cheekyvixen
Bluelighter
- Joined
- May 17, 2003
- Messages
- 58
Miranda Devine always manages to piss me off.... heres the article.
link: http://www.smh.com.au/news/Miranda-Devine/Sad-victims-of-a-vital-war/2005/04/20/1113854259767.html
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There's pity for the Bali Nine, but there's also a need to combat drugs, writes Miranda Devine.
The first response for many people to news that nine Australians had been caught allegedly smuggling heroin out of Bali this week was good riddance. Of the human tragedies brought to our attention each day, their plight rates low on the compassion scale.
But then you see their young, stricken faces on footage from Bali and watch a distraught but dignified couple, interviewed on TV about their "bubbly, gorgeous" but "easily led" son and you can't help but feel sorry for the wasted lives.
"I don't condone it at all," said Stephen Czugaj, whose son Michael, 19, was arrested at the airport in Bali with an alleged 2.4 kilograms of heroin strapped to his body. "Drugs destroy people's lives. We do have a niece who is a heroin addict, so we've seen what it can do," he told Channel Nine.
"He's not a crim, far from it, [just] immature ... naive and stupid," said Michael's mother, Vicki.
A similar story emerged from other parents of the Bali Nine. Most of those arrested at the airport and the Melasti Hotel in Kuta weren't criminals, or heroin users. They appeared to be ordinary people, average age 22, working low-paying jobs.
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In fact, federal police say the Australians were allegedly chosen by drug syndicates as drug-carrying "mules" precisely because they were cleanskins, quiet, not big drinkers or smokers, and hadn't travelled much. Some of the parents have said they didn't even know their child had a passport.
The mules may also have been chosen for their beefy builds, so the strapped-on heroin didn't alter their body shape too much. It is chilling to think that someone set out with such a shopping list of attributes to trap a number of dopey young Australians. You can only hope their plight serves as a deterrent to any other Australians tempted by a free trip to Bali and $15,000.
But sad as it is for the families involved, the arrest of the Bali Nine is a graphic example of the important work Australian Federal Police have been quietly engaged in for the past seven years as part of the Government's much-mocked but hugely successful Tough On Drugs strategy.
It was federal police, investigating a "sophisticated" international drugs syndicate for the past 10 weeks, who tipped off their Indonesian counterparts about the Bali Nine two weeks ago, said the AFP's international network manager, Mike Phelan, yesterday. There could be more arrests this week.
The $1billion Tough on Drugs policy has freed police to do their jobs, after a disastrous experiment with harm minimisation policies in the late '80s and '90s had resulted in a doubling of daily heroin users and an explosion in property crime, particularly in NSW.
There have been record seizures of heroin in recent years, including 125 kilograms from the North Korean cargo vessel Pong Su in 2003.
Last week three more young Australian drug mules, aged 15, 17, and 21, were arrested in Hong Kong, allegedly planning to import $1 million worth of heroin into Sydney in condoms.
In November 2003 two people were arrested and 21 kilograms of heroin seized from a narcotics distribution syndicate operating between Malaysia and Australia.
In August 2003 police found 15 kilograms of heroin in an industrial oven imported into Sydney from China and arrested three people.
Australia's heroin seizure rate increased from 8.5 kilograms per million population in 1995 to 30.4 kilograms in 2000, federal police say. Other drugs, such as amphetamines, which are soaring in popularity, are also being targeted, with a world record $250 million ecstasy seizure in Melbourne this month.
This disruption of heroin imports and the jailing of important drug dealers, as well as a crackdown on drug crime in Cabramatta, once Australia's heroin capital, led to a heroin drought at the end of 2000 which was regarded as unique in the world. "We believe law enforcement efforts have contributed to the heroin drought," says Phelan.
As a direct result, fewer people have died of heroin overdoses and property crime rates have dropped.
The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre last year reported the number of people dying of heroin overdoses in NSW had fallen by 70 per cent between 1999 and 2003, from 481 people dead to 143. That means potentially 338 lives have been saved.
"The credit for the drop in heroin consumption belongs in the first instance to federal customs and the Australian Federal Police," Dr Don Weatherburn, head of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, acknowledged last year.
Meanwhile, this week, the bureau's figures show rates of property crimes in NSW, such as break and enters, have almost halved since 2001. Weatherburn credits much of the fall to lower heroin use.
The effects in Australia - a heroin drought and falling crime rates - can no longer be denied by the criminologists and commentators who claim law enforcement attempts to control supply are doomed to fail.
Just consider the 11 kilograms of pure heroin the Bali Nine were allegedly attempting to bring into Australia. If they had not been stopped, the amount would have translated to at least 44 kilograms on the street, as it would be diluted with a cutting substance such as paracetamol or lactose to reduce its purity. Addicts in Cabramatta were used to heroin of about 15 to 22 per cent purity, says a former Cabramatta detective-sergeant, Tim Priest.
If each quarter-gram dose of heroin costs $25, then the Bali heroin was worth more than $4 million on the street. If the average addict consumes three doses a day, that means the Bali heroin would have kept the estimated 20,000 addicts in NSW happy for three days.
To continue these back-of-the-envelope calculations, if an average break-and-enter nets $200 to the addict, as Priest estimates from his time arresting burglars, then about 20,000 houses would have to be burgled to pay for the heroin at the centre of the allegations against the Bali Nine. And who knows how many users would have died of an overdose.
The results are in and they show it is only the war on the war on drugs which is doomed to fail. The war on drugs in Australia is working. The Bali Nine are just part of the price.
[email protected]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
link: http://www.smh.com.au/news/Miranda-Devine/Sad-victims-of-a-vital-war/2005/04/20/1113854259767.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There's pity for the Bali Nine, but there's also a need to combat drugs, writes Miranda Devine.
The first response for many people to news that nine Australians had been caught allegedly smuggling heroin out of Bali this week was good riddance. Of the human tragedies brought to our attention each day, their plight rates low on the compassion scale.
But then you see their young, stricken faces on footage from Bali and watch a distraught but dignified couple, interviewed on TV about their "bubbly, gorgeous" but "easily led" son and you can't help but feel sorry for the wasted lives.
"I don't condone it at all," said Stephen Czugaj, whose son Michael, 19, was arrested at the airport in Bali with an alleged 2.4 kilograms of heroin strapped to his body. "Drugs destroy people's lives. We do have a niece who is a heroin addict, so we've seen what it can do," he told Channel Nine.
"He's not a crim, far from it, [just] immature ... naive and stupid," said Michael's mother, Vicki.
A similar story emerged from other parents of the Bali Nine. Most of those arrested at the airport and the Melasti Hotel in Kuta weren't criminals, or heroin users. They appeared to be ordinary people, average age 22, working low-paying jobs.
AdvertisementAdvertisement
In fact, federal police say the Australians were allegedly chosen by drug syndicates as drug-carrying "mules" precisely because they were cleanskins, quiet, not big drinkers or smokers, and hadn't travelled much. Some of the parents have said they didn't even know their child had a passport.
The mules may also have been chosen for their beefy builds, so the strapped-on heroin didn't alter their body shape too much. It is chilling to think that someone set out with such a shopping list of attributes to trap a number of dopey young Australians. You can only hope their plight serves as a deterrent to any other Australians tempted by a free trip to Bali and $15,000.
But sad as it is for the families involved, the arrest of the Bali Nine is a graphic example of the important work Australian Federal Police have been quietly engaged in for the past seven years as part of the Government's much-mocked but hugely successful Tough On Drugs strategy.
It was federal police, investigating a "sophisticated" international drugs syndicate for the past 10 weeks, who tipped off their Indonesian counterparts about the Bali Nine two weeks ago, said the AFP's international network manager, Mike Phelan, yesterday. There could be more arrests this week.
The $1billion Tough on Drugs policy has freed police to do their jobs, after a disastrous experiment with harm minimisation policies in the late '80s and '90s had resulted in a doubling of daily heroin users and an explosion in property crime, particularly in NSW.
There have been record seizures of heroin in recent years, including 125 kilograms from the North Korean cargo vessel Pong Su in 2003.
Last week three more young Australian drug mules, aged 15, 17, and 21, were arrested in Hong Kong, allegedly planning to import $1 million worth of heroin into Sydney in condoms.
In November 2003 two people were arrested and 21 kilograms of heroin seized from a narcotics distribution syndicate operating between Malaysia and Australia.
In August 2003 police found 15 kilograms of heroin in an industrial oven imported into Sydney from China and arrested three people.
Australia's heroin seizure rate increased from 8.5 kilograms per million population in 1995 to 30.4 kilograms in 2000, federal police say. Other drugs, such as amphetamines, which are soaring in popularity, are also being targeted, with a world record $250 million ecstasy seizure in Melbourne this month.
This disruption of heroin imports and the jailing of important drug dealers, as well as a crackdown on drug crime in Cabramatta, once Australia's heroin capital, led to a heroin drought at the end of 2000 which was regarded as unique in the world. "We believe law enforcement efforts have contributed to the heroin drought," says Phelan.
As a direct result, fewer people have died of heroin overdoses and property crime rates have dropped.
The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre last year reported the number of people dying of heroin overdoses in NSW had fallen by 70 per cent between 1999 and 2003, from 481 people dead to 143. That means potentially 338 lives have been saved.
"The credit for the drop in heroin consumption belongs in the first instance to federal customs and the Australian Federal Police," Dr Don Weatherburn, head of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, acknowledged last year.
Meanwhile, this week, the bureau's figures show rates of property crimes in NSW, such as break and enters, have almost halved since 2001. Weatherburn credits much of the fall to lower heroin use.
The effects in Australia - a heroin drought and falling crime rates - can no longer be denied by the criminologists and commentators who claim law enforcement attempts to control supply are doomed to fail.
Just consider the 11 kilograms of pure heroin the Bali Nine were allegedly attempting to bring into Australia. If they had not been stopped, the amount would have translated to at least 44 kilograms on the street, as it would be diluted with a cutting substance such as paracetamol or lactose to reduce its purity. Addicts in Cabramatta were used to heroin of about 15 to 22 per cent purity, says a former Cabramatta detective-sergeant, Tim Priest.
If each quarter-gram dose of heroin costs $25, then the Bali heroin was worth more than $4 million on the street. If the average addict consumes three doses a day, that means the Bali heroin would have kept the estimated 20,000 addicts in NSW happy for three days.
To continue these back-of-the-envelope calculations, if an average break-and-enter nets $200 to the addict, as Priest estimates from his time arresting burglars, then about 20,000 houses would have to be burgled to pay for the heroin at the centre of the allegations against the Bali Nine. And who knows how many users would have died of an overdose.
The results are in and they show it is only the war on the war on drugs which is doomed to fail. The war on drugs in Australia is working. The Bali Nine are just part of the price.
[email protected]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Then she'll see just how 'necessary' this "tough on drugs" billshit campaign is...
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
