AUS: It?s time to saliva test drivers for more drugs, says a leading legal expert

[Jabberwocky]

MOTORISTS are being allowed to drive with a cocktail of dangerous drugs in their system because of lax roadside testing laws, according to a leading legal expert.

Criminal barrister Stephen Lawrence says Benzedrine, known as benzos or ?bennies?, and other prescription medications are the greatest contributor to drug-related road deaths.

However, he says drivers in New South Wales are only being tested for methylamphetamine (ice), ecstasy and cannabis in the Mobile Drug Testing (MDT) stings and he is now calling for a radical overhaul to the testing system.

?You can drive off your head on valium and you will sail through a saliva test,? said Mr Lawrence.

?I don?t think that a testing regime based on the mere presence of illicit drugs is problematic, because it deters people from making impossible judgments about when to drive following drug use.

?But, I do think the current regime can be characterised as part of the failed war on drugs, because it only focuses on illegal drugs, when other legal drugs are actually just as dangerous.?

Yesterday, the NSW Government announced it will crack down on drug drivers by strengthening laws and boosting roadside drug testing.

The measures include: doubling the number of roadside drug tests from 100,000 a year to 200,000 a year by 2020, adding cocaine to the list of drugs subject to roadside testing, increasing maximum penalties for drug drivers to two years imprisonment, fines of $5,500 and/or licence disqualification for up to five years and providing for ?appropriate restrictions? on people who drive after using other drugs, in consultation with health experts.

And, the state?s Centre For Road Safety?s Executive Director, Bernard Carlon, told news.com.au that it was a misconception that those who misuse pharmaceutical drugs like painkillers or benzodiazepines cannot be caught drug driving.


?In 2016, an estimated 1150 drivers were detected driving under the influence of a drug, up approximately 40 per cent compared to 2012,? he said.

?Any driver that NSW Police suspect is impaired by drugs, whether illicit drugs like cocaine or prescription pain killers, can be arrested for blood and urine tests if police believe they are driving under the influence and they fail a sobriety assessment.?

Mr Lawrence, however, believes it?s time to test drivers who take drugs like valium as part of MDT saliva swab stings.

?In the UK and Ireland, they test for these drugs and I think it?s really important that we move in that direction here,? he said.

The legal expert argues that drug testing should be based on scientific research around drug impairment and how long the effects of drugs last for.

?It?s politically easy to monitor and penalise illicit drug users, whereas prescription medications cut a much wider swathe across the community,? Mr Lawrence said.

?If the government truly made this testing regime about road safety, all sorts of people would be affected who probably consider themselves good law-abiding people, and frankly I think the state government is scared of the political consequences.

?The state government should create a testing policy that deters illicit drug users and prescription drug users from driving when it is not safe.

?This regime should include testing for cocaine, morphine, benzodiazepines and any other drugs that the evidence tells us don?t mix well with driving.?

According to a study by Curtin and Monash universities, of Aussie road deaths between 2000-2012, 24.3 per cent of fatally injured male drivers tested positive for an illicit substance compared with 16.7 per cent of female drivers.

However, the study shows there is a big problem when it comes to legal drugs.

Opioids were the most frequently detected group of non-illicit drugs ? accounting for 12 per cent of all fatalities ? followed by antidepressants (7.3 per cent), benzodiazepines (5.9 per cent) and stimulants (2 per cent).

An addition, 5.9 per cent of drivers also tested positive to a diverse range of drugs to treat conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and hypertension.

Paul Mavor, a pharmacist with Medical Cannabis Research Australia, told news.com.au medical cannabis patients were being unfairly punished in roadside stings.

?In the case of medical cannabis patients, the very large majority receive very low levels of THC, the psychoactive component of the plant, and are still okay to drive,? he said.

?This effectively treats their medical condition such as pain, nausea or MS while enabling them to still function. They effectively get ?help not high?.

?Depending on the sensitivity of the roadside test, the patient may have trace amounts of medication in [their] system but may be statistically safe to get behind the wheel. In contrast there are a lot of other drugs such as opiates that will give patients a high and impair them to drive.?

Along with announcing a raft of new measures to tackle drug driving, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the state will look into the issues around prescription drugs.

?There are prescription drugs that may significantly impair the performance of drivers,? Ms Berejiklian said.

?We need to ensure that drivers are not impaired and a risk to others on the road. We will be seeking advice from police and road safety and medical experts on the appropriate restrictions to balance the need of people taking medication and the safety of the broader community on the road.

?We know that we need to continue to be vigilant to ensure we keep our community safe on our roads. That includes ongoing assessment about the most appropriate restrictions for repeat driving offenders.?


Source: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...t/news-story/56a8df3c9901969b1c8fa9567589a2b3

 

[JessFR]

However, the study shows there is a big problem when it comes to legal drugs.

Opioids were the most frequently detected group of non-illicit drugs ? accounting for 12 per cent of all fatalities ? followed by antidepressants (7.3 per cent), benzodiazepines (5.9 per cent) and stimulants (2 per cent).

An addition, 5.9 per cent of drivers also tested positive to a diverse range of drugs to treat conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and hypertension.

You gotta love how these irresponsible dumbass reporters just take the obvious that some people will have drugs in their system on a car accident and automatically assume it's a problem and that those drugs caused the accident with no proof whatsoever.

Yeah, antidepressants caused it.

Fuck people man. I honestly care very little what they do. If people end up fucked over cause the idiots in charge make up new stupid laws because the tabloids told them too, serves em right. They woulda been all for it if it weren't something that affected them.

That's how people are, playing armchair expert on every issue when they know nothing about it.

 

[spacejunk]

Criminal barrister Stephen Lawrence says Benzedrine, known as benzos or ?bennies?, and other prescription medications are the greatest contributor to drug-related road deaths.

Fucking murdoch press. Ignorant scum.

 

[JessFR]

Fucking murdoch press. Ignorant scum.

Save some hate for the public. They're the ones who keep believing it.

 

[spacejunk]

Nah, they mostly don't know any better, being fed shit like this.
Benzos = benzedrine? My fucking god.

I don't blame the public for this shit; in australia most people reject this sort of murdoch bullshit.
He's losing heaps of money on his propaganda rags.

 

[JessFR]

Say you're right. Then why do politicians react to it.

Politicians do all sorts of stupid crap because the news says there's a problem that doesn't really exist. Or doesn't exist the way they suggest.

So if people don't really buy it, and I think they do. But if they didn't that means the politicians believe they do.

Honestly I think people DO believe it though. I hear people parrot what they hear on current affair and the news all the time. They may claim they don't believe it in a general sense, but they don't actually apply that to anything specific.

Hell, when I've bitched about crazy over regulation most Australians I've met have defended it. A lot of people in my age group of upper 20s have still never had a full driver's license because of how insane the regulations for them have gotten.

I got mine in Queensland just before the new regulations came in, back when I did it there were no P plates, no log books. No nothing really. You had Ls for 6 months, after which you got a provisional license for a few years but it was identical to a full license except it had a no alcohol limit.

My first provisional license automatically became a full license after 3 years of the 5 year license had passed. It literally said both provisions and open license on it, with the open license taking effect the day the provisional part of the license expired. Same card for the whole thing.

People my age today can't believe it. But that's cause they aren't from Queensland and have had the new regulations longer. And it's only getting worse.

People just can't accept that some degree of people dying on the roads is inevitable and won't ever stop making it harder and harder. Till now young people don't get a full license until they're nearly 30.

And this is much the same, soon we will have crazier drug driving laws. Australia just never knows when enough is enough. And nearly everyone I've ever spoken to about it defends it.

Which is why I say fuck em. They defend it till it fucks with them, but too bad for them. They get what they deserve.

I just ignore the laws that get in my way anyway so I really don't care.

 

[spacejunk]

I think politicians react to it because they - along with the corporate press - have a vested interest in scapegoating people.

Look at the "african gangs" beat-up in australia in the last couple of weeks.
Total bullshit, and the press and right wing politicians were all over it.
Drug users are easy to demonise - and without demonising people, where would tabloid newspapers be? Or conservative politicians?

They're in cahoots because it suits their agendas; namely working for the interests of the privileged few. Keep the plebs fighting amongst themselves.

 

[JessFR]

Ehhh. I don't think so.

I think they do it cause rightly or wrongly they think the people want them too. Politicians are obsessed with popularity cause their jobs depend on it.

The level of conspiracy and intelligence you suggest is well beyond what I consider them competent enough for.

And personally I do think people believe it.

Like I said, I see people parrot the news all the time. They might say they don't believe it or trust the news. But they do.

 

[spacejunk]

So you outright reject that the (blatantly) conservative press are in cahoots with conservative politicians?

It's not "conspiracy" in the modern, paranoid use of that word. It's vested interests.

We're all products of our respective environments - just as you are a product of yours - and of course people will be ignorant when they're fed shit and kept in the dark.

 

[JessFR]

Part of my problem is I reject the premise of this conservative press.

I don't find a lot of the press outlets particularly conservative. Some are, but some aren't. Murdoch may own them all but he's removed enough from them for them to have their own separate structure with their own biases.

They are tabloids, their loyalty is to sensationalism. And people love sensationalism. They read it, get worked up. Politicians see that and see they have to do something about it.

So for example, someone on methadone is in a car accident, the press turns that into a sensationalist claim that people on legal drugs are putting people on the roads in danger. People get hysterical. The politicians see that, and feel they must be seen to do something about it.

I honestly don't consider this particular problem to be exclusive to either side. It's just politics and people.

It's less that in saying your claims are factually wrong and more that I'm saying that's not whats going on here with what I'm talking about.

 

[pofacedhoe]

^ i think its kind of both of your points to similar degrees at the same time

 

[spacejunk]

^ you're right, of course - but i think propaganda on the scale of murdoch's empire shares a pretty sizeable chunk of the blame, but obviously not all of it.

I don't find a lot of the press outlets particularly conservative. Some are, but some aren't. Murdoch may own them all but he's removed enough from them for them to have their own separate structure with their own biases.

Do you think that's true?
My understanding of the way Murdoch runs News Corp (i prefer to call it News Corpse) is that he has a lot of editorial imput.

For instance, his papers and tv shows across the world often run with the same editorial line on serious or deeply contentious issues.
The iraq war, for instance; i think every single murdoch paper had a strong pro-war stance on iraq in ~2002-3

Iraq and the Rupert Murdoch connection: The media mogul's network of pro-war campaigners

And this article talks about the way Murdoch's papers have alligned editorially (and used as political weapons) for decades:

In 1979 Rupert Murdoch made his first takeover bid for the largest newspaper company in Australia, the Herald and Weekly Times, which he believed had mistreated one of its key architects, his father. The bid was resisted. Murdoch had a well-deserved reputation as a manipulator of the political process. He was known to have used his existing papers ruthlessly in 1972 to undermine the Liberal prime minister, Billy McMahon, and then in 1975 to help destroy Gough Whitlam, the Labor prime minister he had once enthusiastically supported. In fighting against the bid, the Melbourne Herald expressed the general understanding: ?Mr Murdoch?s newspapers always respond in unison ? as though to some divine wind ? as they pursue their relentless campaigns in favour of current Murdoch objectives ? particularly his political ones. Every journalist in Australia knows that.?

He's a powerful man with a ridiculous amount of political clout. Look at fox's relationship with trump. Pretty cozy.
He can build people up, and has no issue with tearing them down.

This is a long read, but an interesting one that i think supports what i'm trying to say - murdoch uses his global media empire to push his political agenda - he pushes it on the public and the legislators.
It's a pretty comprehensive and apparently well-researched piece.
It's from 2011 but just as relevant as ever i think;

Special report: Rupert Murdoch, a hands-on newspaperman

LONDON (Reuters) - To illustrate the extent to which Rupert Murdoch used to micro-manage his newspapers, a one-time Murdoch editor told an anecdote about a typical board meeting at the mogul?s UK newspaper arm in the 1980s.


News International directors, including some of the most powerful newspaper editors in Britain, would solemnly assemble in a board room within Murdoch?s fortress-like publishing compound at Wapping, not far from the Tower of London.

Once assembled, Kelvin MacKenzie, the editor who ran Murdoch?s raucous daily tabloid the Sun between 1981 and 1994 and made it the most influential newspaper for much of the Thatcher era, would ask: ?Right. Who?s going to ring Rupert, then??

The anecdote was delivered with a smile. But senior journalists and corporate officials who have worked at the highest levels of the Murdoch organization in Britain say it encapsulates a deep truth about the way the Murdoch newspaper empire has traditionally been run.

Former senior Murdoch employees in Britain, Australia and the United States say Murdoch is a hands-on media proprietor, as ready with an opinion on a story as he is to dispose of any editor who regularly takes a different stance from his own.

Reports of Murdoch pressuring editors until their newspapers reflected his own political leanings are common -- if more frequent at his tabloids than at his quality publications. Sometimes, Murdoch does not even have to pick up the phone.

?When I was last at News I was astonished how some editors would almost factor in Rupert even though he was 12,000 miles away,? Bruce Guthrie, a former editor at Murdoch?s Herald Sun in Melbourne, told Reuters.

?You could almost see them thinking, ?what will Rupert think of this?'?

News International told Reuters it does not comment on Murdoch?s level of involvement in his newspapers. Dow Jones & Company, which owns the Wall Street Journal, declined to comment. Parent company News Corporation would not comment.

Reuters is a competitor of the Journal and of Dow Jones Newswires, the financial news agency that News Corp acquired along with the Wall Street Journal in 2007.

ANTICIPATING THE BOSS

To get an idea of how deeply Murdoch sometimes sought to steer what his newspapers were saying, former Wapping insiders point to his relationship with one of the more respected of his British media properties, the Sunday Times.

Toward the end of a typical week, says a former senior News International figure, the owner would routinely ring the paper?s editor -- from the mid-1980s a voluble Scotsman named Andrew Neil but more recently John Witherow, a genial, low-profile South African -- and grill them about the stories being worked on.

One person who was present at one of these sessions said Murdoch would ask his editor to run through the list of stories reporters were chasing. He would then critique them one by one.

Eventually Murdoch would hear a story he liked and make his interest apparent. That story would then become a main candidate for the front page.

Roy Greenslade, a media commentator for the Guardian who worked as a senior editor at both Murdoch?s Sun tabloid and the quality Sunday Times, said that from what he saw and heard, Murdoch?s personal editorial involvement was much deeper with his British tabloids than with his two up-market papers, The Times and the Sunday Times. Current and former employees of the Wall Street Journal say that?s the case at that paper as well.

In his earlier days as a UK media mogul, Murdoch was known for literally dictating what tabloid editors would put in their papers, Greenslade told Reuters.

But Greenslade and other News Corp editors also said that as Murdoch?s empire expanded, the Australian-born mogul had less time to micro-manage operations at individual papers.

At the same time he was still able to exert editorial influence by selecting editors who would anticipate his editorial views and whims.

?As an editor you were never in any doubt about what pleased him,? Greenslade said.

In 2007, Murdoch himself told a House of Lords committee looking at media ownership and the news that he was a ?traditional proprietor? at the Sun and News of the World, according to the committee?s minutes of a meeting with the media boss. ?He exercises editorial control on major issues -- like which Party to back in a general election or policy on Europe,? the committee noted.

Rebekah Brooks, editor of the News of the World when some of the phone hacking occurred and head of News International until last week, told the same committee that she was ?very lucky to have a traditional proprietor like Mr Murdoch, coupled with always having Les Hinton (then head of News International) there as well, who, as you know, was a journalist. Yes, I do seek advice from them and, yes, it is a consensus issue.?

STEALTH

Murdoch?s influence, former News Corp staff say, was not restricted to Britain and explains why so many of his titles around the world took the same editorial stance on major issues, such as the Iraq war.

Guthrie told Reuters that Murdoch regularly hosted editorial conferences at which he would make his feelings known.

?You leave the conference kind of inculcated with a culture,? said Guthrie, who won damages from the company in 2008 for unfair dismissal.

?That?s the way it?s done, it?s almost by stealth, but you leave those conferences with an almost collective view -- certainly with the knowledge of what the boss wants.?

Another former News Limited journalist in Australia, who asked not to be named, agreed that Murdoch liked to employ people who could anticipate his next step.

?They know how to think,? the former journalist said. ?People are put in these jobs because they understand News Corp and how Rupert thinks so they don?t have to be micro-managed.?

Neil, the editor of Britain?s Sunday Times for 11 years, told a House of Lords committee looking into media ownership in 2008 that he was never in any doubt what Murdoch wanted, even though he could not recall a direct instruction telling him to take a particular line.

?On every major issue of the time and every major political personality or business personality, I knew what he thought and you knew, as an editor, that you did not have a freehold, you had a leasehold ... and that leasehold depended on accommodating his views,? he said.

?Rupert Murdoch is obsessed with what his newspapers say. He picks the editors that will take the kind of view of these things that he has and these editors know what is expected of them when the big issues come and they fall into line.?

In the 1980s, the Sun?s MacKenzie would hear from Murdoch on a daily basis -- not quite to discuss exact headlines, but to make sure the newspaper would report the major issues as the press baron saw fit.

Greenslade, recalling the relationship between Murdoch and MacKenzie, told the same House of Lords committee that the editor would regularly come off the phone ?rubbing his backside as if he had been given a good kicking on the phone?.

Three former News of the World reporters who spoke to Reuters also remember a hands-on owner.

?Rupert comes across as quite unassuming,? said one. ??The quiet assassin,? we used to call him. He used to turn up unannounced -- you wouldn?t know he was there. No jacket, sleeves rolled up, at the back bench, quite hands-on.?

Another said: ?If the Murdochs were in town, there?d be massive pressure to get some sensational story that weekend.?

A third, a correspondent for the News of the World in New York for a period, agreed that Murdoch liked to get involved. But based on practices in his U.S. newspapers, this person said, ?I think the whole thing (alleged phone hacking and police bribery) will have horrified Murdoch.?

PLEASING THE BOSS

The pressure from the boss was -- and is -- less intense at Murdoch?s quality papers. Neil told the committee that during his time as editor at the Sunday Times he would hear from Murdoch perhaps once or twice a week and receive regular cuttings from Wall Street Journal editorials, sent to show Murdoch?s take on an issue.

?Part of the process of him letting you know his mind, in addition to calls and conversations, is to clip out editorials from, above all, the Wall Street Journal,? he said. ?He loved the Wall Street Journal, and he will love it even more now that he owns it.?

According to current and former employees of Dow Jones, Murdoch chats on a daily basis with the editor of the Journal, Robert Thomson, both by phone and by wandering down to the Journal newsroom at News Corp headquarters on Sixth Avenue. Murdoch enjoys occasionally bantering and gossiping with other editors and reporters whom he has come to know in the Journal newsroom, these people say.

A News Corp insider agreed Murdoch occasionally trades gossip with editors and reporters, but said it never went further than that.

But the experience at the New York Post, at least on one occasion, was different, according to a former employee at the paper.

?You kind of knew what he wanted and what he didn?t want. You knew what kind of stories to do and what not to do. But the only time I really saw him hands-on in the newsroom for any sustained period was the seven week Gore-Bush (electoral) recount. He was there and he wanted to make sure we were on it the way he wanted us to be on it.

?There is no doubt obviously who they wanted to win the election.?

A former veteran New York Post reporter described Murdoch as having had ?his hands all over the Post. I used to see him in the newsroom something like twice a week sometimes when he was in New York, especially if something big was happening in politics or business.?

While Murdoch ?used to give us tips about people he wanted us to go after especially in business and politics,? this reporter said the Post did not use things like private investigators or phone tapping.

?When he bought the Journal we started to see him a lot less,? the former reporter said. ?It seemed the Post had lost its luster and he had this new plaything. Some people started wondering if the Post was long for this world.?

SCHADENFREUDE

In an editorial on July 18, the Wall Street Journal argued that readers should ?see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can?t cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications? -- a reference to the Guardian which has led much of the coverage on the hacking story -- ?that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp journalists across the world.?

That may be true. There is no suggestion that hacking took place at the Wall Street Journal or Murdoch?s Times and the papers continue to provide serious, in-depth coverage of politics and business.

But critics, including some former Murdoch editors, argue there?s no getting around the fact that Murdoch?s personality and the pressure he creates have helped create a culture where reporters felt it was acceptable to hack into phone messages to get scoops.

?The culture that exists at his newspapers is a culture he has developed,? Guthrie said. ?It?s in some ways an amoral culture. Essentially Rupert is this hard-driving proprietor who pushes all his editors for more sales, bigger stories, he wants bigger splashes and he puts his editors under enormous pressure to deliver on that.

?He is not necessarily a bloke who wants to discuss ethics in journalism.?

With reporting by Georgina Prodhan in London, Michael Perry and Michael Smith in Sydney, and Yinka Adeogoke and Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Simon Robinson and Sara Ledwith

From Reuters. Link


I'm not saying that the public shouldn't be more critical and discerning - look at the fucking idiots they keep voting into government in this country and elsewhere.
but members of the ruling classes that own these enormous media networks have a lot of clout. I mean, think of how predominance of Fox in the USA.
It's huge, and its editorial perspectives reach hundreds of milllions - probably billions of media consumers.

It's huge. So huge that he - a shrewd businessman - makes a loss on his papers in Australia and the UK.
(See: Rupert Murdoch's News Corp registers $817m loss as its newspapers' value fall)


Why do you think he does it? I'd wager that it's not about profits, and that it's an investment in power and influence.

I've heard runours that his son and heir Lachlan is (or was?) a smackhead, so it will be interesting to see what happens to the Murdoch dynasty after daddy's gone or kryogenically frozen or whatever (i'm kidding on that last bit - i'm sure he's got some kind of immortality deal with Satan)