Snowstorm in Kings Cross

Yes, it snowed last night in Kings Cross when residents attended the second public consultation on the coming upgrade of Fitzroy Gardens, site of the El Alamein Fountain.

After Clover's standard speech about all the wonderful things Council is doing for us, we were shown three design options for the park, supposedly driven by the 800 comments received at the previous consultation.

Despite being repeatedly told this was all about what WE wanted, each of the three council-designed rebuilds all involved a complete repaving, glossing over the fact that the biggest bloc of resident comments had said things like "leave it as it is" and "No more grey granite".

The snow got thicker in a Powerpoint display when we were told one of the things "we didn't like" about the park were the broken and cracked pavers, complete with a picture of a few slightly sunken tiles covered in Ibis-shit.

This of course justifies only better maintenance, not a rebuild. I can show you plenty of broken or cracked grey granite pavers throughout the city, but they don't seem to be used as a rationale for repaving the whole city.

I regularly walk the park and cannot now find any pavers in disrepair. In fact the paving seems in really good nick. One local I spoke to thought the park needed repaving -- "these pavers are disgusting" -- until I pointed out that any new paving would be just as stained in about three months.

At no stage have any structural or functional problems with the park been identified by council.

No, the real agenda here is simply Sydney's renovation disease, a cultural cringe which cannot leave anything to grow old gracefully, obtain a patina of age or exist long enough to come back into fashion. Sydney remains stuck in its teenage-girl phase, changing its clothes three times a day in an effort to impress.

Now Kings Cross will have to endure another year or so as a construction zone with its fallout of damaged businesses, intolerable noise and rampant production of greenhouse gases. So much for Clover's green credentials.

It's not "about us" at all, it's about feeding Council's voracious upgrade department, and it's about sham democracy and sham consultation from our bureautocracy.

Of course another thing "we didn't like" was the markets, particularly the Sunday Rotary markets which, along with the Gardens, has been on Council's hit list for many years. One wonders why, if we don't like it, it continues to make money. Note, the markets were also one of the things we said we "liked".

There was no information on how the markets might continue during the construction work, but the management of both markets "had been consulted". How democratic.

Two of the design options move the children's playground under the trees for shade, right in the firing line of the Ibis-shit. Smart.

The Ibises "were a management issue" we were told, without any specific solutions being offered.

Option Three involved moving the huge mature Fig tree, centrepiece of the park, to one edge. What could possibly go wrong?  

We are getting an upgrade whether we want it or not. It's inevitable as they had decided the budget and appointed the designers well before the initial community consultation (read: 'snowjob'). In that light I recommend Design Option 1, the least radical.

You can send comments to Kathleen Ng -- kng@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au

See the spin on Council's website here.

Report on initial "consultation" here.

Pictured: Beautiful Fitzroy Gardens as they are now. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

The war on drugs, American style

While failing to significantly change drug use patterns, the US War on Drugs is claiming thousands of lives including ritual torture-decapitations and the murder of politicians and journalists in Mexico. This is the ugly future desired by "tough on drugs" zealots even though the only winners seem to be arms dealers. Funny that.

The pictures come from an interesting website run by US police who, having experienced the dark side of the drug war, oppose prohibition.  

For the amazing dope on the carnage in Mexico, check this article.

And we think the fallout is bad in Kings Cross!


PS (20/10/08) The drug-war bloodletting in Mexico is reported in the Herald today, the story as usual studiously ignoring any comment questioning the effectiveness of prohibition, leaving the uninformed reader to react with horror and intuitively wish for even more prohibition. They even blame the increase in violence on cocaine use. Very twisty.

PPS (14/12/08) Another take on the Mexican drug war carnage via the Christian Science Monitor claims 5,400 lives have been lost this year (more than Americans killed in Iraq) and that the crackdown has doubled the price of cocaine in America. This is seen as a measure of success even though it means ever-higher profits for suppliers and dealers, making the business that much more attractive. 

Kings Cross gangster murdered: prohibition takes another life

Apparently he was a Kings Cross gangster named Todd O'Connor. Apparently he might have been involved in a drug supply gang called "Notorious". But maybe not. In any case he was murdered in Tempe on Sunday night, shot through the head. 

And apparently all the bikie gangs of Sydney are competing for the lucrative drugs turf in Kings Cross.

While this fallout from drug prohibition makes for colourful news stories, we don't need it any more than Chicago needed Al Capone. The sooner we discard this dysfunctional way of managing drugs and redirect the wasted $$ millions into productive directions, the sooner we can enjoy a much happier society. Are you listening, Premier Rees?

'Pal' lives on in the news

John O'Connor, known locally as Pal, keeps making news after his death on 27 September (see previous post & comments). Today's lead letter in The Sydney Morning Herald is from an ex-prison officer who tells how our jails are used as welfare accommodation by many. He says Pal might still be alive if he had been imprisoned and he calls for part of the prison budget to be reallocated for basic shelter for homeless and mentally ill people. Are you listening, Premier Rees?

PS: (9 October) Pal's funeral at St Canices is reported in The Sydney Morning Herald here.

PPS: (10 October) Another Herald story today (looks like a major re-edit of yesterday's -- thanks to a commenter for the link)

Note the 13-year-old runaway line. My info is that Pal was diagnosed as schizophenic at age 13 and kicked out by his parents. It's from a good source but it's still only hearsay.

PPPS: (11 October) Adele Horin opines in the SMH about a 'homes-first' approach to helping people like Pal. An anonymous commenter on the Todd O'Connor story above finds it all "nauseating and hypocritical." I have asked for clarification.

PPPPS: (14 October) Yet another letter to the editor about Pal, this one from people who were with him when he died.

Location, location, location

While the rest of the city claws and scrambles for that famous Sydney view, paying a fortune and even poisoning trees in the process, Council has decided we need to see flowers instead. This is the flower installation they have temporarily placed on the land bridge over the Kings Cross Tunnel, which was built as an observation deck for the impressive view down our very own "Champs Elysees" back to the city, pictured below but now obscured by the plants. While it's all very funky and nice and all, surely they could have designed better for the position -- and not created a hidden, dangerous dead space behind it. But what would we know, we're only residents.

International experts talk sense on cannabis

A panel of international experts has concluded that the prohibition of cannabis causes more harm than the drug itself. The UK's Beckley Foundation commissioned the panel in the lead-up to next year's UN review of global drug policy.

The panel's conclusions have received wide news coverage (even in the SMH!), a rare but welcome balance to the hysterical and inaccurate stories we are usually bombarded with.

Typically, the anti-drug zealots will ignore this new report and continue spinning their increasingly transparent propaganda.

I challenge Jan Copeland, director of the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre, to discredit the findings of the Beckley Cannabis Commission, as her supposedly "evidence-based" message is diametrically opposed. As she is privileged to possess the resources to do this, and either she is wrong or the Commission is wrong, avoiding the issue will destroy any credibility NCPIC may have.

If she cannot or will not discredit the Commission, it must be concluded that NCPIC is immorally wasting millions of taxpayer's dollars in its partisan mission of disinformation.

I challenge Jan Copeland to explain the contradiction between her portrayal of cannabis as a seriously dangerous drug rivalling Ice and the Beckley Commission's conclusion that:

The probability and scale of harm among heavy cannabis users is modest compared with that caused by many other psychoactive substances, both legal and illegal, in common use, namely, alcohol, tobacco, amphetamines, cocaine and heroin.

PS: 7/10/08 The actual Beckley Commission report is now online. The conclusions and recommendations are on Page 169. Please note the 49 pages of references. An appendix outlines desirable directions for research into cannabis, offering a wider agenda than the present politically directed search for harms. Of note among these are two areas that have been crying out for attention: Proper epidemiological research into the effect of cannabis on car accident rates; and research into the precursors, genetic or otherwise, indicating why cannabis is enjoyed by some but causes anxiety in others. Knowing the warning signs of psychosis could be a useful tool in preventing harm.

Confessions of a cannabis 'addict'

Prohibitionists are spending a whack of taxpayers dollars trying to establish 'cannabis addiction' as a significant problem. Jo Baxter of Drug Free Australia recently stated at an international forum (1) that "there are still at least 200,000 people in Australia... who admit to being addicted to cannabis". As she was referring to the Australian Household Drug Survey (2) which does not give figures for cannabis addiction, it appears to be a prime example of the porkies these people spout.

An acquaintance of mine told me the other day she had conducted a 'medical experiment' on herself. After 40 years of smoking pot almost daily, she decided to give it up to see what would happen.

Result: nothing. A week after she stopped (on the weekend), she had a strong urge to smoke and trawled the house for dregs, but didn't smoke. Next weekend, the same. Then nothing -- no problems, no side-effects, no withdrawal symptoms. She is now five weeks into her fast. That's not even indicative of a significant psychological dependence.

It is salient, I think, that she has never smoked tobacco and did not consume it mixed with her pot.

She is a pleasant, healthy, employed, functional person with adult kids who are themselves studying or employed.

OK it's a sample of one but 40 years is a long time and any sane person would have to admit that if she had been using heroin, cocaine, tobacco or amphetamines she would have been deeply addicted.

This gels with my knowledge of the long-term smokers I know. The only time I have seen anything like dependence in a pot smoker was when they mixed it with tobacco.

I guess Jo Baxter must either be talking about a different substance or she is deeply deluded.

1. http://reageramera.blogg.se/2008/september/jo-baxter-drug-free-australia-the-importan.html

2. http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/phe/ndshs07-fr/ndshs07-fr-c02.pdf

(Thanks to Gary Gahan for pointing out the Jo Baxter material on an email list.)

NCPIC spouts more junk science

The Sydney Morning Herald continues its poor journalism on the topic of drugs by printing without balance or comment yet another AAP story regurgitating propaganda from NCPIC (the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre, where I hear the staff are already getting mightily annoyed with its highly paid Director Jan Copeland's focus on demonising cannabis at the expense of balance or truth).

The whole story, showing "links" between cannabis and depression is a transparent beat-up of the kind exposed elsewhere on this blog so I won't analyse the whole thing.

But simply take the lie in the last paragraph which claims that cannabis smoking "leads to brain shrinkage", referring no doubt to the study discussed in the hyperlink above which in reality showed only a tenuous link to brain shrinkage and could equally have shown that unemployment is the cause (and it ignores a larger study which showed no shrinkage, both views backed up in a New Scientist report).

Again in the present case, the sample who mention cannabis to doctors came from atypical minorities, just like the 'brain shrinkage' and the 'cannabis causes violence' furphies spouted by NCIPC and published in The SMH. "Users were more likely to be male, young, unemployed or on a low income and indigenous", says the SMH story. So the study could equally have concluded that being a young unemployed Aboriginal is likely to lead to depression and dope smoking. That's not on NCPIC's agenda though.

They even go so far as to infer that this study shows cannabis is more harmful than amphetamines. This is not only bizarre, it's dangerous if it leads to a reallocation of resources away from the hard drug to the soft drug. Frontline social workers in Kings Cross I speak to are flabbergasted by this tripe.

There is another giveaway in the story, which: "...also revealed that mentioning cannabis use to a doctor was very rare". Jan Copeland is "disturbed" by this, another unscientific assertion about data that could equally show that very few of the 750,000 weekly users in Australia see it as a problem.

It's just like the junk studies that showed that 90% or so of cocaine users had smoked cannabis and concluded that pot led to coke use. But a simple re-examination of the stats demonstrated that only a small minority of regular pot smokers used coke, refuting the first conclusion. Be careful what you believe, dear reader, it's all smoke and mirrors (to use an apt analogy!)

For "balance" the story includes an ideological comment from the AMA's Dr Rod Pearce who essentially argues that cannabis causes harms under prohibition therefore we need more prohibition. THINK about it! 

And if I am right about NCPIC, what a colossal waste of taxpayers' money!

PS: Even NCPIC's own mission statement is nonsensical:

"The NCPIC mission is to reduce the use of cannabis in Australia by preventing uptake and harms associated with its use in the Australian community."

In other words, "The NCPIC mission is to reduce the use of cannabis in Australia by reducing the use of cannabis and reducing the harms associated with its use in Australia". Huh?

R.I.P. Pal

One of the better known street characters of Kings Cross died this morning, suddenly collapsing after attending St Vincents Hospital Casualty.

Pal, as he preferred to be called, was a gentle, intelligent person who was dealt a lousy hand in the game of life. He suffered from a variety of physical and mental problems which combined to exclude him from society and employment. However he never complained, and was always honest in his activities and courteous to the many locals who befriended him. 

He was dependent on charity and welfare for survival. His deterioration and death in his forties is a testament to the poor standard of care available to marginalised people.

The photograph was taken in October 2004 at his request after he had found a used syringe in the street and posed with it in his mouth.

His funeral is likely to be this week at the Wayside Chapel, where he was a regular.

PS: (3/10/08) Pal's real name was John O'Connor and this week's Wentworth Courier carried a story about St Vincent's Hospital staff who knew and liked him and held a dinner in his memory. He had admitted to the hospital over 800 times.

PPS: (7/10/08) The Sydney Morning Herald ran a major story on Pal on October 4. Thanks to the anonymous commenter below for the link.

Up to $12 billion says prohibition has failed

Faced with the reality that recent massive hauls of ecstasy have not made any visible difference to the availability of the drug, the Australian Crime Commission has dramatically increased its estimate of the size of the illicit drugs market.

They say between $4 billion and probably nearer $12 billion dollars annually are flowing out of Australia into the hands of international drug dealers, reports The Age today.

While not concluding that the War on Drugs has failed, the ACC is going to brief the government on 'revised strategies'.

This recognition of the real situation makes a mockery of prohibition groups who call for a 'tougher on drugs' approach, because the financial cost of eliminating a drug economy of that size would be astronomical, not to mention the social cost of the ugly militarised society we would have to create and the economic cost of convicting and punishing a very large percentage of the population. 

Taxpayers would very quickly tire of paying through the nose while being stopped at gunpoint and forcibly drug-tested wherever they went, because that is what it would take.  They would quickly realise locking up pot smokers is not as important as providing good health services or transport infrastructure because the former does not affect them but the latter does.  The solution would be far worse than the 'problem'.

The soaring debt levels of the US government alone makes effective prohibition unaffordable, and indeed there are reports they are already cutting back their Drug War spending.  

On the other hand, legal controlled availability would earn money for governments and greatly reduce crimes committed to fund the purchase of illegal drugs, particularly burglaries and muggings. The small minority who do experience problems with drugs could be better off if treated and educated. It would be a much nicer world for all of us.

PS: (29 September 08) A follow-up story in today's Age provides support for this analysis:

"Criminologist John Walker... believes the ACC's figures should spark alarm about the failure of traditional policing to fight the drugs trade. 'Law enforcement cannot solve an economic problem. It never solved prostitution or prohibition. In fact, what police do makes it worse because it drives up the price.'"

Juanita Nielsen investigator ignored by Sydney media

Barry Ward, one of the two journalists who originally investigated the murder of Juanita Nielsen, has posted a comment beneath another story on this blog. It is worth bringing to the fore:

I have just discovered the Kings Cross Times blog and refer to your articles on Juanita Nielsen.
Some of your readers may know my name or even recall meeting me when Tony Reeves and I conducted our investigation into the killing back in the 1970s. The following is one of many articles I have written on the subject over the years. It will enlighten those who may not have been around at the time. The battle continues……

This year brings the 33rd anniversary of the murder of Kings Cross newspaper publisher Juanita Nielsen. It will also mark another year in the silent conspiracy of corruption that surrounds what may have been the crime of the century in NSW.

When Tony Reeves and I began our journalistic investigation back in 1975 we described it as the story of a lifetime, then The Story That Won't Go Away. For three decades we've been rebuffed in our attempts to force a commission of inquiry, to expose the truth behind this sordid tale of police and political corruption, of betrayal and heinous brutality.

But the story hasn't gone away, and neither have I -- although I was forced to leave Australia because of my activities.

The story surfaced again recently with the publication of a book whose author claimed to have found a witness with new evidence. I wrote a critique showing that his book was merely an extension of the official version of events, the cover-up, and e-mailed it to all of the Sydney media. Even though I am well know to most of them and the fact that my critique contained some astonishing facts only one editor bothered to reply and that to tell me that he preferred the police story!

This shouldn't really have surprised me. Our erstwhile colleagues in the Sydney media have long been not merely ambivalent but antagonistic in their approach to this story and to Tony and I. Orchestrated by the PR Dept of the NSW Police, they have accepted the official version of events without the slightest attempt at corroboration. Even though they all reviewed the book they wouldn't consider my critique of it, just as they ignored a major story that touched upon the case back in 1975.

Let me explain. In the course of our investigation Tony and I traced Eddie Trigg, the last person said to have seen Juanita alive. Within minutes we had been beaten up, abducted and handed over the Darlinghurst Police who threw us into jail for the night. "A good yarn," we agreed, when the goose bumps had abated. There was more good copy to come.

We pleaded not guilty to the spurious charge of being found drunk in Darlinghurst and, thanks to two pro bono barristers, fought the case as it lasted eight days over as many months. The charge was eventually dismissed but not before the case, which also involved two QC's on "watching briefs" for unidentified clients, had set two legal precedents. Another good yarn, we agreed. The transcript ran to 175,000 words.

But not one of those words was reported by the Sydney media. Like our allegations surrounding the killing of Juanita, the story was ignored. It might never have happened.

No one wants to know the truth about the Nielsen conspiracy. My rationale is that the political implications are too far-reaching, too dangerous. That, though, doesn't explain the shameful attitude of Sydney's journalists. They are a disgrace to the calling that Tony and I love.

If you'd care to read my critique of the Rees book and get an insight into what Tony and I achieved you can do so courtesy of the only branch of the Sydney media not afraid to run it. It was published without question by Fiona Prior on the Henry Thornton current affairs website. Read it by clicking on to the hyperlink below: No, there was no response to it, legally or officially……. http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=2714

I have written a novel which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Nielsen conspiracy but, like their media colleagues, Sydney’s publishers have proved ambivalent. So I have self-published it Those who wish may download it at http://www.lulu.com/content/2880339

My warmest regards to those Victoria Street residents and other caring folk who may remember me.


Barry Ward
barry@ward5525.freeserve.co.uk

Drugs chief dumps on prohibition

A former British senior civil servant, who once ran the anti-drugs unit in the Cabinet Office, has described the present government policy of being tough on drugs as pointless. Julian Critchley says he now believes the best way to reduce the harm caused by drugs is to legalise them.

He clearly spells out that the main obstacle to this is politicians' fear of the tabloid press.

Here's a link to Critchley's BBC audio interview, and here's a link to a fuller BBC report.

What has this to do with Kings Cross? Well, on 21 August, two local residents groups are hosting a community summit to tackle the 'late-night booze fests' and 'alcohol-fuelled violence' that some of them constantly rail about. 

I guarantee that the the 'action plan' will do nothing to tackle one of the root causes of excessive alcohol consumption in this area: the harsh persecution of pot smokers via sniffer dogs (there were TWO dogs trawling the railway station barriers the other day). 

If you publicly search and humiliate up to 100 people per week in a precinct, most of whom are pot smokers, most won't come back and those who do will mainly be drinking, drinking, drinking. Years of this strategy must have greatly moved the demographics of our visitors towards alcohol abuse.

Still, some impressive speakers are listed at the 'summit' including Dr Alex Wodak and former KX Superintendent Mark Murdoch. And the meeting seeks "positive, practical, actionable and reasonable controls" as the outcome, which is encouraging.

The meeting is at St John's Church, Darlinghurst, 7.30pm, Thursday 21 August. 

[Pictured is an unusual view of St John's and the Top of the Town apartments shot from the newly restored turret of the Kings Cross Hotel.] 

Police, doctor back up realistic view of ecstasy

The lead letter in today's Sydney Morning Herald is from a Kings Cross doctor who observes first-hand the relatively benign effects of ecstasy (even in the impure form currently available in our illegal, unregulated market).

Today's Courier Mail also tells of frontline Police in Fortitude Valley (Brisbane's Kings Cross) who are grateful for the high numbers using ecstasy because they cause so much less trouble than the drunks.

These pieces underline the yawning chasm between real frontline experience and the official 'right message' spun by governments and prohibitionists.

This is not to say that prohibitionist activists are necessarily being dishonest -- along with the rest of us, they have for generations ingested torrents of propaganda and biased junk science designed to demonise certain drugs. Lacking for the most part any direct experience of drugs or alternative cultures, they do not have any reliable way to tell fiction from fact. (The NCPIC material described in the previous two posts is a perfect example of 'biased junk science').

Today's media grabs are solidly grounded in real experience, a rare occurrence in a society where most drug users keep their mouths shut for fear of arrest. Accordingly, open-minded observers need to give extra weight to the similar message both of these stories carry -- and then question the frame of reference that supports prohibition, a difficult thing to do if you believe in it.

All bloggers wrong, implies Copeland

Professor Jan Copeland has dismissed criticism of her public position on cannabis saying "We did get some negative press but it was only from bloggers". Copeland, pictured, is director of NCPIC (National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre)

She was speaking at NDARC's 2008 Symposium and was presumably referring to the many critical responses she received to an opinion piece she published on an ABC site (linked in the post below).

Several commenters exposed her criticisms of cannabis as flawed, quoting scientific studies at length. Despite the NCPIC website claiming to present evidence-based information, Copeland has ignored the content of these criticisms and rubbished them on the grounds that they were on a blog – a blog that she had started off herself!

Does this mean all blogs are wrong? Or does it mean that Professor Jan Copeland is just using that as an excuse to ignore extensive evidence that challenges her political bias?

After all, her organisation has a website and we all know you can't trust information from the web (especially if buying tickets for the Olympics). So all the information on her NCPIC site should also be ignored, at least by Copeland's questionable logic.

Even funnier, when they answer the phone at NCPIC they omit the 'prevention' bit from their name. I suppose that's because they know 'prevention' is the buzzword of conservative christian fundamentalists who want mandatory detention for all young people caught with cannabis, and it's becoming an embarrassment for a supposedly 'evidence-based' organisation.

Also strange is that Paul Dillon, previously known for his balanced reporting on drug matters, is the organisation's Communications Officer. The optimistic view is that Dillon will hit his stride soon and balance out the one-sided spin from Copeland. 

Here's a link in which Dillon lists the addictiveness of different drugs. After explaining how drug information needs to be accurate or kids just don't believe it, he offers these ratings:

"[Nicotine is no. 1, alcohol is no. 10] Heroin is about number 13, and ecstasy and cannabis are a lot further down the list."

That makes Copeland's description last week of young cannabis smokers as "a hard core of addicts" seem a bit purple, doesn't it?

But what would I know? I'm only a blogger.

PS This lead letter in The Sydney Morning Herald (Aug 1) nicely exposes how the NCPIC spin contradicts its own evidence.

New Reefer Madness industry in full swing

It seems the new National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre (NCPIC) is wasting no time demonstrating its political aim of demonising cannabis.

An article in today's Sydney Morning Herald betrays the usual symptoms of selective data being used to support a predetermined view.

On the one hand we are supposed to be horrified at the spectacle of violent dope smokers presenting at hospitals. But as usual there is no causal link between the two. These people apparently presented "after smoking marihuana" but not necessarily BECAUSE of marihuana. What other factors may have contributed to the situation of those included in the data is not revealed. Only one in four showed violence, and the data no doubt does not include the legions who present at hospitals for some other reason without admitting cannabis use because it is illegal.

The article even quotes St Vincents' media darling Dr Gordian Fulde bringing up the discredited furphy that today's marihuana is ten times more potent than yesterday's weed but then curiously contradicts the thrust of the story by saying that smokers rarely need sedation. Ten times more potent? Where's your data, Dr Fulde? (And how much was edited out of what you actually said?)

On the other hand, we see doctors from the emergency department in the same hospital writing to newspapers pointing out they have never had to deal with a cannabis-related emergency. Strange contradictions here.

Well-paid NCPIC Director Jan Copeland has apparently learned nothing from the factually supported flaming she received on an ABC blog (note particularly the posts by "Rumpus"). It is clear NCPIC is nothing but a political propaganda tool and deserves no credibility whatsoever.

And, of course, the fact that all this supposed trauma is happening under prohibition is not mentioned.

And why the Herald uncritically publishes this rubbish is beyond me. It is no more credible that the original Reefer Madness and is produced for exactly the same reasons.

PS (31 July): NCPIC is at it again in The SMH, typifying young dope smokers as 'a hard core of addicts'. 

The press release gushes: "Teenage girls are now just as likely to smoke dope as boys, according to statistics showing rates are at an all-time low but a "hard core" of addicts still remains." 

Never mind that cannabis is about as addictive as golf or stamp collecting. To use the same term for cannabis addiction as used for heroin, ice or cocaine addiction is one of the most wildly dishonest and inaccurate statements it is possible to make. It's like equating a poke in the guts to a beating murder. NCPIC and The SMH are covered in shame.

The press release goes on to twist language in one of the most brazen pieces of propaganda I have ever seen.  Those who still smoke are "committed cannabis users who have other problems in their lives." Then Ms Copeland gets sinister with what I can only see as a call for tougher prohibition: "It's going to take more than an ad campaign on television to deter them."

Older smokers had "failed to give up" and needed "more help".

It's clever spin – assuming something is necessarily a problem when that idea itself is seriously questioned. And not a word about how all these committed teenage smokers can so easily get their hands on the stuff under prohibition, plain evidence that prohibition itself is the failure.

The Herald story finishes with a repeat of yesterday's claims about cannabis-related violence in Sydney hospitals. And Gordian Fulde has been all over the radio repeating that other furphy about the terribly potent new strains of Hydro. But as one email correspondent put it today:

"What's the violence level around Dutch coffee shops, where every strain of hydro is available?"

Indeed.

Climate sceptics exposed as swindlers

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

"THE controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle misrepresented several leading climate scientists to try to convince people that human-induced climate change is a fraud, Britain's broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, has found."

The program, shown last July on ABC amid some furore, seems to have been shameless in its dishonesty. Unfortunately all too many climate change sceptics will have had their views reinforced along the way.

The general approach is very similar to much of the prohibitionist spin around illicit drug use, but unfortunately the media seem to have almost entirely lost their critical faculties in this instance. I regularly see prohibitionist messages discredited by professionals because they use suspect research and ignore sound research that challenges their views. But these rebuttals never seem to find their way into the public sphere, possibly because the truth is seen to be 'the wrong message'. Sigh. 

No strings attached

People were laughing yesterday at this pole poster in my street. It's obviously a hoax, so I have obscured the phone number. The two posters I saw had been removed by late afternoon. Quite a few World Youth Day pilgrims use this street... welcome to Sydney kids, it's not all prayerful arm-waving!

Two sides of World Youth Day

Cardinal Pell, the Pope and other protectors of pedophiles might have had a secret giggle over a slip of the tongue on ABC's AM program this morning. The announcer headlined with a story foreshadowing today's Papal apology to "vixens of sexual abuse." 

A correction to "victims" was immediate.

Freud would have raved in his groll.

Meanwhile the 'spin doctors' on the Morning Show described senior Catholics as 'not only climate change sceptics but also abuse sceptics'.

On a brighter note: Pictured are global pilgrims having a good time outside the Opera House yesterday, innocent and happy. More power to them. Shame on the politics of their leaders.

Bus busts a sign of the new order

While the news is full of outrage because we can now be fined $5.5k for 'annoying' a Catholic pilgrim, the same inhuman authoritarianism is pervading many other parts of Sydney life.

A fairly common sight on our buses is a weeping young Asian girl, probably from China or Hong Kong where there is a single fare for all journeys, who has been busted by an inspector for not inserting their fare card enough times for the journey. I can understand as I have no idea how many sections a journey might be. Even when other passengers offer to pay the extra fare, the inspectors continue their officious sadism.

Now Melbourne has abolished tram conductors and the same thing is happening there. But that perhaps more human city is making an issue of it via this eloquent article in The Age.

Sydney better get used to it because, ever since APEC, 'This is the way we do business now'. And they wonder why tourism is falling.

Moral panic thriving in the media

Sydney's media yesterday was in a tizz over teenagers in a 'booze and drug orgy' at the Submission under-age party in Darling Harbour. ABC reports had one girl hospitalised from an overdose of GHB. It turned out she was drunk, which at least The SMH had the decency to report. This letter they published today, however, put it further into perspective:

Restrain the rage

It seems that of 2000 revellers at a "strictly alcohol-free" under-age event on Wednesday, 0.2 per cent were found to be under the influence of alcohol and 0.1 per cent were found with illegal drugs, of which half had enough to constitute a charge of "supply", thanks to a police sniffer-dog raid ("Under-age rage", smh.com.au, July 10).

Six doesn't seem a particularly alarming total to me. I'd wager that if you randomly tested 2000 police officers, teachers, nurses, doctors, politicians or State Transit Authority employees while they were at work, you would find a much higher percentage.

Daniel Kell, Sutherland

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

Ah, so many different ways to report something.