Australian Ice Thread

[poledriver]

Sophie Collombet's murderer sentenced to life behind bars

An ice addict who randomly attacked a French student in a Brisbane park to gratify his sexual desire has been sentenced to life in prison for her murder.

Sophie Collombet's killer will spend at least 20 years behind bars for brutally raping the French student and leaving her for dead in a Brisbane park.

Benjamin James Milward, 28, was high on ice when he grabbed Ms Collombet as she walked home from university on the night of March 27, 2014.

Milward can't remember what exactly happened but Ms Collombet's injuries suggest she was dragged along the ground and hit in the head multiple times.

The self-described sex addict raped the 21-year-old before leaving her on a bench covered only by a jacket and newspaper.

He then threw her possessions in the Brisbane River and fled the state.

The Brisbane Supreme Court heard on Wednesday Milward told Ms Collombet he would get help but never did.

The Griffith University business student was alive for several hours after the assault and died from extensive injuries to her head.

Passers-by thought she was a sleeping homeless person and did not call for help.

It was a rough sleeper who finally went to check on her and called paramedics, but it was too late.

Milward confessed to police when he was tracked down in NSW' Coffs Harbour 10 days after the attack, thanks to eye witnesses who had seen him in the park.

He pleaded guilty earlier this month to rape and murder but the court heard he had never intended to kill Ms Collombet.

In sentencing Milward, Justice Ann Lyons condemned his attack on a defenceless woman.

"Your actions were cowardly, you attacked a woman alone in a park," she said.

"She died not far from this courtroom. I can see the spot from my room."

Milward was sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 20 years.

Ms Collombet's family, who flew in from France to be in court, spoke of their endless grief at the loss of their daughter, sister and girlfriend.

Her brothers Guillaume and Lionel read a collective victim impact statement in court describing their constant pain.

"There's not one life that has not been destroyed," Lionel said.

The family refused to acknowledge Milward as he apologised while being led from the dock, and would not take questions about him from media outside court.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/10/26/life-jail-french-students-killer

 

[poledriver]

 

[poledriver]

Miranda Devine: This ice age has gone on too long

DOES anyone seriously think it’s a good idea to provide a taxpayer-funded nanny to an ice addict who already has had eight children removed by welfare authorities?

It’s insanity. Yet this is exactly what the NSW government is doing for the ninth baby of a Blacktown mother and her violent partner as part of a pilot program to keep children in risky family situations.

These ice addicts get a fulltime carer for 40 hours a week to look after their seven month old son, and we’re told he’s “thriving”.

Family and Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard claims it’s a radical new program, but it just comes from the destructive old 1960s ideology that led to the child abuse epidemic in the first place: family preservation at any price.

With the non-judgmental ethos of the social work industry that all families are equal, and drug addicts can make fine parents, children are kept in violent, chaotic situations until the damage to their developing brains is so profound that they will never be able to lead normal lives.

Yet our welfare industry turbocharges the underclass. It incentivises hopeless drug addicts to keep having children they can’t take care of, because it provides them with more money for each child and priority social housing. There is no need to stay with the child’s father because the state is a better breadwinner.

A truly radical program would be to offer addicts a sterilisation bonus, like the baby bonus, so they can wreck their own lives but no babies are harmed in the process. If that’s too draconian, how about an incentive to take long-term contraception.

People squeal about the rights of adults to breed as they wish, but they don’t trump the rights of babies not to be abused. And if drug addicted adults are considered responsible enough to bring a baby into the world, then they are capable of making the decision to trade away their fertility for money.

It would be a lot cheaper for the taxpayer than paying for a fulltime nanny, and the savings in human misery are incalculable.

For more than a decade in the US, non profit group Project Prevention has been doing just that, paying drug addicts $300 cash for long-term birth control, including sterilisation.

“Don’t let a pregnancy ruin your drug habit,” is their motto.

Founder Barbara Harris, who started the project after adopting four of eight children of a crack addict, has been demonised as a eugenicist and racist. But she says: “Social workers and their like have done their best for years and it’s not good enough. I’m paying addicts for being responsible.”

Similarly, when I raised the prospect this week, on Channel 9’s Today Show, of a sterilisation bonus for our Blacktown ice addicts, do-gooders slammed it as a cruel idea straight out of Nazi Germany.

Former Labor minister Gary Johns was similarly criticised when he wrote a book, No Contraception No Dole, suggesting compulsory contraception for those on welfare as an emergency measure, “to help crack intergenerational reproduction of strife.”

The do-gooders would rather turn a blind eye to the cruelty of sentencing the babies of ice addicts, already damaged in the womb, to a life of Hobbesian chaos.

Anyway, why is it any more perverse to offer addicts cash incentives not to have children who will be mistreated, than to offer them extra welfare for each child they have and can’t take care of? Our welfare system has its own in-built perverse incentive for child abuse and neglect.

But for a brief shining moment, when Pru Goward was the minister, it seemed NSW was about to err on the side of the child’s rights, with strict conditions for removing victims from abusive parents and starting the path to adoption.

But Hazzard has drunk the social work KoolAid.

“There is absolutely no question that removing a baby from a mum is no guarantee that baby is going to have a positive future,” he said this week, while trumpeting his nanny-for-ice addicts program.

But it’s not child removal that is the problem. It is the fact that children are not removed soon enough.

Instead they are shuttled back and forth between various foster situations and their dysfunctional home — 43,000 kids each year. And like domestic violence, this epidemic of child abuse and neglect is concentrated in dysfunctional welfare holes.

“We’ve heard it all before,’’ says child protection expert Jeremy Sammut, research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies and author of The Madness Of Australian Child Protection.

He says permanent adoption is the only solution to rescue children from hell, but authorities are reluctant to act out of fear of being accused of creating another “Stolen Generation” or “forced adoption” scandal. The do-gooders up to no good again.

In the end, the best early intervention program is to remove welfare incentives to have unwanted children, and the best way to stop children being abused and neglected is to adopt them out to families who will love them and let them flourish.

Forget taxpayer funded nannies.

If you are an ice addict who has had eight children removed you long ago forfeited the right to be a parent.

Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine. Picture: Richard Dobson

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...g/news-story/f68ef4841a1e0271377f5065a44e6b5d

 

[poledriver]

Why We Shouldn't Be Advocating Sterilisation

News Corp have done it again, this time with columnist Miranda Devine suggesting that drug addicts should be sterilised. Comedian Ben Mcleay responds but holy hell we really shouldn't need to do this.

It’s that most wonderful time of the week again: the time when a News Corp columnist writes a piece so profoundly fascist and weird it manages to stand out among the white noise of their characteristically fascist and weird pieces.

This morning’s hefty scoop of steaming, fly-covered opinion came from Miranda Devine, who so thoughtfully suggested that it’s about bloody time we sterilised people suffering from a methamphetamine addiction. Pretty reasonable right?

Actually, while that might sound wonderful on paper, it turns out it’s a terrible idea, and we thought we’d outline the top 3 reasons why:

1. Are you fucking kidding me?

No, really, what the fuck? It’s 2016 Australia not bloody Nazi Germany. Devine railed against the comparison in the column, saying that when she expressed her Eugenics Lite™ plan on the Today Show “do-gooders slammed it as a cruel idea straight out of Nazi Germany.”

Ah, those bloody do-gooders, always trying to, uh, do good. If you don’t want people to compare the things you say to cruel ideas from Nazi Germany, maybe don’t suggest policies that are literally straight out of Nazi Germany.

Over 400,000 people were sterilised by the Germans before the end of World War II, in an attempt to rid the German population of “undesirables”, including those with disabilities, mental disorders and alcoholics.

I’m sure Devine will act baffled as to why people are outraged at this take, but advocating for rendering childless those people suffering from an issue that overwhelmingly disproportionately affects the lower class might for some reason rub people up the wrong way.

2. Get fucked

The bitter hatred that people (particularly conservatives) have for addicts is utterly disgusting. Studies have shown time and time again that addiction tends largely to have roots in both environmental and genetic factors, and yet society treats people struggling with addiction as if they are just intrinsically worse people who are choosing to indulge their substance dependence at the expense of the taxpayer.

Apparently Devine is sick of taxpayers footing the bill for childcare - which is apparently not a big deal if it’s Joe Hockey’s kids on a jaunt in the US, but it’s a huge problem when it’s people suffering from a disorder that doctors characterise as a disease, go figure.

But hey, hold on, it’s not just the money - Devine wants to stop children being born into these families supposedly because she fears for their well-being, saying that “this epidemic of child abuse and neglect is concentrated in dysfunctional welfare holes.”

But of course the solution here isn’t to provide better support for addicts and to put more money into elevating families from poverty, it’s clearly to end the family tree for people she finds to be undesirable. It’s that classic saying: “you should always just try and treat the symptoms of a problem and never actually address its root cause”.

3. You smug shell of a human being

In an astoundingly nonsensical paragraph, Devine accuses Family and Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard of having “drunk the social work KoolAid” because he said there’s no guarantee that a child removed from its mother is going to have a good future.

As we all know, social work KoolAid is that drink that makes you even vaguely empathetic to the plight of people in a lower socio-economic bracket than you, and we should hate and revile all people who have been drinking it.

Surprisingly though, Devine somehow manages to accidentally make a good point, buried in a sea of otherwise wrong-bordering-on-dangerous points. In what I’m sure was an extremely begrudging concession, she offers that if sterilisation is too “draconian” (that’s a bloody word for it), maybe we could give addicts an “incentive to take long-term contraception”.

While I assume she’s probably imagining a system where we withhold Centrelink payments if recipients can’t prove they’re taking the pill or have been given the snip, how about something a bit simpler: subsidise the cost of the pill.

The pill being free sounds like a fucking fantastic incentive for people to be on it, and we get the added bonus of no longer putting the financial burden of those who menstruate just because society has for some reason made that largely not the province of people with penises.

What I’m trying to say is, if we ignore every single other part of the article and just slightly misconstrue that one part, Miranda has some great ideas. If we don’t, however, it’s an absolute crock of shit.

http://www.sbs.com.au/comedy/article/2016/10/26/why-we-shouldnt-be-advocating-sterilisation

 

[poledriver]

Two men will face court after officers form the Traffic and Highway Patrol located a loaded gun, ammunition, drugs, a knife, and knuckle-dusters in a car following a vehicle-stop near Bathurst this morning.

About 8am (Thursday 27 November 2016), officers from Chifley Highway Patrol, stopped a Ford Falcon on the Great Western Highway, Walang, 15km north of Bathurst.

Following investigations, officers searched the Falcon and found a loaded .22 calibre shortened firearm, ammunition, a hunting knife, and knuckle dusters.

The driver, a 22-year-old man, and passenger, a 21-year-old man, both from Cowra, were arrested.

Following a search of the passenger, officers found and seized an amount of drugs believed to be ‘ice’ and cannabis.

All items seized will undergo forensic examinations.

The two men were transported to Bathurst Police Station, where the passenger was charged with two counts of possess prohibited drug. He is due to appear at Bathurst Local Court on 5 December 2016.

The driver was charged with possess shortened firearm, possess unauthorised firearm, possess ammunition, prohibited weapon, possess prohibited drug, use/supply stolen firearm or firearm part, not keep firearm safely, and custody of a knife in a public place.

He was refused bail and is due to appear at Bathurst Local Court tomorrow (Friday 28 October 2016).

Assistant Commissioner Michael Corboy of the States Traffic and Highway Patrol Command said that the arrest is an example of the outstanding work that the Traffic and Highway Patrol officers do on a daily basis.

“"This is a prime example of the capability that our Traffic & Highway Patrol Command officers have on our roads.

"Whilst our focus will always be road safety, our officers enforce the law on and off our roads," Assistant Commissioner Corboy said.

 

[Crankinit]

Why We Shouldn't Be Advocating Sterilisation

News Corp have done it again, this time with columnist Miranda Devine suggesting that drug addicts should be sterilised. Comedian Ben Mcleay responds but holy hell we really shouldn't need to do this.

It’s that most wonderful time of the week again: the time when a News Corp columnist writes a piece so profoundly fascist and weird it manages to stand out among the white noise of their characteristically fascist and weird pieces.

This morning’s hefty scoop of steaming, fly-covered opinion came from Miranda Devine, who so thoughtfully suggested that it’s about bloody time we sterilised people suffering from a methamphetamine addiction. Pretty reasonable right?

Actually, while that might sound wonderful on paper, it turns out it’s a terrible idea, and we thought we’d outline the top 3 reasons why:

1. Are you fucking kidding me?

No, really, what the fuck? It’s 2016 Australia not bloody Nazi Germany. Devine railed against the comparison in the column, saying that when she expressed her Eugenics Lite™ plan on the Today Show “do-gooders slammed it as a cruel idea straight out of Nazi Germany.”

Ah, those bloody do-gooders, always trying to, uh, do good. If you don’t want people to compare the things you say to cruel ideas from Nazi Germany, maybe don’t suggest policies that are literally straight out of Nazi Germany.

Over 400,000 people were sterilised by the Germans before the end of World War II, in an attempt to rid the German population of “undesirables”, including those with disabilities, mental disorders and alcoholics.

I’m sure Devine will act baffled as to why people are outraged at this take, but advocating for rendering childless those people suffering from an issue that overwhelmingly disproportionately affects the lower class might for some reason rub people up the wrong way.

2. Get fucked

The bitter hatred that people (particularly conservatives) have for addicts is utterly disgusting. Studies have shown time and time again that addiction tends largely to have roots in both environmental and genetic factors, and yet society treats people struggling with addiction as if they are just intrinsically worse people who are choosing to indulge their substance dependence at the expense of the taxpayer.

Apparently Devine is sick of taxpayers footing the bill for childcare - which is apparently not a big deal if it’s Joe Hockey’s kids on a jaunt in the US, but it’s a huge problem when it’s people suffering from a disorder that doctors characterise as a disease, go figure.

But hey, hold on, it’s not just the money - Devine wants to stop children being born into these families supposedly because she fears for their well-being, saying that “this epidemic of child abuse and neglect is concentrated in dysfunctional welfare holes.”

But of course the solution here isn’t to provide better support for addicts and to put more money into elevating families from poverty, it’s clearly to end the family tree for people she finds to be undesirable. It’s that classic saying: “you should always just try and treat the symptoms of a problem and never actually address its root cause”.

3. You smug shell of a human being

In an astoundingly nonsensical paragraph, Devine accuses Family and Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard of having “drunk the social work KoolAid” because he said there’s no guarantee that a child removed from its mother is going to have a good future.

As we all know, social work KoolAid is that drink that makes you even vaguely empathetic to the plight of people in a lower socio-economic bracket than you, and we should hate and revile all people who have been drinking it.

Surprisingly though, Devine somehow manages to accidentally make a good point, buried in a sea of otherwise wrong-bordering-on-dangerous points. In what I’m sure was an extremely begrudging concession, she offers that if sterilisation is too “draconian” (that’s a bloody word for it), maybe we could give addicts an “incentive to take long-term contraception”.

While I assume she’s probably imagining a system where we withhold Centrelink payments if recipients can’t prove they’re taking the pill or have been given the snip, how about something a bit simpler: subsidise the cost of the pill.

The pill being free sounds like a fucking fantastic incentive for people to be on it, and we get the added bonus of no longer putting the financial burden of those who menstruate just because society has for some reason made that largely not the province of people with penises.

What I’m trying to say is, if we ignore every single other part of the article and just slightly misconstrue that one part, Miranda has some great ideas. If we don’t, however, it’s an absolute crock of shit.

http://www.sbs.com.au/comedy/article/2016/10/26/why-we-shouldnt-be-advocating-sterilisation

Sterilization is obviously appalling, but I don't see a problem with purely positive incentivization to take long term (although not permanent) contraception, and not just for drug addicts but for anyone at risk of unwanted pregnancy.

 

[spacefacethebassace]

^ Hear, hear! I think the intention is the same, what's important is that people who are producing an astonishing number of children while simultaneously being unable to provide for any of those children, should be incentivized somehow to stop the needless and costly procreation. The forced sterilization idea is of course, fascist, and goes far beyond what would be necessary, but I think it's important to recognize that there's a problem.

 

[Crankinit]

It's such an easy solution too - just offer a moderate cash payment every time someone has a contraceptive implant or similar put in place. It's perfect because it's self selecting - those who would be willing to get the implant so they can grab cash to spend on a new phone, or a gram of shard, or whatever they want, are exactly the people most at risk of not wanting or being capable of caring for any child they may produce.

And if these people get into a better place in their life in the future, they can simply forego the payment and stop the implant. Financially I have to imagine it would pay for itself many times over in money saved on social services, welfare, addiction/mental health treatment, etc. It's a literal win/win, and I'm always a little bit amazed that nobody has ever implemented it.

 

[poledriver]

 

[poledriver]

Alexander John Semaan jailed for ice-fuelled murder of Michael Bakhaze

Alexander Semaan and Megan Beljulji.

A REMORSELESS Melbourne ice user declared he wanted to “kill everyone” before shooting dead a family friend at close range.
Alexander John Semaan, 41, has been jailed for at least 18 years for murdering Michael Bakhaze in December 2014.
Semaan’s sister, Hanna, and ex-girlfriend Megan Beljulji were also jailed on Friday for at least two years after they tried to cover up the crime. The only witness to the shooting, Tony Kannan, saw a drug-affected Semaan with an ice pipe and a gun before the senseless murder, Victorian Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale said.

Mr Kannan said when he asked Semaan why he had the gun, he had replied, “I want to kill everyone”.
At one point Semaan pointed the firearm at a neighbour putting her bins out, before putting the gun to Mr Bakhaze’s forehead and pulling the trigger. The murderer retreated into his East Brunswick bungalow, triggering a tense and lengthy stand-off with police when he and then-girlfriend Beljulji refused to surrender.

Semaan later claimed a gun-wielding intruder had been attempting to rob him, and that Mr Bakhaze had been shot by the robber.
After the crime, Beljulji and Hanna tried to get Mr Kannan to change his statement, and attempted to put the police on a “false trail” to support Semaan’s story of an armed intruder.
Beljulji told ballistics police to re-examine the crime scene, where they found additional, intentionally placed bullet holes that would appear consistent with the false story.
“As to who made the bullet holes to lend credence to Alex’s defence, that remains a mystery,” Justice Beale said.

Semaan has been sentenced to 22 years and two months jail, with a non-parole period of 18.
His sister and Beljulji were each sentenced to three years behind bars, with a minimum two.

http://www.news.com.au/national/vic...e/news-story/36547624e0a3d72b19e43a2f5e8b04de

 

[Jabberwocky]

NSFW:

Wrong section.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Police shocked to arrest 15-year-old Perth 'Mr Big'

A baby-faced 15-year-old boy, described as a “Mr Big” in the Perth drug scene, has been arrested after allegedly trying to sell a dealer $100,000 worth of methamphetamine.

The age of the boy, and his position so far up the drug supply food chain, has stunned the officers who arrested him over the weekend in the Wheatbelt town of Northam.

“I would have to say that we were shocked that a 15-year-old has got access to these quantities of drugs and has the capability of then dealing them to others,” Detective Senior Sergeant Mitch Howard of the Wheatbelt detectives office told the West Australian.

“My staff had to convince me that they really had the right target. From all my 30 years of policing experience ... I have never come across that before.”

Police were targeting a 31-year-old woman who was recorded speaking on the phone with the teenager and agreeing to buy 100g of meth, worth more than $100,000, in three separate deals.

Police arrested the woman after pulling her over and allegedly finding close to $45,000 worth of methamphetamine in her car.

Officers then traced the boy to a house in Wanneroo where he was allegedly found with 30g of meth and 30g of ecstasy, reportedly hidden in his underpants.

The boy has been charged with two counts of conspiring to sell a prohibited drug, one count of selling a prohibited drug and two counts of possessing a prohibited drug with intent to sell or supply.

He faced Perth Children’s Court yesterday and was granted bail.

The shocked boy’s parents were at the courthouse after only learning the day before what their son had allegedly been up to, the West Australian reports.

The boy had been estranged from his parents, professionals with other children, for the past year and was living at his girlfriend’s mother’s house in Wanneroo.


Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/national/20...-15-year-old-perth-mr-big#WVrpw7M2hbivxOq0.99

 

[poledriver]

Wrong section.

Haha, thanks. Not sure what happened there.

 

[poledriver]

That's not the ICE cream he wanted: Father horrified to find 'meth' in tub of frozen dessert from Coles after he gave it to his five-year-old son to eat

A father claims to have found methamphetamine in a tub of ice cream
The man from Perth, Western Australia, said he bought the tub from Coles
A former drug addict, the man said the shard was very similar to meth
However he has admitted he couldn't be exactly sure about what it was

A father has been left shocked after finding what he believes was methamphetamine in a bowl of ice-cream he had just placed in front of his young son.
The man, who chose to remain anonymous, bought the tub of vanilla ice cream from Coles in Perth, Western Australia, on November 11.

Having just sat down with his five-year-old son after dinner, the young boy reported finding 'glass' in his dessert, WA Today reports.
The man, who admitted to being a recovered drug addict, said he couldn't be sure what the clear shard was but 'knows what meth tastes like'.

'The substance about five minutes into my son eating it, when he told me there was "glass" in his ice-cream,' the father said.
'My first reaction was shock and then I examined the shard, and realised it didn't quite have the structure of most glass, so I firmly pressed it between my fingers and a little piece broke off.'
Methamphetamine, the crystal version of which is known as 'ice', has seen a major rise in popularity over recent years among drug users.

The man - who hasn't used drugs for three years - said after licking the shard he was amazed to discover a chemical flavour.
While he couldn't confirm whether or not it was in fact a drug, he said many aspects were similar.
'It has a very similar taste and structure as methamphetamine so I am led to think that's what it is,' he said.

The man said he monitored his son after the incident, just in case he had eaten anymore of the potentially lethal recreational drug without realising.
Despite the seriousness of the incident, the father said he didn't blame Coles and said he hoped the manufacturer of the product 'get on top' of the issue.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Coles for comment.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...tub-ice-cream-bought-Coles.html#ixzz4RGA8JMla

 

[consumer]

Sales of Coles icecream have gone through the roof.

 

[poledriver]

Meth-addict parents to be drug tested and will have their children taken away if they fail

The new testing regime was announced on Tuesday in Queensland
It comes after the shocking death of Caboolture toddler Mason Jet Lee
Parents who enter into an IPA order will be drug tested by doctors
If they fail those tests, the at-risk kids will be taken away from them

Ice users will have their children taken away from them if they fail new mandatory drug tests in Queensland.

Child Safety Minister Shannon Fentiman announced the new testing regime on Tuesday after the shocking death of Caboolture toddler Mason Jet Lee.

Under the plan, parents who enter into an Intervention with Parental Agreement (IPA) order with child safety authorities must submit to being drug tested by GPs.

If parents fail those tests or miss them, at-risk kids will be removed and put in foster care.

The tests won't be limited to ice but the drug is central to the policy with the minister saying it presents a major challenge for child safety officers.

Mason was the subject of an IPA before the 21-month-old boy died at the home of his stepfather, William Andrew O'Sullivan, who is facing a manslaughter charge.

O'Sullivan is accused of inflicting a fatal blow to the boy's abdomen that ruptured his small intestine and a court has been told the child died in agony over several days.

Mason was found cold and stiff at O'Sullivan's Caboolture home, where nappies full of blood were also located.

Mason's mother, Ann Maree Lee, and O'Sullivan's housemate Ryan Hodson are also accused of manslaughter for failing to seek treatment for the boy.

Ms Fentiman did not mention Mason's case in announcing the drug testing regime, it is reportedly part of the government's response to the case.

The minister said the testing regime would give child safety officers another tool to help keep at-risk kids safe.

'If the information suggests that there is ice use, and the children are unsafe, we will remove the children,' Ms Fentiman told ABC radio.

'It will be up to the discretion of the child safety officer and it will depend on whether or not there is a history of drug use, or what sort of suspicions we hold.'

On Monday, a fourth child safety worker was stood down pending an ethical standards investigation over Mason's death.

Ms Fentiman has admitted a 300-page internal report into the child safety department's handling of the case exposed 'serious errors of judgment' on behalf of staff.

In addition to the four staff who've been stood down, another nine face disciplinary proceedings.

In July, shortly after the toddler's death, government data showed almost two-thirds of child abuse investigations and assessments in Queensland had not taken place within recommended time frames.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...d-children-taken-away-fail.html#ixzz4RNREsqgx

 

[poledriver]

The tests won't be limited to ice but the drug is central to the policy with the minister saying it presents a major challenge for child safety officers.

Will it include cannabis? How about alcohol? I'd guess at, yes it will include cannabis and no it wont include alcohol.

 

[poledriver]

More than just an extended warranty!
Two Taiwanese nationals have been arrested for importing approximately 20.6kg of crystal meth into Australia. This has an estimated street value of $20.6 million.
The drugs concealed in household electrical appliances arrived via Hong Kong and were intercepted by our Australian Border Force partners before referring the matter to the AFP.
Another great example of what can be achieved when we work together. More details located in the media release on our website.

#AusFedPolice

 

[poledriver]

Meth lab clean-ups on the rise, amid worsening ice scourge

There is more evidence of a worsening ice scourge, with a Newcastle biohazard cleaning service saying it now gets daily clean-up and testing requests relating to meth lab activity.

Health and government officials have been concerned about a so-called ice scourge for several years.

It has kept biohazard forensic cleaners such as Newcastle's Josh Marsden busy.

Mr Marsden told the ABC he got hundreds of calls a year to either test for meth lab activity or to clean up after they have been dismantled.

"We get them every day from people who have bought properties and then found out from the neighbours that there was a drug lab in that house or tenants who are moving into houses and are getting side effects," he said.

Labs can pop up anywhere

Mr Marsden said most people thought of drug labs operating in undesirable or out-of-the-way places, but nothing could be further from the truth.

He said the labs could appear in residential or commercial buildings in cities or in more isolated areas.

"We find them in million-dollar properties, we find them in sheds, we find them in the back of cars, we find them in caravans and campervans," he said.
Mr Marsden said hundreds if not thousands of Australian properties were previously used as drug labs.

As a result he is urging families to buy meth testing kits to analyse homes before buying or renting.

He predicted meth tests may soon accompany building and pest reports, amid a growing number of homes being identified as former drug labs.

"They always say we have done our property checks, we have done our pest and building inspection but they haven't done a meth inspection," he said.

"I think it is something we are going to see in the future … and New Zealand is already doing that."

Mr Marsden said many people were shocked to learn of their property's shady past.

"Most of the people have no idea what a meth lab is or what they do until they start researching meth labs on the internet and find out how toxic they really are and then start finding out what steps are needed in remediating the property so it is safe to live in again," he said.

Mr Marsden said families with children were the most anxious.

"By simply being in that atmosphere the young children are usually the ones who are exposed the most," he said.
"Kids, with smaller bodies, are more susceptible as they fight and run across the carpets and roll on the carpets and rub against the walls."

Real Estate Institute says mandatory meth testing a step too far

The Real Estate Institute's Hunter chairman Wayne Stewart said any moves to enforce mandatory meth testing of properties would be onerous.

"The real estate industry is already policed for so many aspects of properties these days," he said.

"With new asbestos reform coming in, we are already going to be police officers for the asbestos part of the business as well, but I think it is something that people in general just need to be cautious about."

Mr Stewart said vigilance was the key.

"No house is off limits," he said.

"We see almost on a daily basis that crime syndicates are using homes as disguises in outreach suburbs, and so you never know.
"Over the last 25 years we have dealt with a number of these that have caused grief for our vendors or future buyers.

"Drug use is a part of society these days so people do have to be cautious."

Mr Stewart said meth labs were not the only issue some property owners were facing.

The new owners of one inner-city Newcastle home had to remove hundreds of syringes from wall cavities.

He said another rental burnt down and it was later revealed the house had been used to grow hydroponic cannabis.

In 2014, police across Australia raided nearly 750 meth labs.

Police from the New South Wales Drug Squad have previously told the ABC that labs were often found in rural areas, but they had also been discovered in motel rooms, shipping containers, boots of cars, and on the back of trucks.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-...n-the-rise-amid-worsening-ice-scourge/8078954

 

[poledriver]

Diary of a meth dealer: The night I fired a sawn-off shotgun at a man in the grip of my massive ice addiction

IT WAS the height of his massive ice addiction and Pat Smith, one of NSW’s heaviest methamphetamine dealers, was at home in Grafton strung out on the drug.
What happened next was to be a life changing moment which should have ended with a murder and a prison sentence.
The 43-year-old, who concedes he “destroyed” many people’s lives during a 20-year drug binge, said he just snapped.
It was late at night and people were arguing outside his house.

“I went out on veranda with a loaded cut-down shotgun,” he told news.com.au.
“When they got loud I went off at them, so they came to the gate — Kooris — and [one man] said ‘Think you’re a goer ya white c***’ and I said ‘Yeah ya black c***’ and pointed the gun about one metre from his face.
“He said ‘Go on pull.....’. I did and it misfired. I wasn’t supposed to go to jail and he wasn’t supposed to die.”
Mr Smith has decided to reveal some of the worst stories of violence and madness on ice as a lesson to others to get off the drug.
At its height, or at the lowest point of his addiction Mr Smith was earning $200,000 a year “selling ice, fuelling young people’s addictions and turning their world into a miserable existence”.

He often had no sleep for days and had gone for “17 days with only eight hours sleep, one lot of four hours and two lots of two”.
“I’d just keep topping up and topping up,” he said. “Not many ice addicts could take the amount I was taking.”
Despite selling ice, Mr Smith said he was an emotional mess and often cried when young people became hooked on ice.
“I had a Koori lad at my flat on third floor scared to go downstairs because ‘his cuz on the second floor was going to bash him’.
“He was 23 maybe. I didn’t sell to him, he was too crazy. Paranoid.
“So I got his uncle and three mates to walk him to my car so we could drive him to one of my best mates’ place to calm him down.

“We nearly had to drag him down. Then halfway there in the car, he starts saying ‘please don’t hurt me’ and we’re like ‘WTF?’
“He goes ‘please, please’ and starts opening the car door. I slowed down to about 20km an hour and he leaps out the door screaming ‘Don’t hurt me’ and bolts into the bush.
“His uncle just looked at me and I said, ‘it’s ice bro. He’s fried’.
Mr Smith said another young guy, aged 21, became so paranoid after three months on ice he began thinking Pat was an undercover narcotics agent.
“If he saw a hole in the roof or wall? It’s a camera! He thought a van parked across the road was undercover cops. We dragged him across the road just to prove it wasn’t.
“Sadly these guys are still on ice.”
But for Pat Smith, it was the beginning of the end of his addiction, which he gave up in May last year and has now become an anti drug-campaigner. But he still struggles daily.
He had become a dealer during the final four years of his addiction to feed a poker machine addiction and his massive habit, which at its peak had him injecting a gram of meth a day.

Instead of costing $1000, it set him back only $400 because he was dealing, but the intensity of selling and using put his life on the edge.
At one point during the 17-day binge, he drove for 16 hours from his home town of Yamba to Sydney and back again.
Sleepless and “wired”, he remembers swerving all over the roads.
But the incident with the shot gun and the fact that “the ice scene had become too violent” spurred him on to make the difficult decision to give up, but one which he believes saved his life.
He walked into a doctor’s surgery and gave a detailed and “straight up” confession about what he’d been doing and how much of the drug he’d been taking.
The doctor was startled, but prescribed antidepressants to allow him to cope with withdrawal, urges and a predicted plunge in his mood and demeanour.
He suffered such bad nightmares and daily panic, he started taking Valium to cope.
“I used to think I wasn’t violent. But, yes I was,” he told news.com.au.

“Going for so long without sleep nearly sent me insane.”
Not a dollar of his big drug dealing days remains and he is broke and has lived on and off with his mother.
“She didn’t know much about [my ice addiction], but I’d go weeks without contacting her, I wouldn’t answer the door. But now she’s stoked.”
Mr Smith went public last year about his drug past, standing up at a local meeting and describing his life as a dealer and ice user.
Now he is working to raise community awareness and help addicts get off ice.
“They’ll be better off as a result. I am helping friends get off ice and I want to help anyone who needs it,” he said.
His Facebook page, Patrick Smith Fighting Ice, is part of his campaign to make restitution for dealing the drug.
“I want to spend the next 20 years repairing the damage I have done. I want to get the message out to people taking ice,” he said.
“If it’s only a few months or less than a week you’ve been clean, it doesn’t matter.
“Don’t feel guilty. Every day clean is a good day, believe me.”

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/re...SF&utm_source=News.com.au&utm_medium=Facebook