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Today Tonight - pot story

goatyoghurt

Bluelighter
Joined
Jul 25, 2002
Messages
1,632
Its just starting now, from the ads it looks like shit but I'll give it a chance, report will follow. Whoever sees it let us know what you think.
 
They did a good job of sensationalising a story (its a current affairs show so thats their job) it was one kid who killed himself after returning home to Tasmania from working Near Alice Springs for a period of time where he apparently got ripped and also drank a lot every day. The interviewed one doctor who tried to explain government propaganda against drugs but he was drowned out by the boy's crying mother who is now on a crusade to have drug tests introduced into workplaces in Australia. 8)

It should be a day of birthday celebration but for Dr Pam Fenerty it's a day of endless grief.

Instead of giving her son birthday presents, Dr Fenerty lit a single flame mounted in a metal dish filled with bush rocks on what would have been his 20th birthday.

"I think he's in here with us," she said. "Probably laughing because that's what he did best - kept people entertained and that's why so many people loved him around the place."

But her son took his own life a few weeks ago, the victim of a so-called "harmless drug". Dr Fenerty claims her son was given high-potency cannabis at a work site.


"And I believe they may as well have given him 5kg of rat poison," she said.

Before the tragedy James Ireland was like many normal 19-year-old boys.

He liked to drink with his mates and had dabbled with marijuana occasionally.


But in August this year he took a working holiday to Alice Springs to catch up with his estranged father and work on an Aboriginal community mission.

Dr Fenerty felt James would be safe there.

"I thought if he was out in an alcohol-free Aboriginal community, where else could he be safer on this earth?" she said.

But now it seems James would have been safer anywhere else.

"He rang up his friends in Tasmania and told them they were bonging on at breakfast, at lunch and throughout the day," Dr Fenerty said.

"And James said to one of them he was in heaven."

Dr Fenerty says she didn't know her son was smoking dope but he and his workmates took photos of each other with bongs, bottles of beer and whiskey sitting on their work vehicles.

After two weeks of working two hours from Alice Springs, James returned home to Tasmania to take up new work.

"He looked radiant," Dr Fenerty said. "I was bursting with pride."

"He gave me the biggest kiss and cuddle. He had the most beautiful smiling

eyes."

But James's eyes held a terrible secret - a desire to kill himself.

Dr Fenerty only found out when she received an SMS from her son.

"And the SMS said I love you mum," she said.

"I'm sorry to do this to you but this is the easiest way out. I'm in the shed, I love you mum, James."

She says she knew immediately what it meant.

"I think I let out a primeval wail," she said. "I knew, I just knew."

James had been home just 30 hours and he was dead. Dr Fenerty is convinced cannabis caused her son to kill himself.

"It killed my son," she said. "Until someone can convince me otherwise."

Maybe that someone is Dr Andrew Katelaris, a medical professor who says marijuana isn't a threat.

"In the war against drugs the first casualty is truth," he said.

Dr Katelaris maintains there's no link between dope and mental illness - and ultimately suicide.

"Cannabis has gone through all the safety checks of the FDA, all the food and drug administration safety checks and it has passed its licensing as a medicine," he said.

"It's in the same category as all the other medicines we use, so it can't be that dangerous."

The fight against cannabis is as old as the drug itself. Police departments around the world are spending millions of dollars to raid suppliers.

But there's little scientific evidence about the effects of marijuana on the human brain.

The main chemical in cannabis is nicknamed THC and it causes the "high" when it latches onto brain cells, especially cells that affect memory and emotion.

Detective Sergeant Steve Nealan heads the cannabis unit of the drug squad.

He says hydroponic dope is the new boom business for drug dealers.

"And as a result the yield from hydroponic cannabis plant can be up to four or five times larger than that of an outdoor plant," Detective Sergeant Nealan said.

In one raid, police allegedly found five houses owned by one person were being used to grow the drug.

"Within those houses the cannabis was entirely grown through the whole house, anywhere from the master bedroom to the shower cubicle - even the roof rafters were virtual greenhouses," he said.

That raid netted police 9,000 plants. At $20,000 per hydroponic plant it was a haul worth $180 million.

Dr Katelaris says this new "super grass" is very different to previous versions of the drug.

"If you grow hydroponics in a careful and loving and near-organic way it's standard herbal product," he said.

But when organised crime uses chemicals to grow high potency marijuana he says it becomes dangerous.

Dr Katelaris is one of the few to research THC levels in different forms of marijuana. He says the hydroponic varieties contained far less THC than other marijuana.

But Dr Fenerty doesn't believe him. She set out on a 3,000km pilgrimage from South Tasmania through three states to the very heart of Australia to retrace her son's last days.

Armed with photos taken from her son's camera she has put together the pieces of her own tragic jigsaw.

Dr Fenerty believes she found one of the rooms where James smoked his dope.

Manager Peter Byrne says he's shocked that drugs were apparently brought into a so called "clean zone". He says if he had known, the perpetrators would have been removed from the settlement.

Dr Fenerty now campaigns to have drug tests introduced into work sites across Australia.

At the same time System Homes - which employed her son James - is under the microscope while a coroner investigates James' death and the role played by cannabis.

"I will spend the rest of my life feeling guilty and ashamed," she said.

She says no good can come from her son's death.

"But I hope and pray that somehow or another we can realise in this country that these drugs are causing so much harm and we can't tolerate them," Dr Fenerty said.

"It is such an evil substance."

taken from here
 
goatyoghurt said:
Its just starting now, from the ads it looks like shit

It's Today Tonight - what do you expect? ;)

Anyways you're not going to get anything rational from a shocked, grieving parent. Of course they're going to scapegoat something if they can. Another one of those "drugs are bad/exploit the tragedy" stories.
 
i guess the above proves that a phd doesn't exactly demonstrate common sense or intelligence, does it. i wish ignorant people would just close themselves off from the rest of us or shut the fuck up.
 
i agree, totally what you'd expect from today tonight - how funny was it when they said "super grass" :). I was suprised they gave the pro-pot doctor the amount of time he got though. That table that showed hydro having less THC than other forms of pot was good too.
 
Watching this just made me angry.
Why exactly does the mother think two weeks marijuana use made her son decide to kill himself.
 
i watched this...

i didnt think it was all that bad a story... i mean it was full of sensationalism (but what isnt on today tonight?), but at least there was some pro/con arguments there.
to anyone with an open-mind on drug use (which is a small percentage of the population - since so many people seem to be brainwashed by the anti-drug media), it would have been obvious that the pro-pot arguments had more backing behind them than the anti-pot arguments.

I mean, cmon, the woman was sure pot made her son suicide because she found a photo of him pulling a cone? that vs. an educated dude who's spent a great deal of his time (scientifically!) studying marijuana.

of course, they ended on a negative note... that was to be expected.
 
I know this is racist, and I know this is wrong, but when the following line was spoken my whole family choked on their dinner and started laughing.
"I thought if he was out in an alcohol-free Aboriginal community, where else could he be safer on this earth?" she said.
;)
 
I can personally tell you that me and weed don't mix, I have a slight schzophrenia (sp) which is made worse when THC is in the system.. I totally fuck up and trip out, and It's like a bad dream...

I would never touch it again :(
 
Hearst would be fuckin proud.

Today Tonight are contesting with A Current Affair for this years new journalism award! It's given to the show which best misconstrues drug related stories to prey on the ignorant and apprehensive public in pursuit of ratings!

I hope the people behind TT know they're the arse end of the current affairs industry.
 
And the winner of the award for the show which best misconstrues drug related stories to prey on the ignorant and apprehensive public in pursuit of ratings is....................................................Today Tonight!!!!
 
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I unfortunately did not see the story but I am not at all surprised, just another way for the media to attack the big bad world of drugs. Had the mother ever thought that her child was depressed rather than pot causing him to commit suicide. I have friends who have committed suicide and 'seemed' quite happy. No-one suspected it. I can't believe they allow this shit on TV. 'Pot kills kid'. Pretty hard to believe if you ask me.
 
I watched this report.

"He rang up his friends in Tasmania and told them they were bonging on at breakfast, at lunch and throughout the day," Dr Fenerty said.

"And James said to one of them he was in heaven."

This comment in particular grabbed my attention. Is it possible he was taking something else? People on heroin often say they feel like they are in heaven. Just a thought.
 
^^^ Good point. I would love to learn more facts about this story as they surface. Not to start the heroin bash once again, I do believe that someone not particularly stable would have trouble coping with hardcore smack withdrawals especially if they manifest themselves physically and not just mentally.

This also might be a bit far fetched, but pot can be laced with anything including smack for smoking. Hell, someone can give you a bit of smack to smoke and tell you its mull resin or hash or something. Homebake smack is very easy to produce and is perfect for smoking. In fact its 10 times less effort than growing a mull plant providing you have access to prescription pain killers containing morphine.
 
when your grieving, its easy to blame the first thing to come along.. in this case marijuana. I think it would be easier for the mother to blame the pot than to acknowledge any problems the kid might have had - it does mention his estranged father. It is very easy to fake being happy for your parents. (as riser said - noone suspected it).
 
I could understand him drinking a copious amount of alcohol and then going and committing suicide.. was this possibility investigated? I've noticed considerable increase in depressive thoughts after heavy alcohol use before, which is one of the reasons I don't drink heavily anymore. If they were photographed with bottles of beer and whiskey, surely it's something that could have had an impact?

Or was that completely overlooked because alcohol is a nice legal drug with no really dangerous side-effects? 8)
 
I agree with the above comment.
After drinking all day and night on saturday for the rugby, a lot of the next day i felt very down and depressed.
It had nothing to do with the fact we lost :p
i was a little dissapointed but the depressed feelings were about myself not rugby...just wanted to clear that up ;)
 
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