Mr Giggles
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2000
- Messages
- 362
Canberra Times, January 7, 2001-Page 24
Reported by Peter Clack
(please excuse the long post-the CT web site never seem to post these arcticles)
Welcome to *Groundhog day.
Another year is dawning and the story of drugs is unchanging. There is more available more of everything, and cheaper too. More people are overdosing on heroin and more are dying. Drug-related crime is accelerating. Police across the country are making record seizures of drugs.
Cocaine from the Americas has grown worse to become one of the biggest new drug problems in the country in 2000, out-stripping heroin seizures.
Party drugs like ecstasy, the amphetamines, have continued to be massively popular despite publicity about the perils and clear **evidence these drugs are often contaminated by rat poison, strychnine and glass fragments.
Ecstasy may contain a whole range of pharmaceutical, veterinary or other substances unknown to the buyer, produced in a variety of shapes and colours often with popular logos such as the PLAYBOY or MITSUBISHI symbol.
These colours and logos are incorporated into "designer" drugs to make a pill appealing. Similarly, ecstasy is often referred to as the "love drug" or "hug drug".
The realities could not be further from the truth. The Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence, lists 12 distinct types of Amphetamine type substances in its Australian Illicit Drug report 1998-1999.
One group contains speed, uppers, meth, ice, crystal or shabu. The other contains amphetamine analogues and substitutes, the dangerous party drug ecstasy (methylenedioxymethylamphetamine -MDMA) and other versions, such as flatliner.
Seizures by the Australian Federal Police, often in joint operation with other state police and federal agencies, Customs and the National Crime Authority, rose in dramatic fashion last year.
The AFP's Avian mobile strike team made break throughs in all the major drugs categories, sending a broadside through international criminal networks.
AFP seizures of cocaine went from 300kg to almost 900kg in one year, heroin fell slightly from 550kg to just over 500kg and went from about 100kg to about 180kg.
It must not be forgotten that "licit drugs" of alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical drugs caused far more devastation than illicit drugs.
In 1995, 18,124 people died from tobacco-related causes and another 3642 from alcohol. Only 778 died from illicit drugs that year, when a total of 22,544 died from all forms of drug-taking. The total was the same in 1998 when 175,000 were hospitalised for drug-related illness.
The bureau estimates the economic cost of illicit drugs at $18 billion a year, for prevention, treatment, loss of productivity and law enforcement. These figures show a social catastrophe just below the face of Australian life that is worse than any war. We all wonder what the answers are. Should illicit be manufactured under government control and sold in shops with similar restrictions to those placed on alcohol and tobacco?
Would this Make things worse for vulnerable people in our society, the very young or those with a pre-disposition for addictive behaviour or suffering mental illness?
Would it send the wrong message to society that drugs are actually okay? No-one wants these things. But what else is there?
Illicit drugs carry the potential to devastate people's lives and destroy them. How much worse could it be if psychotropic drugs or narcotics were sold under licence, but with controls on production, ages of purchasers and so on?
Could market forces do what law enforcement agencies have failed to do despite their courageous and determined efforts? Or should we acknowledge their efforts to hold firm along their thin blue line and prevent drugs from being even more widespread and devastating?
AFP Commander Ben McDevitt says police in Australia generally recognise that an overwhelming percentage of our crime is attributable to underlying drug problems. Police also recognise that this drug problem is hugely complex and that multi-faceted solutions are required. There are issues which extend far beyond law enforcement and, as such, police seek and engage in a whole range of harm minimisation measures. In a nutshell, crime reduction and prevention has to focus on reducing the capability, the opportunity and motivation to commit crime. Of these, motivation is the biggest and it often is sourced back to drug addiction.
Take away motivation and crime rates plummet. There is no question the backbone of illicit drugs resides in international criminal networks, who feed off it like diseases on a healthy human being. The majority of the drug manufacturers and traffickers do not take drugs themselves, any more than the manager of a casino or licensed club pours his wages into gambling.
Canberra is not an island. Many here live out the national tragedy of drugs; families who are desolate because their children's futures have been destroyed or those whose children are already dead. Others await the dreaded knock on the door. Drug use is rising here. The AFP in the ACT made 33 seizures of ecstasy in 2000 compared with four the year before. Canberra's first seizure of "ice" came in October.
Mr McDevitt warns that ecstasy is no longer limited to the "rave" music scene but has spread to the wider community. "These drugs are not 'fun' drugs, Mr McDevitt said. "Young people may use ecstasy to improve their moods or get energy to keep dancing. However, chronic abuse if ecstasy abuse appears to damage the brain's ability to think and regulate emotion, memory, sleep and pain."
The 1998 National Drug Strategy Household Survey found that 5.6 percent of ACT residents over the age of 14 had used ecstasy at least once. This is more than double the 1995 figures which showed only 2.6 percent.
Ecstasy is no longer confined to infrequent recreational use at social events.
The most recent survey of Australian drug trends showed the use of ecstasy and other designer drugs had increased.
"There is growing evidence that the use of MDMA results in long-term brain damage," Mr McDevitt said. "Tests on squirrel monkeys have shown abnormal brain patterns seven years after MDMA use has ceased. We are dealing with substances which require much more research as to long-term side effects"
*Note: The movie Groundhog day with Bill Murray shows a reporter constantly re-living the same day.
------------------
*its better to roll up hill then down*
Reported by Peter Clack
(please excuse the long post-the CT web site never seem to post these arcticles)
Welcome to *Groundhog day.
Another year is dawning and the story of drugs is unchanging. There is more available more of everything, and cheaper too. More people are overdosing on heroin and more are dying. Drug-related crime is accelerating. Police across the country are making record seizures of drugs.
Cocaine from the Americas has grown worse to become one of the biggest new drug problems in the country in 2000, out-stripping heroin seizures.
Party drugs like ecstasy, the amphetamines, have continued to be massively popular despite publicity about the perils and clear **evidence these drugs are often contaminated by rat poison, strychnine and glass fragments.
Ecstasy may contain a whole range of pharmaceutical, veterinary or other substances unknown to the buyer, produced in a variety of shapes and colours often with popular logos such as the PLAYBOY or MITSUBISHI symbol.
These colours and logos are incorporated into "designer" drugs to make a pill appealing. Similarly, ecstasy is often referred to as the "love drug" or "hug drug".
The realities could not be further from the truth. The Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence, lists 12 distinct types of Amphetamine type substances in its Australian Illicit Drug report 1998-1999.
One group contains speed, uppers, meth, ice, crystal or shabu. The other contains amphetamine analogues and substitutes, the dangerous party drug ecstasy (methylenedioxymethylamphetamine -MDMA) and other versions, such as flatliner.
Seizures by the Australian Federal Police, often in joint operation with other state police and federal agencies, Customs and the National Crime Authority, rose in dramatic fashion last year.
The AFP's Avian mobile strike team made break throughs in all the major drugs categories, sending a broadside through international criminal networks.
AFP seizures of cocaine went from 300kg to almost 900kg in one year, heroin fell slightly from 550kg to just over 500kg and went from about 100kg to about 180kg.
It must not be forgotten that "licit drugs" of alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical drugs caused far more devastation than illicit drugs.
In 1995, 18,124 people died from tobacco-related causes and another 3642 from alcohol. Only 778 died from illicit drugs that year, when a total of 22,544 died from all forms of drug-taking. The total was the same in 1998 when 175,000 were hospitalised for drug-related illness.
The bureau estimates the economic cost of illicit drugs at $18 billion a year, for prevention, treatment, loss of productivity and law enforcement. These figures show a social catastrophe just below the face of Australian life that is worse than any war. We all wonder what the answers are. Should illicit be manufactured under government control and sold in shops with similar restrictions to those placed on alcohol and tobacco?
Would this Make things worse for vulnerable people in our society, the very young or those with a pre-disposition for addictive behaviour or suffering mental illness?
Would it send the wrong message to society that drugs are actually okay? No-one wants these things. But what else is there?
Illicit drugs carry the potential to devastate people's lives and destroy them. How much worse could it be if psychotropic drugs or narcotics were sold under licence, but with controls on production, ages of purchasers and so on?
Could market forces do what law enforcement agencies have failed to do despite their courageous and determined efforts? Or should we acknowledge their efforts to hold firm along their thin blue line and prevent drugs from being even more widespread and devastating?
AFP Commander Ben McDevitt says police in Australia generally recognise that an overwhelming percentage of our crime is attributable to underlying drug problems. Police also recognise that this drug problem is hugely complex and that multi-faceted solutions are required. There are issues which extend far beyond law enforcement and, as such, police seek and engage in a whole range of harm minimisation measures. In a nutshell, crime reduction and prevention has to focus on reducing the capability, the opportunity and motivation to commit crime. Of these, motivation is the biggest and it often is sourced back to drug addiction.
Take away motivation and crime rates plummet. There is no question the backbone of illicit drugs resides in international criminal networks, who feed off it like diseases on a healthy human being. The majority of the drug manufacturers and traffickers do not take drugs themselves, any more than the manager of a casino or licensed club pours his wages into gambling.
Canberra is not an island. Many here live out the national tragedy of drugs; families who are desolate because their children's futures have been destroyed or those whose children are already dead. Others await the dreaded knock on the door. Drug use is rising here. The AFP in the ACT made 33 seizures of ecstasy in 2000 compared with four the year before. Canberra's first seizure of "ice" came in October.
Mr McDevitt warns that ecstasy is no longer limited to the "rave" music scene but has spread to the wider community. "These drugs are not 'fun' drugs, Mr McDevitt said. "Young people may use ecstasy to improve their moods or get energy to keep dancing. However, chronic abuse if ecstasy abuse appears to damage the brain's ability to think and regulate emotion, memory, sleep and pain."
The 1998 National Drug Strategy Household Survey found that 5.6 percent of ACT residents over the age of 14 had used ecstasy at least once. This is more than double the 1995 figures which showed only 2.6 percent.
Ecstasy is no longer confined to infrequent recreational use at social events.
The most recent survey of Australian drug trends showed the use of ecstasy and other designer drugs had increased.
"There is growing evidence that the use of MDMA results in long-term brain damage," Mr McDevitt said. "Tests on squirrel monkeys have shown abnormal brain patterns seven years after MDMA use has ceased. We are dealing with substances which require much more research as to long-term side effects"
*Note: The movie Groundhog day with Bill Murray shows a reporter constantly re-living the same day.
------------------
*its better to roll up hill then down*
'
