How prohibition fuels organised violence

Chris Masters in the Telegraph today writes about gang violence in Melbourne and Sydney in a story headlined 'Why Sydney's hitmen are deadlier'. Under the usual pictures of the Ibrahims, Morans and the late Michael McGurk, he explains various motives behind the violence and deaths, including the practice of an underling serving jail time for a superior but not being properly rewarded after release.

Innocent bystanders killed by stray bullets in gang shootouts are listed.

Then Masters concludes with a neat summary of the role of drug prohibition in all this:

Most often the fighting is down to distribution rights, with the drug trade a common denominator.

The Australian market is, by international standards, lucrative.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, a gram of cocaine that sells for $97 in the US attracts $285 in Australia. Police recently observed one transaction of precursor chemicals originally offered at $120,000 a box soon after selling for double that sum.

While overall homicide rates have trended down over the years, the rate of violence attributed to organised crime remains steady.

And the long-awaited Underbelly 3 - The Golden Mile, set in Kings Cross, debuts this Sunday, Channel 9 8.30. It gets a rave review plus some great Kings Cross footage on The Australian site here.

Dangerous days in Kings Cross

Ex politician Michael Duffy today writes in the SMH about the dark days of police corruption in the Cross. On the eve of the latest Underbelly series, The Golden Mile, Duffy tells the harrowing story of two detectives who blew the whistle on local detectives who lived the life of the long lunch while extorting money from drug dealers, including the known pedophile Dolly Dunn. They neglected police work to such an extent that Kings Cross became a virtual free-for-all.

The whistleblowers were hounded out of their jobs and the country, in fear of their lives or of being framed. These bad old days of Kings Cross are exposed in books by the two whistleblowers: Watching the Detectives by Deborah Locke, and Dirty Work by Glen McNamara. Two more for the Kings Cross collection.

I find it interesting that, in the face of this cornucopia of books and TV shows about 'the bad old days' of the Cross, some current locals keep insisting "it's getting worse" as they call for more measures to stop young people partying.

Sting regains his sting

I hereby retract the bad review I gave Sting's first solo album in The Moruya Examiner in 1985, headlined 'Sting loses his Sting while Dreaming of Blue Turtles'. Sting has redeemed himself by coming out in support of drug law reform, writing a lucid piece in the Huffington Post that had the drug warriors unable to respond except with formulaic babble.

Sting:

The War on Drugs has failed -- but it's worse than that. It is actively harming our society. Violent crime is thriving in the shadows to which the drug trade has been consigned. People who genuinely need help can't get it. Neither can people who need medical marijuana to treat terrible diseases. We are spending billions, filling up our prisons with non-violent offenders and sacrificing our liberties.

All of which is factually correct. Note Sting does not condone or encourage drug use -- he just criticises the War on Drugs. Then comes this response from DARE, an anti-drug outfit that for some reason is allowed to teach stuff in American schools:

Sting should stick to singing and not meddle in matters he doesn't understand. We do not need pop stars coming out and making irresponsible statements like that

Note there is no rebuttal of any of Sting's points, no revelation of how his position is irresponsible. They assert that a rock superstar who most likely has seen the drug world from inside out doesn't understand what these self-appointed preachers think they do.

More from Sting, former lead singer of The Police, describing succinctly the ugly world drug warriors are happily creating in their delusional and self-righteous pursuits:

Civil liberties have been trampled. Law enforcement has been militarized. Literally hundreds of billions of dollars -- dollars denied to urgent problems ranging from poverty to pollution -- have been spent. People who do need help with drugs have been treated as criminals instead. Meanwhile, resources to fight genuine crime -- violent crime -- have been significantly diminished. And in exchange for all this, the War on Drugs has not stopped people from using drugs or kept drugs from crossing the borders or being sold on the streets. 

Anti-drinking ad may achieve the opposite

Gee, the advertising fraternity needs to go back to basics. This ad displayed at Kings Cross station tries to deter girls from binge-drinking. But look at the imagery. Delete the uptight girl in the middle and what have you got? Everyone's idea of a good time -- what people really want to do if only they could shed their inhibitions. The choice of a middle-eastern looking guy as the 'bad predator' is interesting, too.

Message to guys: get the girl drunk if you want to score.

Other ads in the series are far better, like the one showing a young drunk dickhead razzing a thick-necked bouncer and probably about to get his head punched in.

Anti-marihuana ad out of its depth

What have the creatives in the government's ad agency been smoking? Not to mention the apparatchiks who approved it. Do they have short-term memory problems?

Pictured is the latest attempt from the feds to deter young people from using cannabis. It shows a good-looking but plumpish guy squatting sadly above a swimming pool. His reflection shows the pumped superstar he might have been if he hadn't succumbed to the dreaded weed and lost his potential.

But, coming not long after pictures of the world's top-scoring Olympic swimming medallist Michael Phelps toking on a bong (below), it lacks a certain...  credibility. Don't you think?

Big oil money behind the climate change deniers exposed

A clever global campaign to create and promote questionable science undermining support for green energy has been funded in large part by American oil giant Koch Industries.

Greenpeace has done the research tracing nearly $50 million of Koch money over nine years going to climate denial organisations, some of which was used to create non-reviewed junk science including the one that denies global warming is harming polar bears. You've probably heard of that one.

Other 'research' projects purported to show that converting to clean energy reduced employment, but were equally flawed. However the most common use of the money is to disseminate these factoids throughout the media and to lobby governments and politicians to keep burning fossil fuels, protecting Koch’s profits.

Why they don't just use the money to diversify into green energy and make money that way, I don't know. Perhaps it's simply the conservative mindset.

Science was reason's triumph… the defeat of the Beast. But what happened when the Beast learned science?  – Arthur Miller

A favourite Labor furphy attacked

The Sydney Morning Herald has been kind enough to publish another of my letters, this one responding to a slightly strange attack on The Greens by Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner that ran nationally in the Fairfax press.

I didn't have the space to query his outrage that, in his electorate, The Greens outpolled the Liberals and a swag of Lib preferences went their way. Tanner frames this as some sort of unholy alliance rather than simply the swings and roundabouts of the preferential system.

If he doesn't like it, perhaps he would prefer a proportional representation system which grants parties the same proportion of parliamentary seats as the percentage of their vote. Under this system The Greens would have several seats in the House of Representatives whereas now they have none. Be careful what you wish for, Mr Tanner.

Another way to see the preferences swing is that there is so little difference between Liberal and Labor that people are voting accordingly.

Text of my letter:

No compromise on useless policy

Lindsay Tanner does himself no favours by repeating Labor's favourite furphy about the Greens opposing its climate change legislation ("Greens do nothing to bring about change", March 25). His criticism implies the legislation would have achieved something. But its targets were a joke and there were so many compensations to the big polluters that anyone serious about addressing climate change would have to reject it.

It's true that politics is about compromise, but Labor's scheme would have locked Australia into climate vandalism for decades. Better to have no legislation and the hope of some real improvement. Calling this "political posturing" reveals more about Labor's bankrupt approach to politics than any supposed Greens cynicism. 

Michael Gormly Woolloomooloo

War on Drugs failing -- US Government

The National Drug Threat Assessment from the US Dept of Justice says the supply of all drugs except cocaine was increasing, and were being distributed through ever-widening dealer networks. This is despite constant budget increases for the War on Drugs since Richard Nixon declared the war around 40 years ago. Drug War warriors will use the assessment to demand yet more money to escalate the war. Reformers are using it as evidence that the WoD is lost and unwinnable.

Some points from the Assessment:

•Increased heroin availability evidenced by higher purity, lower prices, and elevated numbers of heroin-related overdoses and overdose deaths is partly attributable to increased production in Mexico from 17 pure metric tons in 2007 to 38 pure metric tons in 2008, according to U.S. Government estimates.

•Despite recent government of Mexico (GOM) efforts to prohibit the importation of methamphetamine precursor chemicals, methamphetamine availability increased as the result of higher production in Mexico using alternative, less-efficient precursors. Sustained domestic production also contributed to the increased availability levels.

•Marijuana production increased in Mexico, resulting in increased flow of the drug across the Southwest Border, including through the Tohono O'odham Reservation in Arizona.

•Asian drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) are responsible for the resurgence in MDMA availability in the United States, particularly since 2005. These groups produce the drug in Canada and smuggle it across the Northern Border into the United States.

•Cocaine shortages have persisted in many U.S. drug markets since early 2007, primarily because of decreased cocaine production in Colombia but also because of increased worldwide demand for cocaine, especially in Europe; high cocaine seizure levels that continued through 2009; and enhanced GOM counterdrug efforts. These factors most likely resulted in decreased amounts of cocaine being transported from Colombia to the U.S.-Mexico border for subsequent smuggling into the United States.

Nevertheless Barack Obama has ruled out any Federal moves towards legalisation, while on the other hand continuing to tolerate the ever-growing medical marihuana movement in the 14 states which have legalised it.

-----------------------------

Conservative Fox News commentator John Stossel has a different take on it, documenting some of the outright lies the Drug Warriors tell to reinforce their industry.

War against Kings Cross rages on

If I have been neglecting Kings Cross news lately it's partly because I have been writing about it in The City News.

But there is plenty happening, with Council considering responses to its Late-night trading research.

Despite many comments including mine pointing out gaping holes in the research which fails to actually support Council's anti-pub agenda, Council is ignoring them and forging on regardless.

Clover Moore still wants to regulate into being a 'civilised' and 'sophisticated' late night culture, with bookshops and art galleries open till 3am, which is fine by me.  But you can't regulate civilisation and sophistication (putting aside that the latter word comes from 'sophistry' which I am sure Ms Moore did not intend).

No, regulation just bans things and I am more and more convinced that the very late-night monoculture Councillors complain about is the result of their own regulation plus the uncivilised nature of a minority of suburban yobs and thugs which, short of building a wall around the city, we will always have to put up with.

With almost all street life banned, and sniffer dogs everywhere, over-regulation has created a city where there is nothing else to do besides drink on a night out. The forced closure of the wonderful Quirkz venue in Marrickville is a case in point.

But Council wants even more power legislated by the state so they can really get stuck into the late-night economy.

Cr Chris Harris correctly thinks that Responsible Service of Alcohol rules are a joke, but wants a whole bunch of enforcers trained to patrol pubs and decide who can have a drink and who can't.

Give me a break, Chris. Half the current tension and violence is caused by endless security trolls ordering adults about. I for one go to a pub to relax and do not want to be supervised by some straight authority figure making arbitrary decisions about me. Their judgements will be no more objective than bar staff. The only way to do that is to breathalyse everyone who wants a drink. Is that the brave new world you want?

No, what should be policed is bad behaviour towards others, nothing more or less. I and my friends can consume any amount in a night and not become aggressive or troublesome. Get your moral panic off my back and off my town, Councillors.

Links to recent City News stories detailing all the new rules people want, and my comment on the alcohol research are here, here, and here for a very salient Graffito of the week. More being published tomorrow including an entertaining piece My Quiet Street and a comment piece in The Hub.

Oh, and Council continues to block Cowper Wharf Road in Woolloomooloo to protect the genteel citizens of Macleay St from the horrors of car hoons, despite one of the residents who spoke on the late-night-trading research saying that the blockades "hadn't really worked". But Councillors are simply ignoring that, along with anything else that doesn't fit their temperance mindset. If you read My Quiet Street, linked above, you'll see why we have little sympathy for the residents of Macleay St!

Picture: A KX nightclub ad from 1964. A swinging place to rendezvous indeed.

A good argument to legalise ecstasy

The government seemingly still has no idea that the clean colourful little pills people take are here to stay; popular; and terrific fun if it thinks ads like this are going to make any difference at all.

If the only argument against ecstasy they can dredge up is that illegal manufacture is unregulated and possibly unsafe, the logical conclusion is to legalise, tax and regulate it. That would eliminate yukky scenes like this.

Face facts indeed.

[The ad appeared in a Mardi Gras publication distributed around the Oxford Street gay scene]

Prohibition increases murders while anti-drug ads don't work

Just as the Federal Government is about to launch another shock-horror anti-drug advertising campaign, another study has concluded that such campaigns do no good at all because they trigger a self-defensive coping mechanism in the intended targets. This campaign will target cannabis and ecstasy, the two least harmful illicit drugs, and ice.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon justifies the campaign with panic-inducing cherrypicked statistics about youth drug-taking that ignore the fact that use of these drugs is in significant decline. She highlights the use of drugs by very young teenagers but never mentions that, as this is happening under prohibition, maybe prohibition fails to protect youngsters from drug use because unregulated dealers in the schoolyard don't have to ask for ID.

I found some interesting stats about the effectiveness of prohibition in the form of two graphs covering the last century that show the more governments spend on prohibition, the more murders are committed. If that seems counter-intuitive, just think of Al Capone in the 1920s and bikie gang warfare in more recent times, both made rich by dealing in the banned substance. The graphs are part of an interesting empirical analysis of the self-defeating effects of prohibition from Boston University, well worth a read.

This graphically illustrates how prohibition is more harmful than the drugs it fails to control.

How US prohibitionists poisoned Americans for their own good

While they project images of motherhood purity, prohibitionists tend to be consumed by a moral panic that can lead them into grave errors when they come to believe "The end justifies the means" no matter what the toll in death and suffering.

Today we see the 6,500 killed in Mexico's War on Drugs in one year. But during alcohol prohibition in the 1920s the US government ordered that industrial alcohol be laced with poison in an attempt to stop people drinking illegal moonshine re-distilled from the industrial product -- reports the author of a book on poison.

It didn't work.

"In 1926, in New York City, 1,200 were sickened by poisonous alcohol; 400 died. The following year, deaths climbed to 700. These numbers were repeated in cities around the country as public-health officials nationwide joined in the angry clamor," reports Deborah Blum.

Up to 10,000 died nationally.

Ms Blum likens this to the ideas of today's hard-core prohibitionists who want to spray crops of cannabis, coca or opium -- in other people's countries -- with herbicide. She mentions rumours that the CIA still laces illicit drugs with poison.

And we don't have to look abroad for examples of this "kill them for their own good" thought pattern. A couple of years ago Don Wedderburn, head of BOCSAR, the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, published an opinion piece supporting drug prohibition titled  something like "We need to inflict harm to prevent harm". No doubt the Don would not approve of poisoning people for their own good, but it's only a matter of degree -- the principle is the same.

Death penalty more dangerous than drugs

European drug law reformers are targeting the use of mandatory death penalties for people with drug convictions in Malaysia and many other countries:

------------------------

From March 8 to 12, 2010 during the yearly meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, governments from all over the world will once again declare their support to the global fight against drugs, i.e. the substances that were prohibited worldwide by a UN Convention in 1961.

In Malaysia, as in 21 other countries in the world, people who use or possess relatively small quantities of drugs, including cannabis, are sentenced to death. These sentences are mandatory: judges have no possibility to invoke any extenuating circumstance. Furthermore, the usual burden of proof is reversed so that an individual is presumed to be guilty unless he or she can prove otherwise.

International Conventions on Human Rights, various UN Human Rights Bodies and the UN Secretary General have expressed that the “death penalty should only be considered in cases where the crime is intentional and results in lethal or extremely grave consequences, not in cases of economic, non-violent or victimless offences. In those cases a death sentence may be considered as an arbitrary execution.”

The use, sale or trafficking of drugs is not intended to have a lethal outcome. People use drugs to feel good or to feel better, and as long as there is a demand there will always be a supply. Also in Malaysia, drug use has continued to rise in spite of the death penalty. The people who are occasionally caught by authorities do not have major responsibilities in this business. Killing them will not scare the drug gangs away. On the contrary: thanks to these punishments, the leaders in the drug business can continue to justify extraordinary high prices for their goods

Legitimized by the United Nations, drug prohibition continues to drive repressive policies and legislation including death sentence. These policies are typically rooted in moral in stead of rational arguments, and impede the development of progressive and effective responses to any problems that the use of drugs may cause.

-- From the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies (ENCOD)
Ref: http://www.encod.org/info/PICKET-LINE-IN-FRONT-OF-THE.html

NZ politicians defy drug law review advice

Ruling conservatives in New Zealand have categorically refused to follow the advice of their own drug law review even though its terms of reference restricted it to a prohibition model. The Law Commission Review concluded that the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975...

...no longer provides a coherent and effective legislative framework for responding to the misuse of psychoactive drugs... The Act is now outdated and does not reflect current knowledge and understanding about drug use and related health, social and economic harms.

The Commission recommended a caution and diversion approach for people charged with personal use of small quantities of drugs, citing overwhelming Australian evidence that this approach saved police time, reduced the load on courts and prisons and reduced drug use and re-offence.

The NZ government has categorically rejected the conclusions, saying that such efficiency and harm reduction would "send the wrong message". They don't seem to be able to come up with more substantial arguments, and they ignore the rather obvious fact that the government, if it adopted the Review's advice, could use some of the money it saved to send any message it liked through education and advertising.

It seems they prefer 'sending a message' of ideological inflexibility, higher levels of drug use and harm, and wasting police time and money. So much for economic rationalism.

A more thorough report on the issue from the NZ Drug Foundation is published in the Pundit.

Conroy wants to block safe drug use videos

Google should block Youtube videos demonstrating safer ways to use drugs, says Communications Minister Stephen Conroy as reported in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Google is resisting, saying it has a "bias" towards free speech.

Conroy is setting up a filter system to block RC (refused classification) material from Australian web users, hanging his hat on that old standby, child pornography which is to my knowledge not available on the web anyway except on peer-to-peer networks.

Conroy even uses China as an example of how it can be done, raising the spectre of oppressive government control of information and free speech. We used to say "It's a free country, mate," but those days are gone as a succession of freedoms and rights are removed by power-mad governments consumed by moral panic and imposing a nanny state. On my recent trip to China I found all Blogger blogs (like this one) were blocked, along with facebook and, strangely, the newspaper I write for, The City News. Welcome to the Brave New World.

Denying people information about the safe use of drugs can only result in the less safe use of drugs, so Conroy's latest mania can only cause harm. So much for the government's commitment to "harm minimisation".

Other reports claim that his obsession with protecting the rest of us from things he doesn't like will extend to banning pornography featuring women with small breasts, in case someone fantasises about having sex with children. Women with small breasts are angry, saying that yet more big-breasted stereotypes would be of doubtful benefit to society.

Someone said to Tony Abbott the last time he was on his anti-abortion kick, "Get your rosaries off my ovaries".  Something similar applies to our Minister for Censorship.

Pastor calls for end to War-on-Drugs casualties

Pastor Graham Long of the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross has called for an end to the War on Drugs, pointing out that it victimises poorand underprivileged people while providing warring factions in Afghanistan with cash for weapons. In his weekly newsletter he writes:

Why on earth don't we get the UN to buy the whole heroin crop from farmers in Afghanistan to use it for legitimate medical needs around the world. Bingo! Instant defunding of all the warring groups who fund their mayhem by the sale of heroin.  I've spoken to people in high places about Afghanistan and the truth is that no one sees any end in sight. I don't often get on a soap box but I just loathe the idea of young Australians dying in some cause that has no end. Perhaps if we took the market away from the Taliban and the other warring factions, they'd be struggling to fund a single bullet. While I'm on the box, I wonder when we'll wake up that our war on drugs is a war on people. Actually, it's a war on poor people. Every time I think of the Bali nine, it sticks in my neck that our AFP handed Australian young people over to a potential death sentence. Do you think the AFP would have taken this action if one of the nine had been the son of the Prime Minister? We could save a fortune as well as some lives if we took the drug market out of the hands of criminals. I'm expressing the view of a small minority but one that I think will start to make sense when governments become motivated to pay off their debt. One day, we'll see that today's orthodoxy is expensive and unproductive. I don't get on my box often but ever since 1964 The Wayside Chapel never pretended to be a not for prophet organisation.

How Science is spun to support ruling agendas

Another look at the UK study in the post below illustrates how research into drugs is reported in a way that amplifies the downside, increases the moral panic about drugs, provides superficial ammunition for prohibitionists and encourages more funding from prohibitionist governments.

I used the study to illustrate the extremely low relative risk of taking ecstasy, comparing it to the thousands of casualties from the War on Drugs.

But Science Daily, reporting on the same study, feeds the moral panic, headlining with: "Fatality Rates Among Young Drug Users A Cause For Concern". 

It quotes lead author Professor Fabrizio Schifano who said: "These data seem to support the hypothesis that young individuals seem to suffer extreme consequences after excessive intake of ecstasy. This is an issue of public health concern which deserves further studies." 

This statement has been likened to Steven Fry's observation that "Too much is bad for you because that's what too much means". It's a classic example of begging the question. 

Note the thinly disguised call for further funding at the end of Prof Schifano's quote, perhaps showing how research findings are reported in a way that foments moral panic in the interests of more funding -- no reflection on the good professor's scientific rigour. The politics of the system are to blame, not, generally, its practitioners who would be out of a job if they openly challenged the funding source. It's a sad reflection on the independence of Science.

New figures prove prohibition far more harmful than drugs

A new UK study shows just how relatively few deaths are caused by ecstasy. Published in the journal Neuropsychobiology, it looked at reported ecstasy-related deaths from 1997 to 2007, comparing them to amphetamine-related deaths. It reports 605 deaths using the widest definition of "ecstasy-related".

By comparison, 6,500 people were killed last year alone in Mexico's War on Drugs according to The New Scotsman. This is starkly illustrates that prohibition causes far more harm than the drugs it fails to control.

While any death is obviously a matter for concern, risks should be put into perspective. The UK study provides data that helps this. Looking at younger users who reportedly took only ecstasy (mono-intoxication), the Abstract says:

...However, mono-intoxication ecstasy fatalities per 100,000 16- to 24-year-old users were significantly more represented than AMP/METH fatalities (1.67 ± 0.52 vs. 0.8 ± 0.65; p = 0.0007). Conclusion: With respect to AMP/METH, ecstasy was here more typically identified in victims who were young, healthy, and less likely to be known as drug users. AMP/METH high mortality rates may be explained by users’ high levels of physical co-morbidity; excess ecstasy-related fatality rates in young users may be a reason for concern. Although the coroners’ response rate was of 90–95%, study limitations include both reporting inconsistency over time and lack of routine information on drug intake levels prior to death.

So we are talking about 1.67 'mono-intoxication ecstasy related' deaths per 100,000 users. That's a percentage of 0.0000167 (ignoring the error factor, and according to my calculator). That makes ecstasy one of the safest substances around -- and the percentage would be even lower if they compared casualties to the number of doses rather than users, given that most users take more than one dose in the drug-using period of their life.

From memory, a lot of the 'reporting inconsistency'  mentioned in the abstract introduced significant inaccuracy. Because these substances are illegal and unregulated, there is no guarantee that MDMA was even the active substance used. I wonder how many cases of the more dangerous GHB or PMA poisoning slipped into that percentage? Nor, of course, would the actual dose per tablet have been known, and nor were there instructions or warnings available on the non-existent packet they came in -- basic information that comes with a packet of Aspirin because it is legal and regulated, and which presumably prevents much 'excess intake'. Also, because MDMA is illegal, the buyers did not have to provide ID on purchase. Such a regime would to some extent reduce the drug's availability to the under-18s studied.

I wonder by how much that 0.0000167% might have been reduced had these safety factors, routinely applied to pharmaceuticals, existed under a legal, regulated and taxed regime.

And I wonder what the cost of prohibition enforcement is for each of those 1.67 deaths per 100,000 users, and whether there are more cost-effective ways of addressing drug abuse.

Meanwhile in Mexico:

...40 people died in firefights between police and army forces and the drug cartels. More than 6,500 fatalities will have occurred this year alone, topping last year's total, which was double that in 2007...

Of the 220,000 people arrested on drug charges since Mr Calderón took office, three-quarters have been released. Only 5 per cent of the remaining 60,000 or so have been tried and sentenced.

That was written by Jorge G Castañeda, former foreign minister of Mexico (2000-3), a Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Latin American Studies at New York University, in The New Scotsman.

Even talking in absolute figures, and including multi-intoxication deaths, that's a total of 605 ecstasy-related deaths over ten years in the UK compared to 6,500 deaths in one year in Mexico.

Yet prohibitionists from Drug Free Australia have cited the UK study in their prohibitionist campaign. I have invited them to comment on the relative risks of ecstasy vs prohibition.

PS Another analysis of The Courier Mail recently hyping an ecstasy scare is found at The Australian Heroin Diaries. Do journalists learn this formula at some obscure trash tabloid school, or are they just born that way?

PPS As of 19 February, Drug Free Australia had not taken up my invitation to challenge the above analysis.

Drug War dumbs down police, media

Reporting of the War against Drugs in NSW over the weekend again sunk to a nonsensical level of fallacy and propaganda, covering our police and major media in shame.

Both The Sun-Herald and ABC News parroted inaccurate media output from Police Minister Michael Daley but obtained no opposing comment, breaking rule 101 of journalism.

Here's a summary of what Daley said, with rebuttals in counterpoint.

From The Sun-Herald:

NSW Minister for Police Michael Daley said the heroin seized last year was equivalent to 24 million hits and would hopefully drive up the price of drugs and deter use.

-- but driving up the price increases the profit motive in the black market, and attracts greater interest from local and overseas exporters. And 24 million hits sounds like a lot but is only a tiny fraction of the annual market, same as every year. The article lists increases in arrests for most drugs, especially ecstasy. This could reflect different police priorities or it could reflect greater supply and use, which would make a mockery of the War.

From ABC News:

Police praised for cannabis busts
The New South Wales Government has commended the state's police for seizing $50 million worth of cannabis in the past three months.

-- With the national Crime Commission estimating the imported drugs market alone at up to $12 billion annually, police interceptions are and always were just a scratch on the surface. But they never put their overblown estimates in that context.

"We have intelligence from the public. We used helicopters heavily this week in the Tweed, went up in the air and looked down for the plantations on the ground [and] different colouration of vegetation," he said.

-- So they rely on people dobbing in their neighbours and spending a fortune on polluting helicopter surveillance to stop a few people using a recreational drug that's far safer than alcohol.

Unfortunately some people think of cannabis as a soft drug. It isn't. 

-- but it is, Mr Daley

It does cause psychosis. 

-- maybe, but only in a tiny fraction of one percent of users, making it far safer than just about anything.

It's a gateway drug to heavier use

-- No it's not, Mr Daley, although your War on Drugs makes sure that anyone who has access to it on the black market can likely get harder drugs from the same source. For a start, simple mathematics shows that only a tiny percentage of cannabis users ever inject harder drugs. However propagandists like Mr Daley will quote the opposite statistic, that nearly all hard drug users used cannabis first, ignoring that they probably used alcohol before that. Here's some recent research that Mr Daley should read before mouthing discredited truisms in future...

But his fallacies continue:

and it's a cash crop for bikie gangs and organised crime.

-- only because your War on Drugs creates the opportunity for criminals to get into the business, Mr Daley. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophesy.

New South Wales police say they have seized more than 50,000 cannabis plants - with an estimated street value of $190 million - over the past year.

See above re the total value of the drugs market. And the police always overstate the value of seized drugs.

But Mr Daley is not just spouting discredited information to a slavish, unprofessional media. he is attempting to shore up his own police force. This from the USA's Alternet blog, asking why police always say the same sort of stuff:

"Plain and simple. They are motivated by self-interest. Their very jobs depend on a steady stream of arrests and prosecutions. And marijuana users are their cash cow, with arrests totaling a staggering 847,863 in 2008. As long as the marijuana arrests keep coming, so do their paychecks. Keep this in mind the next time you hear a law enforcement official explaining why we need to “protect our streets” from this “dangerous drug.”

Ref: http://www.smh.com.au/national/ecstasy-use-up-as-police-seize-drugs-worth-260m-20100206-njv3.html

Ref: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/07/2812410.htm

Another climate sceptic mantra blown out of the water

A letter of mine published in the SMH today makes a small contribution to the climate change debate, noting that Tony Abbot would be "talking to industry" about penalties on industry for increasing carbon emissions. Comforting. It's like the judge asking a criminal what sentence they would like.

But the real heavy hitting came from a brilliant report by Matthew Wright that explodes the climate sceptics' eternal mantra that renewable energy cannot provide 'baseload power'.

Wright documents many cases where renewable energy IS already providing 'baseload power' in other countries on a scale similar to our own dirty coal-fired power stations. Much of it uses technology developed in Australia but activated overseas because our government will not support the industry here. As Wright points out, our coal-fired plants were developed with public subsidy, so the argument that renewables cost more is also compromised -- never mind that wind and sunlight are free and inexhaustible. These industries overseas employ similar numbers to our coal-based system, so the jobs argument raised by sceptics is also false.

As one commenter pointed out, noting that we have far more sunlight than any of these countries "We could be the Saudi Arabia of solar thermal instead of the saudi arabia of coal and uranium."

Wright's report lands some heavy blows on the nuclear lobby, too:

"Compared to the 10 years it takes to get a nuclear plant up and running, solar thermal plants with 24-hour baseload capacity have construction times as short as nine months."

The report also backs up my position in reports I published in The City News based on my street-level observations of renewable energy I saw installed in China over the summer break. Solar hot water systems were everywhere, a glaring difference between Chinese and Australian roofscapes. I saw many residential developments (like the one pictured, in Pingyao) which were low-rise, offering plenty of roof space to install the units. Our high-rise model, I suspect, houses no more people per hectare but locks out the solar hot water option. I priced a household solar unit in Dali (a quote that took about 15 seconds with no common language involved except sign language and a calculator!) at around $400. Wright puts the price at "Under $500." The technology was invented in Australia, so why are we charged several times this price? Are you there, Kevin Rudd?

No, he's not. All the above has been endlessly broadcast by The Greens, those "irresponsible radicals". It's time the media stopped focusing on the meaningless Liberal/Labor debate and got real by comparing  those farcical deceptions to Greens' policies that are already reality in other more progressive countries.

Links to previous China Postcards in The City News: Drop the red Lanterns, It's the small things that add up.