestine laboratories.

Pseudoephedrine is the key precursor chemical in the manufacture of methamphetamine, the highly addictive and destructive substance known as "speed" or in its crystalline form, "ice".

But Project STOP, a world-first software built by the Queensland branch of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, has been hailed as a major strike weapon in the war against drugs.

"To date, we've stopped 26,000 packets of pseudoephedrine products leaving the store," said the scheme's co-creator, PGA Queensland manager of Innovation and Development, Shaun Singleton.

While not mandatory, the program has been taken up by 92 per cent of the state's pharmacies since it was piloted in 2005.

Queensland police say a subsequent weakening in the flow of black market pseudoephedrine has led to a dramatic drop in the number of clan lab detections: from 210 in 2004/2005 to 160 the next year and 132 in 2006/2007.

Now, with funding from the Federal Attorney-General's Department, Project STOP is being rolled out nationally. So far, 67 per cent of pharmacies are connected.

Each has access to a live, on-line database that records how frequently a customer - who must present a driver's licence or other photographic ID - has requested pseudoephedrine within and across state borders.

Postcodes for each visited pharmacy are also displayed.

If the number of attempted purchases in a period surpasses a pre-determined "appropriate threshold", pharmacists will usually reject the sale and log it as denied.

Another option likely to alert authorities is a safety sale, where a pharmacist or assistant processes a suspicious order only under threat or because of the possibility of confrontation.

An undescribed or "not recorded" entry may also be fishy.

"More often than not, it's when a pharmacist sees a record (on their screen) that is obviously a runner and they just close the screen and don't follow the process through (as they should)," Mr Singleton said.

He said that when the pattern of pharmacy shopping became extreme, with bids to buy pseudoephedrine products topping an undisclosed benchmark within 48 hours, an instant alarm was triggered.

"Project STOP automatically sends your ID (details) and the pharmacy you're currently standing in, by SMS, to an officer in the drug squad," he said.

Select police and Queensland Health officers also have access to the real-time tabulated data, with its underlying mapping tool adding an element of sophistication.

"Geo-mapping is not easy," said Project STOP's joint developer Kos Sclavos, the PGA Queensland and national president.

"We literally had to code every pharmacy in Australia."

Police say that as well as drying up the diversion of pseudoephedrine, intelligence gleaned from Project STOP in Queensland has led to the interception of runners, cooks and traffickers.

As a result, 177 people have faced court on charges relating to the possession and manufacture of methamphetamine.

Mr Singleton said: "I can pick a radius of say, 5km. The (map) will also show me all the pharmacies in the area that the runner hasn't been to yet. So police will know where he's active, and where he might go to next."

A police source confirmed the technology would sometimes track runners for months before arrests were made.

"We see names reappear and we build up profiles.

"Then we're able to use other methods to (help) get enough evidence to grant a warrant and take action."

Mr Singleton said Project STOP, re-labelled MethShield, was now being piloted in the US state of Kansas with further trials lined up for Missouri and Georgia, in licensing deals worth millions of dollars.

Around 2006, pharmacists in America were forced to move all pseudoephedrine behind the counter and record purchasers' names in a logbook.

But after a sharp decline, clan lab detections are on the rise again because the system prevents real-time sharing of information.

Mr Singleton said: "All the runners have figured out, 'Hang on, they're taking our names down. But no one's actually checking any of this stuff'."

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Drug trade's tragic toll and institutional ignorance revealed
Article from: The Courier-Mail
Matthew Fynes-Clinton
April 03, 2009 11:00pm

FIVE community pillars have let down our youth with a not-in-my-backyard attitude to the flourishing illicit drug problem.

The institutions of ignorance are schools, the police and criminal justice system, the health and drug treatment sector, law makers and the pubs and clubs industry.

This conclusion owes nothing to statistics or voices from official corners.

It is centred on the observations of dozens of ordinary Queenslanders spoken to by The Courier-Mail in the course of its wide-ranging investigation into the growth of amphetamine-type stimulant drugs.

Our stories - your stories - over the past week, highlighting abuse of drugs such as ecstasy, ice and speed, have picked up a wake of carnage.

But now, at whose feet do we drop it?

After a Brisbane mother had caught her 14-year-old son smoking marijuana with other students before school, on the perimeter of the grounds, she learned that he'd been regularly attending sick bay in the mornings. "I saw the haemorrhaging eyeballs," she said. "He was so bleary, he could hardly talk.

"But the school nurse had been diagnosing conjunctivitis ... If I'd been told earlier, I would have been able to say to them, 'Well, he didn't have conjunctivitis at 8 o'clock, how did he get conjunctivitis by half-past 8?'

"How could his teachers not recognise there was something seriously wrong here? How could the school nurse not recognise that this was drugs?"

The mother said she approached police about it, "but they said they had better things to do with their time than round up kids who were smoking dope before school." She said she found some teachers at the government-run school who were prepared to admit "unofficially" they knew kids were turning up stoned.

"But what they told me is that unless a kid is caught red-handed, on the premises, they don't want to know about it."

The woman's son is now 26, a schizophrenic and a speed addict, who has tried to kill himself at least twice.

Meantime, Ron Eddington, a retired Queensland police inspector who spent 38 years as a detective, said drug dealers were often not arrested, but charged by written notice - because it saved police time.

This left offenders loose to continue their operations for months.

"Not so long ago, I was involved in a matter at a house, and I found three notices-to-attend in relation to drug matters," he said.

"They related to three consecutive days where the offender had been apprehended selling heroin, amphetamines and three or four other drugs.

"And he was given a month's notice to appear before the Magistrate's Court, and then after that he'd (likely) get an adjournment for a couple of months."

Mr Eddington said alleged drug pushers should be put straight into custody.

"Forget all this bulls--- about notices-to-attend, they should be arrested that night," he said. "They should be held inthe watchhouse until they appearbefore the magistrate the next morning.

"And then, if they were a persistent offender ... they wouldn't get bail."

Another Brisbane mother, who was assaulted by her adult daughter in what she suspects was speed-fuelled rage, recalled travelling immediately to the local police station. "This officer was just sitting there with his legs up and his KFC," she said.

"I was bleeding and I said to him, 'I've just been assaulted'. He said to me, 'Oh, anyone see it, love?' I said no and he said, 'Well, you've got no witnesses, go home and make yourself a strong cup of coffee. Because it's never going to get to court."

People from all walks - lawyers, doctors, academics and a spectrum of families - spoke of the stonewalling at hospital counters and drug rehabilitation centres. "I tried to get my son in rehab," said one frustrated mother. "But at the end of the day, they say that if the person is not voluntarily presenting, there is nothing they can do."

"We need to make treatment more accessible, easier to get into and easier to come back into (after relapse)," said Dr Mark Daglish, Royal Brisbane Hospital director of addiction psychiatry.

A Gold Coast barrister related that even when addicts mustered their first restorative step – usually a trip to the public hospital – too often they "fell through the cracks".

"They've finally been convinced by someone to go to hospital," he said.

"But when they present there, they're told that because they're not in the midst of a psychotic state and an immediate danger to themselves or somebody else, they're discharged.

"Two hours later, that person steals a car or robs the corner store."

The Courier-Mail series, which began on Monday, ventured from the caverns of nightclub drug-taking to dimmer corners, shaking out the stories of dealers.

The investigation traced the sourcing and making of illicit amphetamines, probed the enmeshment of outlaw motorcycle gangs, and examined the nexus between drugs and all crime.

The raw nerve of drug abuse was exposed through moving accounts from addicts and their torn relatives.

And the newspaper negotiated the release of government scientific tests that proved a parade of dangerous substances are masquerading as ecstasy.

It is ecstasy, of all amphetamines, that shapes as the timebomb. One in four Australians aged 20-29 has tried the drug – and numbers are escalating each year.

And yet, part-responsibility lies in an extraordinary piece of government somnolence.

A source from a commonwealth crime-fighting body revealed how pill presses – destined for ecstasy manufacture – were pouring into the country with no import controls.

He said intelligence agencies had identified the arrival of 149 of the Asian-made machines at Australian ports from 2004-2007. But with no Federal Government registration or licensing requirements, "all of those have just disappeared into the community".

Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus had two things to say. Yes, the presses are not prohibited imports. And no review of the policy is imminent.

Back in the bustling late-night entertainment precincts within Brisbane and the Gold Coast, the newspaper conducted 10 police-accredited drug swipe tests on clubs and pubs.

Only two of the venues were drug-free. The others returned positive readings to one or more of: amphetamine/methamphetamine/ecstasy; cocaine, cannabis and opiates.

On the record, club proprietors acknowledge drugs are consumed at their premises.

But they are perceptibly hands-off, speaking in terms of a practice they "don't condone".

They stand ready, they say, to liaise with police to help stamp it out.

However, privately, they illuminate their distinct lack of pro-activity.

They say it is not their job to enforce drug laws. And that everyone has the right to close a toilet cubicle door; as if, with a turn of a latch, one who chops and snorts is exempt from the consequences of illegal activity.

The aforementioned barrister practically shrieked at the magnitude of day-to-day myopia on drugs.

"If we had one person dying a week in Queensland from typhoid or avian bird flu, or a plane crash, or being run over by a bus, there'd be a parliamentary inquiry," he said.

"Well, every day there are people dying directly or indirectly due to their addiction to amphetamines. But it's just passing by the wayside.

"Meanwhile, there's a growth industry in jails . . . there's a growth industry in cemeteries and crematoriums."

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