WA drug laws get even tougher

Colin Barnett's Liberal Western Australian government has just made its already draconian drug laws even tougher according to the PerthNow site:

PARENTS could be jailed for 12 months and their children put in state care for growing just one marijuana plant in Western Australia under arguably the nation's toughest drug laws.
Amendments to WA's Misuse of Drugs Act, which came into effect on the weekend, mean people convicted of cultivating a single cannabis plant or processing the drug where a child has suffered harm face a 12-month mandatory prison term.

The laws are targeted at methamphetamine labs but, typical of the 1950s thinking of this government, cannabis is drawn into the net. WA already allows its police to use number plate scanning to detect drivers with a previous drugs conviction before stopping and searching them (while rapists, child molesters and murderers can drive on, free). The moves not only ignore current evidence on the failure of mandatory sentencing, but ignore the government's expert advice that tougher prohibition would not solve any problems.  But evidence is rarely a strong point for conservatives.

1950s thinking with modern technology: how very Orwellian. One comfort is that the over 100 comments on the Perth Now piece overwhelmingly ridicule the new law and logically shred the few illiterates who support it. BTW 'illiterate' wasn't used as an insult. They simply can't spell or construct a sentence as they spew their hatred of "druggy scum" etc. Great mates has Mr Barnett.