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NEWS : 22.11.09 - Drugs, booze a national curse

kingpin007

kingpin007

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Drugs, booze a national curse


From: The Sunday Telegraph

November 22, 2009 12:00AM

OUR State is awash in alcohol but we must not overlook the enormous, and growing, problem of illicit drugs.

This weekend, and every weekend this year, police will arrest hundreds of people for booze-related abuse, assault, driving offences and other crimes.

Brawls, domestic assaults and random street crime: alcohol plays a role in at least 70 per cent of the crimes committed in NSW, according to Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione.

That's why he is driving Operation Unite, an unprecedented weekend blitz on alcohol-related crime on December 11 and 12 in which mounted police, dog squads, beat police and highway patrols will attempt to control the pre-Christmas ugliness that traditionally heralds the start of our festive season.

"We can't arrest our way out of this problem. Instead, the community needs to re-assess our celebration of alcohol abuse, to re-assess our infatuation with drinking to get drunk,'' Mr Scipione says.

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He's right, and The Sunday Telegraph fully supports Operation Unite's attempt to address our collective drinking problem.

But no good will come from alcohol control until authorities can seriously get a grip on illegal drugs. Illicit drugs are also responsible for street violence, often exacerbated by a deadly cocktail of alcohol and drugs.

In Sydney, and throughout NSW, drugs of all varieties are available: cocaine, speed, ice, heroin, ecstasy, benzodiazepines and GHB.

Thanks to police efforts to control the source materials used to make crystal methamphetamine, better known as ice, the supply of this drug has dropped dramatically.

Ecstasy is also becoming harder to find. Only about half its regular users say it is ``very easy'' to buy ecstasy today, compared with nearly three-quarters just a year ago.

This means users have turned to drugs that are easier to obtain, such as cocaine, according to the University of NSW's National Drug and Alcohol Research Council.

Most users say it's "easy'' or "very easy'' to procure cocaine and, to a lesser extent, heroin.

And prices have remained stable over most of this decade, with a cap of either heroin or methamphetamine available for just $50 and a gram of cocaine for $300. In other words, a quick high is extraordinarily cheap and shockingly easy on the streets of NSW.

Nearly 80 per cent of regular drug-users say they spend $60 on drugs on a given day. Casual users at nightclubs and parties score drugs for far less money. What to do about it?

Police must continue to strangle the supply chain and make drugs more expensive.

Deliberate, focused police efforts to limit drug supply has a real effect in reducing supply, forcing up prices and thereby reducing use, according to a study by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.

A price rise of just 10 per cent in most drugs typically leads to a fall in demand of between 20 and 30 per cent, according to the study, reported in The Sunday Telegraph today.
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http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...a-national-curse/story-e6frezz0-1225801595848
 
it is ironic that another newspaper just ran a story about the drop in price of heroin, whilst here it is claiming it is stable.
This Operation Unite is national blitz on violence and alcohol misuse occurring on dec 11 & 12. In terms of focusing on violence, then I don't have much problem with this, as I live in Melbourne. Unfortunately, when they say the dog squad, i am pretty sure they are refering to sniffer dogs. This will of course be focused on detecting people in possession of drugs, and probably with quite harsh consequences. I am particularly worried that running sniffer dogs around the CBD might become a regular thing.
 
What a useless alcohol, it goes from rambling about how bad alcohol is to just ragging on drugs without making any real connection between the violence and drugs. Both drugs and alcohol exacerbate the violence but ONLY in fuckwits who are the type to cause trouble anyway. MOST people can use drugs or alcohol responsibly without committing crimes or getting violent, the people that do this shit would do it anyway because they are fuckheads. What they need to change is the pathetic sentences they give violent offenders and the shit attitude a lot of people have that its their right to bash someone for little to no reason.
 
And prices have remained stable over most of this decade, with a cap of either heroin or methamphetamine available for just $50 and a gram of cocaine for $300. In other words, a quick high is extraordinarily cheap and shockingly easy on the streets of NSW.
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Try telling someone from almost any other country that, they won't stop laughing for half an hour. Same for meth/heroin.
 
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Ok. This little project of theirs is only going for 2 days and id say up to a week if they are planning on useing a trick on us.

This proves

A-They don't have the resources to police the streets
B-This is a publicity stunt and nothing else. Every news chain knows about it and any one with half a brain knows that the problems wont be fixed in anyway what so ever within 2 days.

Think if they came out with this headline

"On december 21st and 22nd police will be cracking down on murders"

Net impact....zero
Publicity...high.




Are people who take drugs the only people who see this?
 
^ I don't think drug users are the ONLY people who see how bullshit the media and Government are but I think as a group they are probably the most likely to be so skeptical because of so much slander and misinformation about activities we consider normal and perfectly acceptable.
 
Ecstasy is also becoming harder to find. Only about half its regular users say it is ``very easy'' to buy ecstasy today, compared with nearly three-quarters just a year ago.
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I don't believe this. I'm in a remote area and there's still as much going around as there was 1 or 2 years ago. If the stuff is still making the journey out here, there's definitely no shortage in the cities.
 
There's no shortage of pills, but there's definately a shortage of pills containing a clean dose of MDMA.
 
Yeah that is true, but the media does not understand the difference between MDMA and what is 'ecstasy' these days. Somehow I don't think the majority of pill users do either.
 
drug_mentor said:
^ I don't think drug users are the ONLY people who see how bullshit the media and Government are but I think as a group they are probably the most likely to be so skeptical because of so much slander and misinformation about activities we consider normal and perfectly acceptable.
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word.
 
We can't arrest our way out of this problem.
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And they can arrest their way out of the drug problem?

This is one of the stupidest editorials I've read in a long time, and given the editorial discretion to make subjective statements, to voice an opinion, this article is doubly-stupid. Not the opinion which they're entitled to, but the spurious facts and figures on which it's based and the complete lack of grounding in the reality which young people and drug users live.

Nearly 80 per cent of regular drug-users say they spend $60 on drugs on a given day. Casual users at nightclubs and parties score drugs for far less money. What to do about it?
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Perhaps stop asking rhetorical questions of an audience too stupid to provide any real answers. This piece is so poorly written, such an unbelievable waste of paper that the only people that will get anything out of it are probably already brain-dead. This is exactly what we mean when we talk about the media being responsible for so much of the fear-mongering and misinformation about drug use in this country.

Strangle the supply chain? Yep, like we've been doing for over half a fuckin' century, we'll win this war one day boys. :|
 
Ha yeah that's the first article I've seen that actually goes into the drug side of it. Everywhere I've seen this Operation Unite discussed it talks about how they are trying to combat alcohol-related violence and anti-social behaviour. So the drug-part of the operation will come under 'anti-social behvaiour' I guess. "You there, why are you making friendly conversation with all these people? Empty your pockets, please." It's a shame that the only illicit drug that really gets caught out by these sort of things ends up being pills, which is probably at the bottom of the list of substances that result in 'anti-social behaviour' or violence.

Ah well, just like the road-side drug testing campaign that supported testing for drugs with a line something like "70% of all road casualties and deaths are alcohol and drug-related".

Good old alcohol. Always there to buff the scary statistics!
 
Even if alcohol was used to increase statistics surrounding road fatalities, and made it easier to introduce roadside drug testing, the fact remains that driving under the influence of any substance exponentially increases the chances of an accident. The only problem with the roadside drug testing is that accurate levels of impairment haven't been defined due to the legality of the substances, rather, they are just testing for metabolites which could potentially be detected long after impairment has ceased to be a factor.

Just like drink driving though - it's just a matter of planning ahead and giving yourself an appropriate buffer between consumption and operation.
 
Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I do think steps need to be taken to address people driving under the influence of drugs.

I just don't like their dodgy use of statistics to gain support.
 
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