NSW keeps the prison pipeline pumping

A secret Government committee is planning to build a major new jail in Camellia, Sydney. I wonder whether any of the interest groups that will benefit considered reducing the number of prisoners by decriminalising drugs, following Portugal's resounding success in that regard? Then maybe we would not need a new jail.

I don't really wonder – this government cannot join the dots between an overcrowded 'justice' system and unnecessary criminalisation of people committing victimless crimes.

The uselessness of prohibition in one easy lesson

 I couldn't have put it better myself. [Newcastle Herald 17/12/20]

Oregon decriminalises all drugs – when will Australia understand?

Here is yet another factual, balanced article written by experts explaining why Oregon has voted for common sense. Can our prohibitionists even read? Yes, I'm talking about you, John Barilaro, NSW Deputy Premier, who recently went ballistic because NSW was considering listening to experts instead of a blustering idiot like him.

NSW Police aim at warrant-free drugs crackdown

NSW has proposed an extraordinary Bill that allows Police, without a warrant, to detain and search anyone who had a drug supply conviction in the past ten years.

A two-year trial would target Bankstown, the Hunter Valley, Coffs Harbour and Orana in the west.

This doubling-down on a failed prohibition regime ignores the clear success of decriminalisation in Portugal, and successful legalisations in other places. Where such approaches can bring in solid streams of revenue for governments, the neanderthal NSW approach will cost taxpayers more, even as the state is smashed by Covid-related expenses and revenue reduction.

It is a big step away from the idea of a free democracy. 

The NSW Council for Civil Liberties said the bill would give “extraordinary” powers to police “in circumstances where adequate powers currently exist to search and seize items related to drug activity”.

The "Supply" definition includes people convicted of deemed supply which could include a kid busted at a festival with five or so ecstasy pills.

The Bill is backed by Labor, causing dissent it its ranks, but opposed by the Greens. MP David Shoebridge said “I find it hard to understand how NSW Labor can back this in. It makes you wonder what it would take for them to say no to more money or more power for police.” 

It's not clear whether police will use number-plate scanning to identify targets, as the WA police started doing some years ago. It must be asked, why might this technological intrusion be used against a victimless crime rather than convicted murderers or pedophiles? These prohibitionists are obsessively twisted out of shape.

When will these people learn that prohibition does not stop drug use but only increases violence by handing the supply chain to gangs? They have no recourse in law so they resort to violence. 

It's clear – America's Prohibition era saw Tommy-gun battles in the street between rival gangs, Al Capone style. That stopped when prohibition was repealed. Today we have drive-by shootings and home invasions in south-west Sydney and elsewhere. 

But you don't see rival brewers' trucks running around shooting each other in the streets, do you. They are regulated, provide revenue to the government and have recourse to law to solve disputes, as in a civilised democracy.

This new Bill is a step towards repressive autocracy.

USA creeps towards leglisation during presidential vote

Several US states have voted to decriminalise drugs in referenda taken during the 2020 presidential election. 

In a historic first, Oregon voted to decriminalise all illegal drugs...

Meanwhile, in other parts of the US, voters backed the decriminalisation of recreational marijuana: in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota.

That takes the tally of states where recreational weed is allowed up to 15.

Back in slow-moving Australia, the National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2019 showed that more people supported legalisation (41%) than opposed it (37%).

And a referendum on legalising cannabis in New Zealand was lost even as an assisted dying bill passed and Jacinda Ardern was returned with her own majority. No doubt the No case was run by the usual self-interest groups – The alcohol industry, pharmaceutical groups and the police.  

But they are on the wrong side of history.

One by one the false tropes of prohibition are falling. Prohibitionists always assert that steps toward legalisation would lead to mass abuse of drugs like cannabis. However the Household drug use survey says otherwise –

Interestingly, if cannabis were legal, 78% of surveyed Australians said they would not use it. Only 3% said they would increase their use.
Moreover prohibition has not reduced drug use between 2016 and 2019, rather it is increasing –
This includes the proportion of Australians who used cannabis (up from 10.4% to 11.6%), cocaine (2.5% to 4.2%), ecstasy (2.2% to 3.0%) and ketamine (0.4% to 0.9%).

It's astounding that our democratic country also continues to tolerate mass murder in the Philippines in the name of the War on Drugs, with Amnesty International conservatively estimating that 8.000 people have been murdered without a trial, and even some priests who spoke out about the carnage have themselves been assassinated. Prohibition does way more harm than the drugs it fails to control! 

 

 

Prohibition is, simply, fundamentally wrong

 

Heroin trials succeed in UK

Before the legal Injecting Centre in Kings Cross,
sights like this were fairly common in the street.

After the conservative government de-funded heroin trials in the UK, some local authorities have continued them, with dramatic reductions in crime and homelessness. 

One habitual user told how he used to have to shoplift £80 worth of goods each day to yield £40 for heroin. I'm sure the local shopkeepers prefer this new option. 

Prohibitionists of course are horrified at such a measure, preferring the endless round of expensive and destructive police, court and jail action that had clearly failed before these programs were launched – a system which also boosted a criminal supply chain with its endemic violence and corruption.

Legalise, regulate, tax and treat!

Yes, Aborigines do suffer discrimination in the justice system

Well the numbers are in – there is little doubt NSW police discriminate against Aborigines. And drug prohibition is a major enabler.

"Drug driving laws, whereby drivers can lose their licence on the spot if they have a detectable level of drugs in their system, also disproportionately impact Aboriginal people. Without a licence, many clients inevitably lose their jobs too," reports a special investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald.

As documented elsewhere on this blog, these laws are unjust because they do not test for impairment, only the presence of certain drugs in saliva or blood and cause instant loss of licence. Alcohol driver tests, on the other hand, measure the concentration of alcohol and licence loss occurs only with high blood levels or repeat offences.

Alcohol impairs driving far more than cannabis does, with some now claiming that experienced smokers have no impairment.

This of course discriminates against all drivers who use cannabis, but the investigation shows a systemic bias against Aborigines across many offences.

"In Sydney city, more Indigenous people went to jail than others for offensive language and other public order offences despite fewer being charged with this offence," says the SMH report.

If anyone thinks Black Lives Matter protesters don't have a genuine grievance, please read the linked article. And there is good reason for the BLM movement to campaign against prohibition because abolishing that failed policy will immediately benefit their cause!

NZ to vote on cannabis legalisation and control

Even as Australia bumbles along, clinging to 1930s-style prohibition, New Zealand will vote on legalising Cannabis in September.

And as NSW massively increases police detection quotas for drugs, former NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark  has labelled prohibition as "the worst waste of taxpayers' money".

“For me, it’s just a no-brainer to stop wasting our taxpayers’ money with police helicopters hovering over the Kiwi bush, hounding ordinary citizens who are having a joint of cannabis rather than a glass of wine, hunting down the Kiwis who are desperate for some kind of relief for a medical condition. Let’s stop all that... lets put it into something better,” she said.

The proposed legalisation will ban items designed to appeal to young people, set a four-year prison term for selling to under 20-year-olds and allow cannabis “coffee shops” to open.

Despite this, local prohibitionists claim the new law would make the drug more available to children, because they apparently trust criminal dealers to protect children better than police and the legal system.

Let's hope common sense prevails. In neanderthal Australia, police continue to burn taxpayers' money taking helicopter joy flights around Nimbin looking for the pot plots of hippies.

NSW cops form drug syndicate to entrap drug syndicates

Seriously, prohibition is just a recipe for corruption. No link provided here because it's behind a paywall but here's the text.

NSW Drug Squad detectives have homes raided by fellow police

An internal investigation is underway into the activities of the high-powered NSW Drug Squad, into allegations their police tactics crossed the line into criminality.

Sharri Markson, The Daily Telegraph
July 2, 2020 8:02am

State Crime Command Drug Squad detectives have had their homes raided as part of a misconduct investigation into allegations they created a drug syndicate and manufactured drugs to entrap criminals.

The Daily Telegraph understands attempted prosecutions brought on by the NSW Drug Squad unraveled when police methodology was questioned.

NSW Police last night confirmed the launch of Strike Force Dominion to investigate the conduct of senior Drug Squad police.

“State Crime Command have referred a matter to the Professional Standards Command for further investigation,” a NSW Police spokesman said in a statement.

“SF (StrikeForce) Dominion has been established by Professional Standards Command and remains an ongoing investigation.

“No further comment can be provided at this time.”

The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission has been involved in the investigation and the homes of two senior detectives in the Drug Squad were raided on Tuesday.

NSW ramps up drug detection targets as it flogs the dead horse of prohibition

Good policing or self-fulfilling prophesy?

NSW Police are being given detection targets that demand an increase in drug detections by a massive 86%

Certain suburbs like Kings Cross, Broken Hill, Mt Druitt and South Sydney have far higher targets than the average while North Shore suburbs have among the lowest. Cynics may conclude that the well-off areas where cocaine is the drug of choice are getting a 'Get out of Jail Free' card.

And, despite clear international evidence that decriminalisation and case management is a cheaper and more effective way to address illicit drugs, those targets are the highest of all categories.

Critics say this quota approach will result in bias errors like racial profiling and do nothing to increase community safety – at a time where the incarceration rate of non-white people is stoking widespread protest.

From the SMH article linked above –

Professor Murray Lee, director of the Sydney Institute of Criminology at the University of Sydney, said focusing on... drug supply, could push the offence rates higher over time and risk it becoming a "self-fulfilling prophecy".

"You may well see police going for the low-hanging fruit, whether that's over-policing in particular areas to meet those targets, going after the usual suspects," Professor Lee said.

The target for robbery in Ku-ring-gai has fallen 40 per cent since 2016 to 20 this year, while actual incidents have been increasing in that area, tripling from 10 in 2016 to 30 last year.

How prohibition turned a hippie into a 'terrorist'

George Dickson (pic by Hugh Rimington),

Another example of the toxic chain-reaction sparked by prohibition is reported in the Monthly article 'The Aquarian 'terrorist' (paywall).

Self-described hippie and cannabis legalisation activist George Dickson was arrested in May 2019 for possession in Nimbin, during Mardi Grass, the annual Marihuana Festival.

He ended up being jailed, classified as a terrorist and placed under a full control order, forbidden even from going interstate to his father's funeral and forced to wear an ankle tracker bracelet along with other conditions such as being forbidden to use a computer or phone.

After his initial arrest he was taken 31 kms away from Nimbin to Lismore police station, to be released late on that cold night with no shoes, no money and scant clothes (and, presumably, no pot!). Angered, he smashed the windscreens of two police cars with a rock. Bad and unwise, but it does not make him a terrorist.

This farce happened because of two bad laws, first the law that prohibits cannabis for no rational reason, and second, Australia's then newly minted Terrorism Act. The loose wording of that Act allowed police to draw a link between smashing the windscreens (violence) and Mr Dickson's history of activism in support of cannabis legalisation (a political activity). His activism included things like putting stickers on telegraph poles – hardly the sort of activity the terrorism laws were designed to address.

This apparently resulted in up to 20 police etc at one time being on the case, most reportedly unable to take it seriously.

I'm guessing Mr Dickson takes it pretty seriously.

Black lives matter, especially under prohibition

Police in Kings Cross guide a sniffer dog towards
an indigenous man in one of their daily street trawls.
No drug indication was made.

Following the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, mass protests in the western world have all but pushed Covid 19 off the front pages (not that there are too many of those left!). "Black lives matter" is again an anthem.

But the endless discussion around the problem of over-policing people of colour, while exploring the complexities of history and culture, almost always ignores one central driver – the entirely pointless and ineffective War on Drugs. And if you don't agree that 'war' is pointless, you need to explain the success of Portugal's blanket decriminalisation of illicit drugs.

Meanwhile most American states, and Australia where drug sniffer dogs roam the streets, continue to criminalise the use of drugs other than alcohol. In Australia, drug and alcohol "abuse"* is one of the four key risk-factors for involvement in the criminal justice system according to a Parliamentary report.

Available data shows that Indigenous Australians fair (sic) significantly worse than non-Indigenous Australians in regard to these four critical factors which influence involvement in crime.[7] These factors have interrelated detrimental impacts and can be seen as forming a vicious cycle

The Guardian found there had been at least 434 deaths in custody since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody ended in 1991 – that's more than one per month.

In 2018–19 Australia recorded 77,074 illicit drug offences, 20% of the total (ABS). It's not simplistic to suggest that the decriminalisation or legalisation of drugs would significantly reduce the criminalisation of Indigenous people – with the stroke of a pen, as it were. Understandable fears by many people that such a move would create a "flood of stoners wandering around the streets", as is often claimed by prohibitionists, simply does not happen for reasons beyond the scope of this article.

So I urge those who campaign in the 'Black lives matter' space to join the dots between racially skewed policing and the War on Drugs. You may see them as separate issues but the dots do join very strongly.

* I place the word "abuse" in quotes here because crime statisticians tend to class any drug use as "abuse" even though the vast, vast majority of such drug use causes no significant problems for the user or others. I see the inaccurate terminology as part of the demonisation of drugs carried out by the forces of prohibition, not least to reinforce their own survival as a well funded industry.

US prison statistics illustrate the huge impact prohibition has on the criminal justice system.

UN slams Philippines' Duterte over mass drug killings

Rodrigo Duterte with his favourite toy.

The ongoing deadly horror of prohibition-gone-mad in the Philippines has been documented in a UN report. 

'The report stated "the drug campaign-related killings appear to have a widespread and systematic character. The most conservative figure, based on government data, suggests that since July 2016, 8663 people have been killed", but it noted the true total of deaths could be three times as high...' says The Sydney Morning Herald.

President Rodrigo Duterte, himself reportedly addicted to Fentanyl, appears unfazed, passing new laws that allow detention without a warrant.

The regime regularly tags political opponents as 'terrorists' or communists by 'red-tagging' them. Journalists are frequent targets. Such people often end up murdered or jailed.

No mention of the underlying absurdity of prohibition is apparent in reports, even though it is used to justify Duterte's mass murder. Any argument supporting this failed 1930s ideology is nullified by Portugal's success with blanket decriminalisation of drugs, most of which in any case are less harmful than legal alcohol. Prohibition is a form of denialism, in this case more deadly than in most countries.

FBI kills innocent woman in drug raid

The very worst of prohibition combined with gun culture has resulted in tragedy in Kentucky when the FBI raided the home of frontline health worker and African American Breonna Taylor.

The police allegedly did not identify themselves, and Ms Taylor's husband fired a gun, thinking it was a home invasion. The FBI then opened fire indiscriminately and killed Ms Taylor who was shot eight times.

No drugs were found in the house – the dealer they were looking for lived elsewhere and had in fact already been apprehended by local police.

PROHIBITION IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN THE DRUGS IT FAILS TO CONTROL.

A meme about Angus Taylor and forgery

Lest we forget. Someone forged the document about Clover Moore's travel expenses that Angus Taylor published and provided to the Murdoch media. But two police investigations – neither of which actually interviewed Mr Taylor – found there was no case to answer. Something's rotten and it's a lot closer than Denmark.

Oh, and remember how he claimed Naomi Wolfe tried to ban Christmas at Oxford University – when she wasn't even there at the time? And then demanded an apology from HER?

Seriously, this guy.

Climate and bushfires, 2020. No, it hasn't "happened before"!

Here's a short GIF movie I made after wading among the denialist nonsense flooding our mainstream media facebook sites. What does it take to wake these people up? Many of them quote poet Dorothea MacKellar's poem 'My country' as if this recent catastrophe was normal. Many say, "It's summer. It happens every summer", ignoring (among many other facts) that this fire season was out of control from very early September. It's hard to fathom. But I guess ignoring stuff is pretty much the definition of ignorance.

The GIF combines images of the 2020 bushfires with climate facts. Feel free to share!

Meanwhile MacKellar's poem remains a gem. Don't let denialists claim it!

https://www.dorotheamackellar.com.au/archive/mycountry.htm