• 🇳🇿 🇲🇲 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇦🇺 🇦🇶 🇮🇳
    Australian & Asian
    Drug Discussion

    Welcome Guest!
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
  • AADD Moderators: swilow | Vagabond696

No retreat in this fight: Anna Wood's parents want zero-tolerance

poledriver

poledriver

Bluelighter
Joined
Jul 21, 2005
Messages
11,543
No retreat in this fight: Anna Wood's parents want zero-tolerance

Wasn't sure where this should go, here or in ditm. Pls move if you like mods.

TONY and Angela Wood will be eating Peking duck at a Chinese restaurant in Hornsby next Sunday, a tradition they established to commemorate the birthday of their daughter, Anna. She would have been turning 32 on that day and Peking duck was her favourite food.

It seems extraordinary that almost 17 years have passed since the 15-year-old schoolgirl died in October 1995 after having taken an ecstasy tablet at a rave party, combined with what a coroner later determined was a dangerous amount of water.

The tragedy rocked the state, generating headlines and soul-searching for weeks. Anna was an innocent abroad from an upright family and her fate tolled a warning to all parents: it could happen to your child.

''When we bump into some of her school friends … I hardly recognise them, they're so grown up,'' Mr Wood told the Herald. ''That's when you start to think 'What would she be like today?'''

The drugs policy issue has been reignited by a report from Australia21, a group of experts and high-profile citizens who have declared the ''war on drugs'' a failed policy and called for a debate on new directions. While many people, including the former head of the Australian Federal Police Mick Palmer, appear to have softened or changed their hardline views over the decade, the Woods remain staunchly opposed to retreat from all-out war.

''There's a small group of well-funded, well-versed individuals who are pushing for the legalisation of illicit drugs,'' said Mr Wood, who, at 69, still works as a private investigator. ''We can't allow this to happen.''

He wants a zero-tolerance approach, believing the nation's harm minimisation policy has failed. And he thinks the so-called ''war'' has been little more than a skirmish. He has no time for needle exchange or methadone programs, or the Kings Cross injecting room.

''We're not going to change until we get tougher on drugs,'' he said.

Mrs Wood is uninterested in the distinctions experts make between decriminalisation, legalisation and controlled use policies such as those applied to cigarettes and tobacco.

''I don't draw those lines,'' she said. ''Making drugs more available will exacerbate the problems.''

While the Woods act from gut feeling and high emotion, the former NSW police minister John Watkins, from Labor's Left faction, bases his support for the status quo on hard reflection.

The father of five - aged eight to 31 - counts himself lucky to have no firsthand experience of the impact of illicit drugs. Despite having grown up in the 1970s, he never tried marijuana.
''Alcohol was my drug of choice,'' he said.

Mr Watkins opposed the decriminalisation of drugs at the 1999 NSW Drug Summit, despite his faction supporting it. ''I've thought about it a lot between then and now and I'm still opposed,'' he said.

He supports harm minimisation, diversion programs and sentencing options.

But decriminalisation, ''whatever that means'', would lead to greater acceptance of drugs and, hence, greater use, especially by young people. It would not reduce harm and possibly increase it, he said.

When the Woods share their meal on Sunday with their daughter Alice, 34, her husband, Neil, and their children, Reg, 3, and Eric, three months, it will be a happy occasion. ''There are a lot of bad memories,'' Mrs Wood said, ''but Anna's birth was not one of them.''​

http://www.smh.com.au/national/heal...arents-want-zerotolerance-20120520-1yz14.html
 
fucking oblivious society ... i moved from hornsby 4 months ago i would have gone to have a chat with him lol , his 'restaurant of choice' is literally right where my crew sits ... we used to prank call peking restaurant when we got bored and sat at the window a few seats away and watched them go nuts lol . i doubt hes even taken into consideration that the X had something in it , or it had a terrible reaction to their daughter , if drugs were legal the X would have been safe , or she would have known there was going to be a terrible interaction .

if he wants to push the drug user massacre , thats fine by me because the black market is easier to access than the liquor store , and jobs arent that hard to get ;)
 
"combined with what a coroner later determined was a dangerous amount of water."

Perhaps we should ban water? Yeah, that's it - zero tolerance for water drinkers!

But seriously, does greater acceptance of drugs necessarily mean greater use? I think it might, in fact, be the opposite.
 
That's exactly right, in Portugal drug use did not increase. That is why evidence based policies, not emotion or religion based policies should be what we use.
 
Her dads views (on drugs and drug use) have always seemed so backwards to me.
 
Last edited:
Divine Moments said:
Clearly has no idea of what differentiates legal from illegal drugs.
Click to expand...

Yeah I was gonna write the same thing, keep destroying your life consuming alcohol because MJ is so bad for u. You'll pass away way before a weed smoker.
 
^That clip was actually a lot better than I thought it was going to be. Appart from the vintage rave footage the best bit is Anna's sister at the end talking about drug education.
 
Anna Woods parents views on drugs are driven by grief and not research.
I couldnt imagine the heart ache they must go through, but Im not sure they are un-biased enough to be commenting on the drugs debate
 
Anna Wood's death was a terrible tragedy on every count. The poor girl was taken home and put to bed by her friends - they were too scared to call an ambulance (because then they would have had to disclose she had dropped a pill) and hoped she would be alright. And yes she died from hyponatremia (from excessive water consumption). The ecstasy she took may have contributed to her decision to drink so much water, but that's about it. Her grief stricken parents then launched on a pointless crusade to tell teenagers not to take drugs (that worked well didn't it). And a great venue (the Phoenecian) got the chop.

Although it's important to listen and respond to the concerns of the parents of dead drug users, it doesn't automatically make their beliefs more right and reasonable.
 
This is exactly what's wrong with our drug policy, the Woods, as tragic as what happened to them is, have no place commenting on drug laws. We should be making these decisions based on science and logic, not fear and outrage and political pandering.
 
^ Yeah the phoenician club was an awesome venue.
 
Last edited:
It's always these parents who think that their grief should be everybody's problem. It's what has lead to Mothers Against Drunk Driving coercing the state to violate the constitutional rights of drivers on the road by conducting illegal searches and phone-in warrants.

I feel bad for these parents who lost children but their war on our freedoms must stop. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't see an article posted somewhere that police talk about a dangerous batch of E that is going around, yet they refuse to tell the public what this E looks like (symbol on it, colour).

Anti-drug policy leads to so many people dosing in risky ways or unsafe conditions, all because it has to remain secret. What these parents are really asking for is for more children to die because lack of disclosure and punitive laws means they will be as underground as possible when they do their drugs.

Stupid idiots.
 
ayjay said:
Anna Wood's death was a terrible tragedy on every count. The poor girl was taken home and put to bed by her friends - they were too scared to call an ambulance (because then they would have had to disclose she had dropped a pill) and hoped she would be alright.
Click to expand...

So yeah be tougher on drugs. Because that tough upbringing you gave her certainly kept her away from them... Oh wait, she still did drugs like everyone else and died because her friends were scared of getting in trouble... Thanks to the tough stance on drugs...

It just bewilders me, that someone could have this happen to them, and it only reinforces their insane views. I am 19 years old for God sake and it's more obvious than a wart covered dick to me.

By the way, not to get technical here, I mean it's horrible this guys daughter died and all, but since when did one persons opinion count as a valid source for a news article? His opinion is more valid because he has experienced a negative brought on by ecstasy use?
Well here's some news, ecstasy helped me become closer to my significant other and overcome serious problems in our relationship. Acid made me a more positive and open minded person. Marijuana works better for my disorders than my diagnosed medication. So where's my fucking interview SMH?

Seriously the media is an absolute joke.
 
Last edited:
this is just sad - obviously the wood family are still suffering the loss of their daughter, but it seems that her father even admits that the proponents of a different approach to drug law are "well versed individuals" - in other words, well informed with good arguments.

i feel sorry for him - that he tragically lost his teenage daughter - but that is no reason for the rest of us to suspend all rational thought on the issue. i understand his grief, but clearly the man hasn't gotten past the knee-jerk approach of "if kids couldn't get drugs, this would never have happened".
the truth is, if drugs were better regulated (as opposed to supplied in a rampant black market) and less taboo, his beautiful daughter would still be with us today.
kids can get drugs, they do get drugs, and they do everything they can to keep that a secret (including not calling an ambulance in an emergency) because drugs are a big, bad scary secret that we are not meant to talk about because they bring so much shame.
ignorance and fear killed anna wood - not some killer drug scourge. yes, mdma can be dangerous, but with the right precautions (and medical care if things go disastrously wrong) it is comparatively safe. education is the key here - yes, that's harm minimisation.

the fact that the media still gets mileage from her death 17-odd years later goes to show that mdma is pretty damn safe - it's not like kids drop dead from e every week, nor every month.
her death was an anomaly - a tragic one, but an isolated occurrence. i don't know what the figures are exactly, but "anna wood" wouldn't be a familiar name in the australian media if kids died from taking mdma with any great regularity.

alcohol - the drug of choice of this watkins character - kills countless australians every year, both directly and indirectly.
he has no first-hand knowledge of cannabis? well, i bloody well do - and i wouldn't drink alcohol if you paid me. it's fucking poison, in my opinion - horrible stuff that makes people act impulsively, stupidly and sometimes violently. it contributes greatly to the amount of deaths and injuries on our roads, is physically addictive and damages a number of vital organs including the liver and the brain.

former police minister or not, if you don't know what you're talking about, you should stay out of the debate.
it's hard to believe that the strategy of 'harm minimisation' is even open to debate - what sort of cold, heartless nation are we becoming?

i don't really think most people are swayed by sound arguments in the press - emotive, baseless shit like this is far more compelling for the average aussie, it seems - but if this is the best the "pro-prohibition" (anti drug law liberalisation) crowd can pull together, then i almost pity them.
it's a shame that compelling arguments don't always pave the way for pragmatic political change.

if anything, i think we are at risk of these hardline loonies taking over and getting their way. australia has taken a bunch of steps backwards in terms of harm minimisation in recent years (such as the banning of smoking paraphernalia) and we need to remember that it isn't just the big picture we need to focus on, but the everyday realities as well.
it's great to be an advocate for change, but this is going to be a slow-fought battle consisting of baby steps.
we are not going to wake up to headlines one day announcing that the government has decided to legalise drugs, and we can all live happily ever after.
most of us here know that the stereotype of drug users as irresponsible wasters is not true of all of us, and it is important that the folks in the community who don't know much about drugs don't only have the stereotype confirmed to them.
drug scandals sell newspapers, and the press has always loved depicting drug use as a "scourge" - but it is time these people realised that there is no discernible difference between 'legal' drugs of abuse and those which are illegal to possess.
some people are careful, some people are not.
this article is frustrating, but it seems to be a viewpoint that is being obscured by opposing perspectives. even 10 or 15 years ago, this tripe was all you'd ever get - mr plod talking about the dangers of some drug, with the same xeroxed warnings about the drug in question and every other drug for the last 70 years. it is heartening to see some questions about drug prohibition creeping into public discourse, but it don't mean we've won the fight yet. it's only just beginning, kids.
 
I wonder if Mr Wood has ever come across any of the discussions about him on this site. I know this isn't the first time there has been disucssion of his views.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top