The number of people in US prisons and jails last year topped 2 million for the first time, driven by get-tough sentencing policies that mandate long terms for drug offenders and other criminals, the US government reported yesterday. The federal government accounted for more inmates than any state, with almost 162,000, according to a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, part of the Justice Department. That number includes the transfer of about 8900 District of Columbia prisoners to the federal system. [continues 373 words]
At least the hecklers in Ryan are polite. When the Federal Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, and the Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, were ambushed by the pro-marijuana candidate, Nigel Freemarijuana, and his supporters at a function at a local primary school in Ryan yesterday, it could have turned very ugly very quickly. Armed with placards, Freemarijuana and about 50 supporters heckled the Opposition Leader from the party's campaign bus known as the cannabus parked outside the school ground. While Freemarijuana, the first candidate to be endorsed by the newly registered Help End Marijuana Prohibition party, or HEMP, was eventually ejected from the school grounds for lecturing a group of students about drug culture, his supporters were keen to ask Beazley questions and listen to his answers. [continues 151 words]
The Federal Court has found for the first time that addiction or drug dependency is a legally recognised disability in a ruling that will have major implications for employers and service providers. The court ruling means companies that refuse to hire potential employees or sack people because they are drug-dependent could breach the federal Disability Discrimination Act and be liable for damages. Denying a person membership of a club or sporting organisation or refusing to rent him or her a property because the person is drug-dependent could also be unlawful. [continues 375 words]
Political parties, suggests Christopher Pearson, need to address South Australia's growing drug problem. One of the bleaker features of living in a mendicant State is the servile attitude that Parliament - in this case the South Australian Legislative Council - takes towards organised crime. That august body has just voted to disallow a Government-sponsored regulation which would have reduced the number of marijuana plants its citizens can grow, if not with impunity then at most with a $150 misdemeanour fine, from 10 to three. [continues 645 words]
In her article of June 23, Jan Wade quoted some of the Macfarlane Burnet Centre's research on illicit drug use and driving to support her argument that tougher law enforcement is needed to combat drug problems. It is true that many of the heroin users we interviewed drove to buy their drugs, and some routinely consumed heroin before driving away. Unfortunately, Mrs Wade ignored our less convenient findings, including (from a review of the scientitic literature) that the links between illicit drug use and increased road accident risk are far from clear-cut. Some of the best local research has been conducted by Professor Olaf Drummer (Victorian Insitute of Forensic Medicine), who found that opiate users were not significantly more likely to be culpable in fatal accidents than non-users (unless they had also recently consumed alcohol). For cannabis users the likelihood of culpability was actually slightly lower than for drug-free drivers, but not significantly so. [continues 160 words]
I was surprised that you published Larry Collins' biased, unbalanced and highly anecdotal article on Dutch drug policy ("Drug rules, OK?", AFR Review, May 14). An objective assessment of these policies demands a comparison of different types of drug policies and their outcomes. The lack of comparison and a substantial number of factual errors in this article require a response. * The cited increase in cannabis use is also present in other European countries, therefore factors other than Dutch drug policy are obviously relevant. In fact, figures of cannabis use in, for example, the United States are substantially higher than those in the Netherlands. [continues 264 words]
In eight weeks my business has been broken into "successfully" twice and vandalised in attempted break-ins almost every weekend. The consensus among the insurance and police folk is that the offenders were "druggies" looking for a hundred dollars or so for their next fix. These break-ins have resulted in bills of about $3,000 for glass and security system repairs and $3,000 to replace a notebook computer - - with tens of thousands of dollars worth of lost information not recoverable under insurance. [continues 73 words]
