I think FLORIDA TODAY should interview the people who voted for Amendment 2, to legalize medical marijuana, because we are the ones who have to suffer day in and day out with chronic pain. We're the ones whose bodies are being destroyed by pharmaceutical chemicals. Unfortunately, because I suffer from severe side effects of all pain, anxiety, and depression medications allowed by law, I have nothing to relieve my chronic pain from Fibromyalgia, with anxiety and depression being two of the symptoms of Fibromyalgia, along with disk degeneration, and arthritis. I'd gladly open up my medical records of the last 16 years so people could see what the pharmaceutical chemicals have done for me. [continues 97 words]
The NSW Police Commissioner, Mr Peter Ryan, says Australia is losing the war on drugs - a contradiction of the Prime Minister's upbeat assessment that law enforcement measures are "already paying off". Mr Ryan said that despite large heroin seizures in the past 18 months there was a rise in cocaine use, and an "enormous spread" of amphetamines. "I think we are [losing the war], and so is every other country. We're not winning; that is the point." Mr Howard and senior Federal ministers yesterday reinforced their opposition to proposals for a heroin trial, which was supported for the first time on Wednesday by the National Crime Authority. [continues 464 words]
Two Years After The Historic NSW Drug Summit, First-Time Heroin Users Are Younger Than Ever And Health Authorities Report A Rise In People Injecting Drugs. The Premier said yesterday that future governments would need to spend more on drug treatment and education than his four-year commitment of $176 million, as a result of the Drug Summit, in May 1999. In the 1960s and '70s, average first-time heroin users were aged 27. They are now 17, notes Dr Alex Wodak, the director of alcohol and drug services at St Vincent's Hospital. [continues 466 words]
The Premier has given his strongest indication that NSW will allow the medical use of cannabis to relieve acute pain, with patients able to grow up to five marijuana plants without fear of prosecution. Mr Carr yesterday said he was at odds with a United States Supreme Court ruling on Monday that federal law did not recognise medical benefits from cannabis. He said there was evidence that it "could well work". "If someone is racked with pain as they receive chemotherapy for cancer and if cannabis offers relief, I would want that relief to be available." [continues 257 words]
Mobile phones have become the preferred tools of trade for drug dealers, resulting in a 275 per cent jump in robberies in the past three years, the theft of 2,000 phones a month and black-market dealings. The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research has revealed that thefts of mobile phones, most commonly from parked cars, doubled between October 1997 and last December, with 83,598 stolen in that period.External linkRead the report Most phones were stolen from vehicles (38 per cent). Home break-ins accounted for 11 per cent and 7 per cent were stolen from their owners. [continues 261 words]
International tourists, backpackers and pensioners are feeling the cold, wet nose of the law as police use Olympic sniffer dogs as their latest drug-detection weapon. In the past two months drug dogs have searched Sydney's Oxford Street hotels and dance clubs, been used in street sweeps in Newtown, Bondi, Coogee and Byron Bay and worked at the Happy Valley dance party in Appin, south-west of Sydney. In the latest use of the labradors in Byron Bay two weeks ago, 55 people were arrested and 30 cautioned for possessing small amounts of cannabis. [continues 245 words]
One hundred extra police are expected to be moved into Sydney's south-west to tackle drug-related lawlessness when the Carr Government reverses the police chief's downgrading of Cabramatta police station. Eighteen months after Mr Peter Ryan reduced Cabramatta's claim on senior police positions, the Premier is expected within three weeks to add the extra police to the Greater Hume command. Mr Carr yesterday foreshadowed extra powers for Cabramatta police. The Government has already given them the right to disperse groups of three or more, to search for knives and, as of yesterday, to take from the streets drug-affected people in the same way police can remove disorderly drunks. [continues 412 words]
A new law allowing police to move drug users off the streets and put them "out of sight" will be put to work in Cabramatta today, the area's police chief says. As the failure of police to clean up Cabramatta's heroin problem continues, the Premier said yesterday he would outline a new strategy for the area next month. Assistant Commissioner Clive Small said the changes to the Intoxicated Persons Act would allow the police to remove from the streets people affected byillicit drugs and drunks. [continues 419 words]
Migrants with criminal histories in their country of origin were responsible for drug and violence problems in Cabramatta and Lakemba, the Premier said yesterday. Mr Carr, who has asked the Police Commissioner, Mr Peter Ryan, to review Cabramatta's policing strategies, called yesterday for police, business leaders and the community to work together to solve Cabramatta's problems. "There are some people on the fringes of that community who've got a criminal history in their own country and [are] replicating in Australia some of the practices they've bought with them," Mr Carr told ABC radio. [continues 448 words]
Drug treatment places should be doubled in Sydney's south-west but a shortage of trained staff was affecting expansion plans, the State's chief health officer, Dr Andrew Wilson, said yesterday. He told a parliamentary inquiry into Cabramatta's police resources that there had been only a small increase in treatment places in south-western Sydney since the 1999 Drug Summit. Dr Wilson said there were at least 300 to 400 drug-dependent residents of Cabramatta, with statistics showing that 15 per cent of NSW's 400 overdose deaths a year occurred within a four-kilometre radius of the suburb. [continues 282 words]
Assistant Commissioner Clive Small yesterday called for greater police powers to clear drug users from the streets of Cabramatta. Mr Small, commander of the Greater Hume region, which covers Cabramatta, told the parliamentary inquiry he was discussing with the Police Minister, Mr Whelan, options to remove drug users because there was no such provision under current laws. "It's a very difficult situation and we need some new initiatives to deal with what I call the residue of the drug problem," he said. [continues 275 words]
Police have declared war on Cabramatta's drug addicts, planning to use the full weight of the law to charge and jail people who drop syringes and users who openly inject heroin. The new Hume regional commander, Assistant Commissioner Clive Small, said an action plan for the area covering suburbs such as Cabramatta, Blacktown, Fairfield and Liverpool committed police to tackling drugs as the "number one priority" and recognised the level of community concern. Under the plan, people who possess and supply drugs in public places or discard needles will be charged and could be jailed if they have also been charged with other offences or were caught drug-taking while on parole. [continues 455 words]
The Northern Territory's ruling Country Liberal Party has called on the Territory Government to extend controversial mandatory sentencing to include drug traffickers. The party's annual conference at the weekend supported mandatory minimum prison terms for drug trafficking as well as for property offences. The director of the Northern Territory Aboriginal Legal Aid Service, Mr Gordon Renouf, said the proposal appeared to be "political window-dressing", given the Territory already had laws requiring mandatory prison terms for serious offences such as drug trafficking. [continues 459 words]
A Lismore psychologist was charged last night with allowing his garage to be used as an illegal heroin injecting room. Bruce Dufficy, 47, is believed to be only the second person charged in relation to an illegal "shooting gallery" following the arrest in May last year of a Kings Cross clergyman, the Rev Ray Richmond, who opened the Tolerance Room at the Wayside Chapel. The charge against Mr Richmond was subsequently dropped. Dufficy was charged with advertising or holding out that his Conway Street premises were available for the administration of prohibited drugs after he was reported in yesterday's Lismore Northern Starnewspaper as saying he knew it was illegal but wanted to help addicts who had been using his garage to inject drugs. [continues 176 words]
The State Government is searching for a "silver bullet" for the next stage of its drug reform platform that will focus on prevention in schools and early intervention programs for families. The Special Minister of State, Mr Della Bosca, said the challenge for the Government after last year's Drug Summit was to find the policies which minimised the number of people using drugs and to find ways to stop experimental users becoming addicts. "I think the silver bullet in this debate, the policy mix we're still looking for, the issue we're going to work hard over the next few years, is to find a way in which we can put in place a full preventative strategy," Mr Della Bosca told the ALP's State conference yesterday. [continues 331 words]
The State Government is set to repeal the section of the NSW Casino Control Authority's charter that charges the gaming watchdog with promoting the State's "tourism, employment and general economic development". The objective has "compromised" the authority, because it conflicts with another objective to ensure that the management and operation of Sydney's Star City casino is "free of criminal influence and exploitation", according to an anti-gambling spokesman, the Rev Tim Costello. Senior government sources said a Cabinet minute being finalised by the Minister for Gaming, Mr Face, would be taken to Cabinet in "a matter of weeks" to delete the economic promotion function. [continues 434 words]
The Minister for Gaming, Mr Face, will ask the chairwoman of the NSW Casino Control Authority to explain her "disturbing" remarks that she was "sorry" a high-roller gambler and heroin dealer was banned from the Sydney Harbour Casino. A spokesman for Mr Face said the minister was surprised to hear Ms Kaye Loder tell the ABC's Four Cornerson Monday night that she was "sorry to see the money go out of NSW" after the Police Commissioner, Mr Peter Ryan, banned high-roller Duong Van Ia from the casino in September 1997. [continues 279 words]
NSW prisoners will be guinea pigs in the first Australian jail trials of radical drug treatments aimed at breaking the cycle of addiction and crime. The three clinical trials of naltrexone, buprenorphine and the long-lasting methadone replacement drug, LAAM, will involve 650 prisoners over the next few years. The trial of naltrexone, which blocks the effects of opiates such as heroin, will run for two years from July for 450 prisoners at Parklea Correctional Centre, near Blacktown. Fifty inmates at Lithgow Correctional Centre will from next year trial the use of LAAM, a drug that appears to last twice as long as methadone and which the State Government said could eventually remove the need for daily methadone dosing of many prisoners. About 800 of the State's 7,400 prisoners are now on a methadone program. [continues 341 words]
Australia's first Drug Court has slashed the rate of repeat offenders but poorly supervised urine-testing procedures mean there is no way of analysing the number of people who remain drug-free. A review of the first year of the Drug Court, based at Parramatta Court, has found two-thirds of the 224 drug-addicted offenders remained on the program and only 13 per cent were sentenced to new offences. The director of the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Dr Don Weatherburn, said of his review: "That might not sound too good but it's actually very good for a group of recidivist property offenders addicted to heroin ... about 60 per cent of people in jail for property offences will return to jail within two years." [continues 395 words]
A Newcastle public hospital said yesterday that it had been forced to seek private-sector partners to overcome a bed and funding shortage, in a move branded by staff as the privatisation of health services. The announcement came as doctors, nurses and ancillary staff at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital launched a campaign advising "that we are no longer able to provide the level of care needed by the Newcastle and Hunter community". The hospital, owned by the Sisters of Mercy and operated as a public facility with $50 million annual funding from the State Government, is the main provider of medical drug and alcohol detoxification services, cancer treatment and palliative care for a population of 500,000 people. [continues 425 words]
