The drug that dragged down Harriet Wran from a life of private schools and luxury apartments has no respect for social class or status. Grinspoon lead singer Phil Jamieson became withdrawn and paranoid, stealing money from his band to feed his daily addiction. Two-time world surfing champion Tom Carroll recently described how ice made him "completely manic", saying: "It was killing me from the inside out." "No one is immune," says drugs expert Rebecca McKetin. "We like to think problems happen to other people but it could happen to us or people like us." [continues 588 words]
CHILDREN with drug and alcohol addictions will "slip through the net" when the state's only residential rehabilitation program for young teenagers closes this month because of a lack of funds. The state-appointed child safety commissioner has called on the Government to help save the program, in Melbourne's east, after donations dried up amid the global financial crisis and outpouring of aid to bushfire victims. Commissioner Bernie Geary, who advises the Government on the safety and wellbeing of children, said that unless the Government responded to the need of the Tandana Place program for 12 to 20-year-olds, vulnerable young people would "slip through the net". "They are the young people we find in prisons and abject and long-term homelessness," he said. "It has a ripple effect, it affects broader families. The community needs places like Tandana and it's in all our interests that it continues. [continues 474 words]
The use of random drug tests at several private schools has dramatically cut drug usage among students, say principals. But a drug agency says drugs remain a problem among young people and the lack of positive tests might mean students were adept at confounding the results. Several private schools using random urine tests on students who have a history of taking illicit drugs claim to have recorded almost no positive results in up to four years of testing. The headmaster of St Andrew's Cathedral School, Phillip Heath, said up to 10 students had been subject to random tests in the past four years and none had returned a positive. [continues 394 words]
