Mexico's horrific war on drugs failing

Mexico's horrific war on drugs is failing hopelessly even as all the drug business indicators get healthier. The war was declared for political reasons by a politically desperate President Calderon (Yes, that old story).

...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.

So reports 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.

Señor Castañeda says the war is...

...unwinnable because it fails to comply with the tenets of the Powell Doctrine, elaborated 18 years ago by Colin Powell, then chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, in relation to the first Gulf War.

Mr Powell enumerated four conditions that must be satisfied to succeed in a military operation. One was deployment of overwhelming force, which the Mexican military lacks. Another was definable victory, which one never has in a war on drugs. The third condition was an exit strategy at the outset, which Mr Calderón lacks, because he can neither withdraw in defeat in his own country, nor withdraw and declare victory.

Monbiot shreds Plimer

The battle over climate change has descended to the level of religious bickering since the sceptics have massaged enough anti-science to counter the mainstream of science on climate change.

Both sides can muster arguments sophisticated enough to baffle the average Joe, so such people have to accept one side or the other as a matter of faith.

So it's good to see one of the current stars of the sceptic movement, Professor Ian Plimer, being shredded on Lateline by non-scientist George Monbiot.

As blogged here previously, Plimer's book spouts numerous denial-side factoids that have been soundly and publicly discredited -- but there are always a few ignoramuses left who will believe them, so he keeps getting paid to spout them. Monbiot and host Tony Jones asked Plimer the hard questions about these points and Plimer evaded, evaded and evaded, unable to defend his stance.

This helps me avoid any crises of faith as I find it hard to believe someone who repeats an argument after it has been soundly discredited. Plimer is the inspiration for such leading 'experts in the field' as Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce, our alternative government. The sad thing is, the ludicrous flat-earthery of these people helps make Kevin Rudd look good by doing next to nothing.

It's almost funny.

Sounds from the vault -- early Fairlight demo

Classic 1970s uber-cool dudes demonstrate the new-fangled Fairlight synthesiser in 1980 -- it's played by Michael Carlos who was a bit of a keyboard hero for me in the early '70s, playing with Jeannie Lewis on her album Free fall through featherless flight and earlier with Tully.

While the clip shows the Australian origin of all today's techno sound, best of all is the endless grinding sound of the huge floppy disc loading some sounds (probably about 128k). Comparing that with today's flashcards, I wonder what we will be using 29 years from now?

Violence down as moral panic rises

It's official -- alcohol-related violence IS down 4.5% over the past two years, even as Council clamps down on Sydney's night economy, repeatedly justifyling the policy with claims that violence is rising and 'out-of-control'.

The new figures, as reported in today's Sydney Morning Herald, come from the NSW Bureau of Crimes Statistics and Research.

They make nonsense of the statistics produced by Council's recent late-night trading research, with Clover Moore and her cohort repeatedly quoting that 60% of respondents "consider that those areas are experiencing increasing rates of alcohol-related harm, and that appropriate ways to reduce... such harm include... enforcing a ceiling in the number of alcohol outlets..."

Violence has reduced even more than the average in Kings Cross since a marked increase in high-visibility policing. The Cross interestingly escaped last weekend's well publicised orgy of violence as colourfully described by the police media blitz. The police have, significantly, departed from their usual plodspeak in favour of emotive language highlighting words like 'disgusting'. This marks a shift from straight policing to social engineering, all part of the moral panic.

We observed Kings Cross on Friday night from our favourite kerbside drinking and people-watching spot, and I wrote a commentary on the peaceful night, and the police blitz, for The City News.

The Sydney Morning Herald today also runs a spirited defence of the Nanny State which states:

so too has the public mood been transformed on alcohol by the violence, distress and other harms its causes for others.

...or has the public mood in fact been changed by a tsunami of moral panic unleashed by the AOD sector which gets more funding the more panic they foment, and by politically bereft governments trying to score points by getting 'tough on' things, and by a small army of nannys and NIMBYs?

Today's declining violence figures -- occurring even as the population rises -- lend weight to the latter proposition.

PS (23 12 09) The the Alcohol and other Drugs Council of Australia (ADCA) has joined the police in using morally loaded language:   "Australia's 'Drinking Culture' - a National Disgrace" begins a pre-Christmas media release berating drinkers. It claims "84 per cent of Australians consider intoxication to be unacceptable" before listing the usual 'alcohol-related' horrors that fail to scare the kiddies. Meanwhile packed pubs and clubs around here continue to produce a babble of chatter and laughter whenever I walk past. I guess that must be the sound of the remaining 16 per cent of Australians.

Canberra wants your input on drug strategy

The next five years of drugs strategy is being formulated by the Federal Government. While they are seeking input from experts and the community, the following introduction on the consultation website implies that there will be no fundamental change:

Australia's National Drug Strategy 2004–2009 is in its final year of implementation. The Strategy has been evaluated by independent experts under the auspices of the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy (MCDS). The evaluation found that the Strategy and its three pillars of supply, demand and harm reduction are fundamentally sound and have been vital to the success of the Strategy in reducing the prevalence of, and harms from, drug use in Australia over a long period.

Nonetheless, significant harms from drug use continue to occur in Australia and new trends are emerging. This Consultation Paper aims to identify emerging issues and seek input from expert stakeholders and the broader community on directions for the next phase of the Strategy 2010–2015.

My translation of that: 'A prohibition model will remain despite a lack of objective evidence that it works, but we are prepared to strengthen harm reduction strategies.'

If they were serious about that they would recommend more medically supervised injecting centres. The Kings Cross Centre has been evaluated to death, and it works well. Nevertheless it remains the only such facility in Australia and the NSW government maintains it on a trial-only basis.

All written submissions can be forwarded to the National Drug Strategy Consultation inbox (NDSconsultation@health.gov.au) or sent to:



National Drug Strategy Consultation

MDP 27

GPO Box 9848

Canberra ACT 2601



The closing date for submissions is Wednesday 24 February 2010.

Czechs decriminalise 15g of cannabis

The sizeable minority who enjoy recreational drugs other than alcohol can now do so in the Czech Rebublic without being persecuted by police, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Czechs drink the most beer and smoke the most cannabis of any country on the continent. As the WSJ points out, hops and cannabis are related botanically, being "the two sole members of the Cannabaceae family of plants."

Czechs will be able to carry up to 15g of cannabis or grow 5 plants for personal use. New rules for artificial drugs are being drafted which would allow people to carry two grams of methamphetamines, cocaine or heroin, five ecstasy pills or 5g of hashish without committing a criminal offence, reports Czech media.

Let's wait and see if the world ends or if people just do what they are doing anyway, minus the risk of arrest and jail.

PS 21.December.09 The Czech government has now decriminalised the harder drugs as well. The limits are:

Marijuana 15 grams (or five plants)

Hashish 5 grams

Magic mushrooms 40 pieces

Peyote 5 plants
LSD 5 tablets

Ecstasy 4 tablets

Amphetamine 2 grams

Methamphetamine 2 grams

Heroin 1.5 grams

Coca 5 plants
Cocaine 1 gram

Now Australian Governments need to either condemn the Czechs as irresponsible idiots, (and the Portugese, Dutch etc) or re-examine the prohibition culture here because Australia's laws are the idiotic ones... both propositions can't be true.

Copenhagen brings climate debate to a thunderhead

I am amazed at the effectiveness of the climate change sceptic movement in dominating public debate around the Copenhagen conference. Time and again, climate sceptics' pseudo-science is exposed but they just churn away regardless.

They even claim that climate change science is a global conspiracy by (a) the British Monarchy or (b) the communists whereas I think they are the ones in the pay of the fossil fuel industries. Here's a site with a neat list of climate sceptic organisations and where they get their money from. Surprise surprise, it's the oil and coal industries! Who would have thought!

And this article in today's SMH rounds up some science showing alarming global warming and extreme weather patterns -- as I wrote to the Herald in August when we had bushfires simultaneously in both hemispheres. It rings true to this lay person.

Photo: A storm out to sea pictured from the roof of the Blanco Restaurant building in Roslyn St, Kings Cross on 19 November. No, I'm not saying this is a result of global warming, it just seemed a graphic illustration. A few minutes later the storm produced a classic anvil thunderhead, below, as the sunset peeked through to highlight buildings in the eastern suburbs:

PS: 702 Radio is reporting the last six months were Australia's hottest on record with an average temperature of 20.1 degrees since June, according to the National Climate Centre. I know weather is not climate but... what's the downside of building renewable power stations and a decent rail network, just in case?

Are pushy web ads self-defeating?

Reading my news on The Sydney Morning Herald website, I get mildly annoyed by those ads that jump out and obscure the content. They are already highly animated to draw your attention, but at least they usually have an X button to close them. But today's ad for GIO's car insurance breaks new ground. Not only does it jump out but its 'close' button jumps around and is invisible most of the time, so you are drawn into a computer-game style shooting match instead of reading the news.

I don't even own a car. GET OUT OF MY FACE!

Result: I hate GIO. And the SMH.

I know it's problematic making money from web ads but I think this tactic damages everyone. If it keeps up I will simply turn elsewhere for my news.

Seized drugs boomerang back to the street

Another police-linked corruption scandal has erupted in Victoria, this time over shenanigans in the Forensic unit, reported The Age yesterday. It seems its civilian staff have been 'recycling' confiscated drugs and selling weapons that should have been destroyed.

This is one of the nasty side-effects of prohibition, which artificially inflates the price of drugs to the point where the temptation becomes too much for some scions of the law when a lucrative offer is made by crooks flush with cash from drug profits.

The black market industry, being unregulated, also attracts guns and shooters as criminals defend turf and punish wrongdoers.

The Age reports that "seized drugs were recycled by the former drug squad and either sold or given to informers as a reward for information."

It can be inferred that not only were drugs being 'recycled' but evidence was also being destroyed: "The 15-month Ombudsman's investigation began after an internal police audit found drugs worth millions of dollars were missing from the centre. The review found drugs listed as destroyed had been kept and exhibits that should have been stored were destroyed."

Two men have so-far been charged. In this case honest cops have blown the whistle on the crooks, which is heartening. But without prohibition, these honest cops would be better employed fighting actual crimes that hurt victims instead of spending their time digging out the endless dirt on their own side of the fence.

The retail mix of Kings Cross, then and now

In cleaning out some comment spam this morning, I found an interesting list of main street businesses posted in 2004 when the strip was half-dead from the overtime and uncompleted street upgrade (Pictured here in September 04, pre-Smartpoles). If someone (me?) gets the time, a comparison today might be informative.

One consequence of the upgrade was killing the fruit barrow by moving it away from the station (where all those exiting the station passed it) into the mouth of Springfield Plaza (where only half the people exiting the station pass it). But Council didn't halve the rent and several operators have gone under. Now it sits there doing nothing but carry advertising and block the footpath. Does anyone have any ideas for an alternative use? It would make a great community access noticeboard... but Council bends over backwards to prevent THAT.

2004
17 closed
7 sex shop
7 fast food
7 Accommodation
6 Pub / Bar
6 internet
5 strip joint
4 Money exchange
4 convenience
4 chinese massage
4 Café
3 souvenir
3 photolab
3 chemist
2 Tobacconist
2 newsagent
2 Hairdresser
2 Drug addict facility
2 Bottle Shop
1 Tattoo
1 Tab
1 Phone Shop
1 Library
1 gym
1 Flower
1 Club
1 Brothel
1 Bank
1 Fruit Barrow

NIMBYS call for total blockade of Kings Cross

My comments in The City News on police blockades of Macleay Street on Friday and Saturday nights have drawn a number of angry emails from supporters of the scheme. In reply to my contention that blockading one area only shunts the noise to other residential areas, several of them have said the other areas should also be blockaded.

The comment below is a fair (and polite!) summary of their position:

My reply to Ms Westmeyer is also below.

On the City News site...

  1.   Rebecca Westmeyer said,

      I couldn’t agree more that Macleay St residents should not be enjoying noise-free nights “while others cop the overflow”. The fact of the matter is NO RESIDENTS should be made or expected to tolerate the level of noise, disruption and anti-social behaviour which we have for so long campaigned for individually and via various residents’ groups, ad nauseum. So the hoons and late night revelers will have to also be moved on from wherever their detour now takes them. And so it goes until they get the message that they are not wanted in anyone’s neighbourhood. Mr Gormly’s comment about “the city’s role as a destination for work and entertainment” is incomplete. Cities, and in particular this most densely populated area of Australia, is also for living which not unreasonably includes a decent night’s sleep. And ‘entertainment’ also means things other than too much alcohol, drugs and general sleaze which is about all Kings Cross offers can currently offer the local community. So the bottom line about traffic diversion is that it is merely a symptom of very much bigger, generic and pathologic issues to do with Kings Cross.

2. Michael Gormly said,

      Rebecca neatly sums up the NIMBY position, confirmed by other campaigners who have angrily emailed me — they want to effectively blockade Kings Cross (and maybe the whole city) from suburban visitors who come here for entertainment. They postulate a global city with no entertainment precinct, a dull, economically depressing prospect that horrifies the majority of us who intelligently moved here because we actually want to live in the entertainment precinct.

      The very definition of a city is “a destination for work and entertainment”. Just because a small minority of us choose to live in the city does not alter that. Sure, find ways to mitigate problems without killing the party, but to simply gate off the city is arrogant and absurd.

      The NIMBYs don’t agree with this, but that’s because their sense of self-entitlement knows no bounds. They seriously propose that taxpayers’ dollars be permanently sunk into a weekend blockade of the whole of Kings Cross (and wherever else the party goes) to exclude the very people who pay most of those tax dollars. I think the police have better things to do that serve privileged elites.

Ms Westmeyer faithfully uses the language this well organised minority have evolved to present its position.  Note the moral panic intrinsic to the portrayal of our party precinct  as "too much alcohol, drugs and general sleaze" -- it's even "pathologic". These people always protest the noise etc they are "expected" to tolerate. But no-one "expects" them to tolerate it -- they simply chose to move into an area that doesn't suit their tolerance levels. They could always have moved to Pymble, or even just a few streets away where it's not so noisy. It's a similar issue in Lane Cove where privileged waterfront landowners are trying to get fishing banned from the public wharves because of the noise.

Photo: The Macleay St blockade in place on the weekend of 22/11/09 at 12.36 am. Supporters advocate this for all roads into Kings Cross. What do you think?

PS (5 December) I have learned that Council is taking over the Macleay St closures for another three months, paying the same commercial operators they pay to protect the rich people in Walsh Bay at The Rocks. Aren't you glad your rates and taxes are being spent on behalf of privileged NIMBYs? I am disgusted -- it shows our over-wealthy society has lost all vestiges of egalitarianism and a fair go for all.

Ms Westmeyer will be pleased, though.

Drugs in prisons show underbelly of prohibition

A story by an ex-prisoner in today's Sydney Morning Herald explains in gory detail the reality of drug use in prisons, where an astounding 50% of prisoners have a history of injecting drug use.

While the story pleads for needle exchanges in jails, it could equally present an eloquent case against prohibition, both because people convicted of drug-related crimes would not be in there in the first place, and because it demonstrates that policing and control simply cannot stop drugs.

In fact, as the story shows, they increase the harms. The tale of one prisoner who bled to death trying to inject himself with an eyedropper is educational to say the least.

The mechanics of full cavity searches are discussed. If prohibitionists imagine a world where each day half the population searched the anal cavities of the other half, the question remains: who searches the searchers? It does not even work in a prison, let alone the wider world.

This is the unpleasant and ludicrous culmination of prohibition. Those people who say "just get rid of the drugs" need to explain how that would be done.

Let's avoid a moral panic about drug driving

Melbourne's Age newspaper published a letter of mine yesterday about the vexed question of drug driving. I was responding to a piece by Beth Wilson who puzzlingly wrote "The likelihood of impairment because of drugs may be three times that of alcohol."

This referred to statistical numbers, not actual danger, so (as my letter said) it only muddied the waters, effectively supporting the latest moral manic about drug driving being generated by state governments and the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre (NCPIC).

Why do I call it a moral panic? NCPIC's own evidence review into drug driving concluded in part that "a clear synthesis of results" was "unlikely". My own review of the evidence concludes that impairment from cannabis driving, for instance, is about the same as driving with .05% alcohol in your blood, which is legal. To throw the same enforcement resources and penalties at cannabis driving as are thrown at illegal drunk driving, then, is plainly wasteful and unjust.

While NCPIC positions itself as evidence-based, its own funding guidelines make it impossible for to provide any information that contradicts government policy. It contributes nothing to the body of scientific knowledge so effectively it is little more than a propaganda outlet. Instead of spending many millions each year to achieve this, the government could simply hire advertising agencies on an ad hoc basis and save themselves a packet.

The very public sacking of Professor Davis Nutt, the UK's chief drugs adviser, because he dared to say that the government's drugs policy was not supported by the evidence, created a media storm. Several of his colleagues have resigned in protest.

Interestingly, Professor Nutt's honorary position was not paid, and he spoke the truth. NCPIC on the other hand is well funded and cannot speak the whole truth. If you want to know what's going on, just follow the money.

ABC Radio reverts to ill-informed sensationalism

ABC Radio's World Today current affairs program departed from its usual high standard yesterday to run a tabloid-style piece blaming most of the problems of remote Aboriginal communities on cannabis use.

The piece is based on a 'study' by Alan Clough from James Cook University. Readers of this blog, or anyone abreast of the current evidence, will recognise the ludicrous basis of the piece from the following:

Cannabis use is now so extensive that psychotic episodes are becoming common place.

Really? This evidence-free assertion, if true, would turn the world of drug research on its head. Mr Clough is not a drug researcher, however, but works at the University's School of Indigenous Studies. It seems he has simply co-opted a few prohibitionist myths and worked them into his otherwise sensible research and scored a national headline.

No authoritative evidence review has yet been able to establish causality between cannabis and psychosis -- only "links" or "correlations" as used in this story. Even then, the numbers affected are so low -- a fraction of one per cent of cannabis users -- that the academic and media focus on this "link", compared to innumerable activities with far higher risk, is ludicrous. This type of issue is why six members of the UK's drugs advisory panel have now resigned -- because political panic merchants have ignored their considered advice about the relatively minimal dangers of cannabis.

That the article treats petrol-sniffing and cannabis use as roughly equivalent is also deeply ignorant and ignores any objective assessment of toxicity. It's similar to comparing rat poison with beer.

There is wealth of reliable evidence easily available online to support my statements. I blog hundreds of such links -- start with this or this; or this from the authors of the new, very well researched Marijuana is Safer book.

Mr Clough's attempt to link cannabis with violence is almost laughable, especially as it assumes withdrawal symptoms from "addiction" which is remarkable for something that is not physically addictive. Even the suicide rate and child sexual abuse were 'clearly linked' with cannabis use.

The piece is a political beat-up, the more so because it ignores the role of prohibition, firstly because it creates the very illicit market the story laments, and secondly because it makes cannabis easily available to minors in a totally unregulated market.

Worse, the story quotes Johnathon Nicholls of Wesley Uniting Care who blames a lack of policing, implying that more policing would somehow stop  cannabis use. Messrs Nicholls and Clough should come to Kings Cross where platoons of police with sniffer dogs make no difference at all.  Clough claims 70 per cent of remote Aborigines are using cannabis -- so what is he proposing? Arresting half the population? What could possibly go wrong?

Any 13-year-old smoking cannabis must be already suffering a deeper set of social and parental disadvantages. Cannabis use is only a symptom of these, not the cause as implied by this misleading story. These disadvantages existed long before cannabis was so popular, as Mr Clough must know.

This research could just as easily have linked chronic unemployment with problems among remote Indigenous people -- but drugs are a much better headline-maker.

The story is arguably racist as well, reading more like a 19th-century colonial report about the Pygmies than balanced discourse.

Shame on The World Today -- it's a stain on your usually excellent standard of journalism. Do a bit of basic research, please, before broadcasting such sensationalist tripe again. At least get a balancing view (Journalism 101). Same goes for Mr Clough.

Kings Cross glitz glamourised again

A lovely piece on Kings Cross appears in The Sydney Morning Herald today. Dugald Jellie writes of the suburb's starring role in the coming third series of Underbelly:

...a dissolute cast of strippers, gamblers, gunmen, hookers, dealers, bouncers, bagmen and boys in blue who ran the fabled red-light district in the days before the 1995 Wood Royal Commission.

This crossroads of debauchery – a place of shoot-outs, bright lights, ceaseless parties and all too many sordid nights to remember and mornings to forget – never has strayed too far from the headlines. Chk chk boom!

He quotes writer George Johnstone:

A cocky, callous place,” was how writer George Johnston long ago summarised this capital of deviance. He thought it an “awkward masquerade”; a strip with “misfitting foreigners about and odd eccentrics, [where] a raffishness has persisted, and it is better than Melbourne and better than the rest of Sydney”.

All of which strikes me as pretty true, and puts the lie to a few locals who write to newspapers claiming that The Cross used to be a "genteel" place "but now it's gotten worse" and the place should therefore be regulated into suburban blandness.

In fact the place is now tamer than it has been for nearly a century, even as Clover Moore, the Police and the State Government intensify their purse-mouthed War against Kings Cross with road closures, selective laws against licensed premises, sniffer dogs and anti-cluster rules designed to remove adult entertainment from the strip. Clover Moore in particular seems obsessed with turning it into "a mother-and-child-friendly shopping precinct" -- like every other suburb of Sydney. Don't these people realise there is a fringe of individuals and eccentrics who do not fit into suburbia, and we have a right to just one district that's different? Gentrification is death.

Pictured: Kings Cross last Saturday night – the testosterone swirls around Dugald Jellie’s "more bare legs than a man ought reasonably expect" as Sydney's youth in their thousands conduct their mating rituals. If only a few old locals hadn't lost their sense of humour and zest for life.

UK sacking backfires on prohibitionists

The British government must be regretting the sacking of its chief drugs adviser, Professor David Nutt. This heavy-handed attempt to gag the facts of the drugs debate has backfired -- an international media storm has broken out with most pieces mentioning Prof Nutt's argument that taking ecstasy is less dangerous than equestrian horse riding.

This is not the 'message' prohibitionists want spread about.  While they and the tabloid rags have been forced to retreat to a very suspect argument that Science is one thing and Policy is another, throwing the term 'evidence-based' out the window, the debate nevertheless rages on. A new piece in The Guardian not only collects a lot of evidence to show that tough-on-drugs policies (including alcohol) don't reduce drug use, but it also lists some unquestionable harms of prohibition.

Meanwhile the editor of Horse & Hound commented in a BBC News analysis that "Most people accept riding is a risk sport. The reward and the thrills more than make up for it."

A blog entry on the Release site picks this up, venturing into into previously unmentionable ground by stating that the risks of drugs, like horse-riding, can also be weighed up against their benefits, writing:

Every weekend millions of UK citizens perform the same kind of cost-benefit calculation in relation to their drug use. “Doing an E tonight? Yes, there are risks, but the reward and the thrills more than make up for it,” says the blog post.

This is heresy to prohibitionists who pretend that drugs have no benefits, or at least that the harms greatly outweigh them. How many times have you heard them say "Drugs ruin lives and destroy families"? Not for the vast, vast majority of users, they don't, any more than horse-riding, car driving or mountain-climbing.

Views from the top

Fabulous 360° panoramas on the panoramas.dk site are fun to view, from the top of Mt Everest to the top of Times Square.

Needle exchanges bring 27x cost-benefit

A clear and concise piece published in The Australian shows the tremendous success of needle and syringe programs (NSPs) in Australia which were yielding a 27-fold return in health, productivity and other gains. Gino Vumbaca, executive officer of the Australian National Council on Drugs, then calls for such services to be extended into prisons.

After pointing out that drug use is only a temporary part of most users’ lives and explaining the logic of protecting their health during this period,  he writes:

In particular prisons are a real blind spot in Australia’s response to HIV and hepatitis C. Prisons have over 30,000 people pass through their gates each year, often for less than 6 months, much higher hepatitis C rates than we see in the broader community, extremely risky injecting practices with at time dozens sharing the same old needle and syringe repeatedly, a high level of sexual assault and other violence and a large number of people with drug problems.

After leading the world for so long on preventing HIV, no prison in Australia has a needle and syringe program operating, or has even trialled one. This is despite such programs already operating in other countries including Spanish, Swiss and even Iranian prisons.

The opposition in Australia to a prison needle and syringe program generally focuses on two areas. First, just stop the drugs getting in. The reality is that there probably isn’t a prison in the world where drugs are unavailable. Huge numbers of people go in and out of prisons every day other than prisoners, such as staff, contractors, legal officials and visitors. Drugs are so easy to hide that it would require a full body cavity search every man, woman and child every time they entered a prison to find them.

His piece comes after the conservative-Christian-dominated group Drug-Free Australia issued a 'Parliamentary Briefing' attempting to persuade politicians that NSPs don't work and should be abolished. Mr Vumbaca's last paragraph above shows how unrealistic is any claim that prohibition can create a 'drug-free Australia'. If they can't keep drugs out of prisons, imagine trying to keep them out of a whole continent, and imagine the oppressive police state we would all be suffering and paying for during the attempt.

I'm pretty clear which side of the argument Jesus would have backed.

UK government sacks drugs advisor

A few minutes after writing the post below which mentions the UK's Professor David Nutt, I learned that the government had sacked him as head of their scientific advisory panel on drugs.

They could not rebut his findings that some illicit drugs are less harmful than the legal ones, so they simply removed him, acting more like the Stasi or the Gestapo than representatives in a mature democracy.

The move, which followed calls in the shockjock press for the sacking, shows that only 'yesmen' can safely offer advice to the government. Inevitably such advice will often be flawed and decisions based on it will be bad for the country. This is one of the intrinsic weaknesses of totalitarian states and a key reason they fail.

Truth is toxic to ideologues, it seems, and this corruption of democracy will cause far more harm than any drug -- as one Guardian columnist writes.

The news is truly saddening, the action disgusting and its perpetrators guilty of a gross abuse of power.

"Professor Nutt clashed with Jacqui Smith when she was home secretary after he compared the 100 deaths a year from horseriding with the 30 deaths a year linked to ecstasy," reports The Guardian.

That journal also roasted the current home secretary in an editorial, quoting Professor Nutt:

"Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth," he argued. "Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively."

Go figure. Shooting the messenger does not change the truth.

PS (2 Nov): Two of Professor Nutt’s colleagues have reportedly resigned from the Advisory Panel in protest at the sacking, and more may leave. One of them is Dr Les King, a respected chemist and former head of the Drugs Intelligence Unit in the Forensic Science Service, who said: "Academics, medics and others are going to ask themselves if they want to serve on these agencies without payment, on their own time and expense, when the advice that they produce is routinely ignored."


The Independent lays out the small political storm triggered by the sacking.

Even Auntie ABC is on this one, reporting that the Scientists "have joined the criticism of a government accused of ignoring sound science in favour of tabloid driven myth."

Warning: The same danger is present in NSW, with a politically desperate government inclined to opportunism and appointing 'yesmen', while columnist Miranda Devine has called for the sacking of Dr Alex Wodak who campaigns for rational drug policy here.

PS (5 November): The Guardian has weighed in, roasting hypocritical politicians in an editorial:

Half the government, as well as the Conservative leader and three US presidents in a row, have used drugs in their own youth, and yet punitive laws continue to threaten others who do the same with prison...

The politicians from the main parties are thus united in continuing to talk rot. It is hardly surprising that the experts feel a need to make themselves heard – and do so in rather blunt terms.

Notably none of the usual prohibitionists nor the UK government have challenged the advisory panel's evidence and conclusions. The only remaining opposition comes from people with closed minds who deny fact in order to continue an unwinnable war. By Arthur Miller's definition these people are not even idealogues because that would require the 'principled denial of fact'. But hypocrites are not principled, so what does that make them?

Cannabis/schizophrenia link 'minimal' -- UK study

While we are saturated with assertions that cannabis causes psychotic mental illness, prohibitionists always act as if the evidence is concrete and stay very quiet about the very small numbers of users who actually have the disease.

And the numbers are very small. A new UK study looked at it the other way around -- How many people would you have to prevent from using cannabis to prevent one case of Schizophrenia?

The study found it would be necessary to stop 2800 heavy cannabis users in young men and over 5000 heavy cannabis users in young women to prevent a single case of schizophrenia. Among light cannabis users, those numbers rise to over 10,000 young men and nearly 30,000 young women to prevent one case of schizophrenia.

This shows how exaggerated is the moral panic on this subject, when many other activities acceptable to society carry FAR higher risks*. Of course the study stops short of describing the deeper fallacy in prohibitionist ideology -- where is the evidence that prohibition prevents anyone from using cannabis, let alone the millions that might be required to significantly reduce schizophrenia?

Professor David Nutt, who heads the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, also says cannabis does not cause major health problems and repeats his claim that ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse.

The UK government ignored the advice of the ACMD and upgraded cannabis into the Class B category, attracting higher penalties, in a move that Professor Nutt described as "devaluing scientific research". The Liberal Western Australian Government has just made a similar move, also against the advice of its own research  body. In both places, cannabis use had reduced during the period the drug was subject to lighter penalties.

WA brought its crackdown just as Dr Norm Stamper was in the state with his message of legal regulation. He reports in the Huffington Post on the rude reception he met in Parliament, the refusal to listen to evidence and the political paranoia of the lawmakers.

Check the letter below from one of the WA Liberal politicians. Every statement in it is demonstrably wrong. Truly, as Arthur Miller said, ideology is "the principled denial of fact".


Reply from WA politician Hon Nick Goiran MLC to a letter re repeal of the Cannabis Control Act 2003.


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21 October 2009

Dear Mr X

CANNABIS CONTROL ACT 2OO3

Thank you for your letter regarding Premier Colin Barnett's announcement to introduce legislation to repeal the Cannabis Control Act 2003.

The State Government recognises that illicit drug use is a significant problem which affects the lives of users, their families, friends and the wider WA community and cannabis-related legislation is sending a clear anti-drugs message to the community.

Research shows that cannabis use can lead to a mass of health and mental health problems including respiratory problems and cancer risk, abnormalities in reproductive functioning and schizophrenia.
Drugs are an insidious threat to the fabric of our society. l have personally seen how people are enslaved, threatened and exploited because of drug debts and addiction. Illegal drugs ruin lives, shatter families and can create a downfall on our community foundation. We should seek to protect our fellow West Australians and these initiatives will crackdown on the plague of illicit drugs in our State.

From what you have written, you support a policy of 'Harm Minimisation'- a strategy to ameliorate the adverse consequences of drug use while drug use continues. I firmly believe that harm minimisation strategies communicate a message condoning drug use, a message I do not espouse. Furthermore, in my view harm minimisation strategies have been an abject failure.

Accordingly, l strongly support the Premier's announcement and the use of criminal law to deter drug use and look forward to voting in favour of the proposed legislation.

Yours sincerely

Hon Nick Goiran MLC

Member for the South Metropolitan Region

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* Activities which carry FAR higher risks than using cannabis: Playing football (especially Gridiron); mountain-climbing; night yacht racing; rock fishing; riding a pushbike or motorbike; flying ultralight aircraft etc etc.