ALMOST five per cent of Canberra's 27,800 secondary students, some as young as 12 years, have admitted using needles to inject heroin or cocaine, a survey has revealed. Described as "frightening" by ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, the survey, released for the first time today, shows that more than half of all students admitted using illicit drugs. At least 15 per cent of students sampled said they had used illicit drugs the previous week and two per cent admitted to sharing needles. [continues 419 words]
Almost 5 per cent of Canberra's 27,800 secondary students, some as young as 12, have admitted in a Health Department survey to using needles to inject heroin or cocaine. At least 15 per cent of students sampled said they had used illicit drugs the previous week and 2 per cent admitted to sharing needles. The survey, issued yesterday by Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, shows that more than half of all Canberra high-school students admitted using illicit drugs. Close to a third of all students had used cannabis, one in four had tried inhalants, 10 per cent tranquillisers and 14 per cent other illicit drugs: hallucinogens (7.1 per cent), amphetamines (7.7 per cent), ecstasy (4.6 percent), cocaine (4.7 per cent), heroin (4.1 per cent) and steroids (3.6 per cent). [continues 378 words]
Opposition Leader Gary Humphries has described as "foolish" delays in considering a heroin trial in the ACT until a study had been carried out into a self-injecting clinic in Sydney. Mr Humphries visited the clinic on Friday, and said he found that very little of the clinic's services would have any relevance to a heroin trial. "I think the Government is foolish and copping out to link a heroin trial with a supervised injecting place in Sydney," he said. [continues 148 words]
Heroin Is On The Wane And Police Drug Strategies Are Working. Last weekend AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty delivered some of the best news on drugs for a decade, that AFP tactics were beginning to show results, with lower volumes of heroin and falling overdose rates. It is too early yet to see if the fall is just a short term phenomenon or a marketing ploy by pushers and dealers. If sustained, though, it represents a shift in the illicit drugs industry, that has hardly taken a backward step in decades. It would be a triumph for Australia's national police agency. [continues 1152 words]
AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty has spoken out frankly for the first time since his appointment in April about the threat to Australia from organised Asian crime syndicates. Mr Keelty said the AFP was tackling the syndicates on their own turf before the drugs got into the country. Agents were working in isolated locations and putting their lives at risk in poor and remote conditions. "They are really at the front line," he said. "Asia is flooded with methamphetamines and if we don't have a relationship with authorities [in Asia] we are not going to be able to get on top of shipments in these countries." [continues 318 words]
SOME drug dealers have resorted to lacing heroin with Gravox or gyprock as they contend with the biggest collapse in the heroin market in more than a decade. The acute shortage has created widespread disorder among Canberra's drug-using community and raised fears by health workers about the impact on the already poor health of many addicted heroin users. They fear outbreaks of violence as dealers battle each other over scarce supplies, and supplies of cheap cocaine arriving on Canberra's streets at half the price of heroin. [continues 182 words]
Cocaine has emerged as a serious challenger to heroin in NSW and it is knocking at the door of the ACT. A chronic shortage of heroin supplies across Australia has sent heroin prices in the ACT soaring to as much as $400 for half a gram. Cocaine is being made available at half the price for $400 a gram. Five years ago, heroin in Sydney was selling for as little as $30 a gram. The reasons behind the decline of heroin and rise of cocaine are not clear. Some see a deliberate marketing bid to create a new breed of cocaine addicts. Others blame droughts in the poppy-growing areas of the Golden Triangle. Perhaps it is due to the massive drug busts last year by the Australian Federal Police and Australian Customs Service. [continues 808 words]
A.C.T. CHIEF Minister Kate Carnell has warned she will seek an early election within four weeks if the ACT becomes ungovernable due to the financial deadlock over a self-injecting clinic. "The Government is prepared to go to an election . . .," Mrs Carnell told the Canberra Sunday Times. "It is not our preferred option because we would like to see everybody get on with Government." Mrs Carnell said she had already taken the unprecedented step of giving a briefing of the situation on Friday to the federal Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government, Ian Macdonald. [continues 461 words]
CANNABIS use by teenagers in Canberra is at chronic levels, forcing many drug-affected children out of the education system and leading to family breakdowns, according to Independent MLA Dave Rugendyke. Mr Rugendyke and his colleague, Independent Paul Osborne, say the ACT must urgently review its ``soft'' cannabis laws, that provide $100 on-the-spot fines for possession of small amounts for personal use. They say cannabis can create a drug-induced psychosis and long-term use can lead to personality disorders, depression, paranoia and criminal behaviour. [continues 400 words]
Heroin addicts facing their first and second offences will be diverted from Canberra's courts for rehabilitation and treatment as authorities seek ways to combat worsening drug-related illness and crime. The scheme will steer early offenders from the criminal-justice system but those who are re-arrested could face the courts later on for repeated offences of self-injecting a prohibited substance, crimes not currently enforced as police target drug dealers and traffickers. ACT Chief Police Officer Bill Stoll said last night the drug diversion scheme had been developed over the past six months as part of the National Drug Strategy, by the Australian Federal Police, Director of Public Prosecutions and the Departments of Health and of Justice and Community Safety. [continues 347 words]
Australian Federal Police officers would refuse any orders to ignore drug-users going into so-called safe injecting clinics to shoot up, the AFP Association warned last night. The association threatened that police would ignore orders to turn a blind eye to heroin use and would enter any 'shooting gallery' in Canberra to arrest those carrying heroin. Anyone who tried to stop them carrying out their duties would be arrested for hindering police, even other police. The association's ACT branch secretary, Scott Rowell, said officers would not obey directives to 'ignore their duty' and they would 'uphold the law' if a shooting gallery went ahead in the ACT. [continues 326 words]
A new approach to reducing the causes of youth crime and drug abuse - based on community involvement - is the centrepiece of a study by the Australian Institute of Criminology. The author of the institute's latest Trends and Issues paper, John Toumbourou, a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Adolescent Health, has given the first assessment of a new approach known as 'Communities That Care', or CTC. The centre is conducting Australia's first large-scale study to measure the factors leading to adolescents becoming involved in crime and drugs. [continues 291 words]
Attempts to 'recriminalise' cannabis use in Canberra was a backward step that would clog the courts with minor offences, Justice Minister Gary Humphries said last night. He was responding to moves by Independent MLA Dave Rugendyke to repeal seven-year-old laws that provide on-the-spot fines for minor cannabis use. He intends to replace them with harsher penalties, leaving police a cautioning option. Mr Rugendyke warned of serious health risks and evidence of psychotic illness from recreational use of the so-called 'soft drug'. [continues 467 words]
Canberra's system of on-the-spot fines for cannabis offences was impossible to enforce with most offenders simply ignoring them, Independent MLA Dave Rugendyke said yesterday. Failure to pay the fines had been allowed to go unchecked; no warrants were issued by police or the courts to fine defaulters and no statistics were publicly available. Mr Rugendyke - a former police officer - said he intended to introduce his own legislation in the Legislative Assembly later this month seeking to 'recriminalise' cannabis offences. [continues 419 words]
Australian schools were wrong to expel students for using illicit drugs, the chief executive of the Australian Drug Foundation, Bill Stronach, said yesterday. Mr Stronach blamed the adoption of a "zero tolerance" philosophy, used in the United States to stamp out petty crime, for the widespread practice of expelling students caught using drugs. He gave the foundation's backing for a safe-injecting room to be built in Canberra, saying the health benefits outweighed other concerns. The ACT Government announced plans this week for a safe-injecting clinic in Civic by the end of 1999 with ACT Labor Party support. [continues 393 words]
Peter Clack looks at the war against heroin that the community is losing and at the lives the drug is claiming. HAVE we had the first heroin death for 1999 yet? If not, it won't be long. Someone, somewhere, will get a batch of heroin that is too pure and will die a dreadful and lonely death in a public toilet, a back alley or on a park bench. Ambulance paramedics have already treated five overdose victims so far this month in Canberra. [continues 1233 words]
Canberra might yet get a self-injecting room in Civic for drug users, despite strong political opposition, as ACT Health Minister Michael Moore works behind the scenes to find support. Mr Moore said last week he was disappointed by the stance taken by Greens MLA Kerrie Tucker, who wants the clinic to be part of a wider drug strategy. Combined with only lukewarm support from the Labor Opposition, Mr Moore said he felt the plan should be withdrawn. "It has been put on the back burner but it is definitely not off the agenda," a spokeswoman for Mr Moore said yesterday. [continues 223 words]
A five-fold jump in the number of discarded hypodermic syringes found each month by workers at the Hume recycling plant has raised fears of needle-stick injuries and infection with Hepatitis B. The firm operating the 12 trucks in Canberra and Queanbeyan which empty recycling bins, Sita-BFI Pty Ltd, said workers who hand-sorted through the material had noticed the rise from 50 needles to 250 a month over recent months. Most of the increase appeared to be from recycling bins at unit complexes, where plastic bags containing syringes, swabs and other injecting aids were often dumped into recycling bins. [continues 289 words]
Tucker labels Moore's three hours for public discussion a 'token gesture' ACT Health Minister Michael Moore's push for his controversial self-injecting clinic for Canberra's drug users is to be allowed only three hours for public debate. The proposed clinic - one of the most controversial moves in recent years to try to stem heroin overdoses and deaths in Canberra - has split the ACT Legislative Assembly. Mr Moore has set aside the night of February 9 for a panel of experts he says represents "broad community views" to speak on the issue and to invite participation from the floor. [continues 330 words]
A drug similar to cannabis and widely used in Africa as a stimulant and a narcotic, khat, is flooding into Australia, Customs sources report. The cannabis-like drug induces a stupor in small amounts, but can lead to rages and unpredictable violence in larger doses. It is being allowed into Australia on permits, mostly to African nationals living in Australia. But although each permit was for a 5kg amount, many hundreds of kilograms were coming through the barriers, the sources said. [continues 75 words]
