$6m Funding a Big Step for Miles Family WITHIN minutes of the State Government announcing a $6 million medicinal cannabis trial this week, Blue Mountain Heights mother Rhonda Miles registered her son for the program which could save his life. Lachlan Miles, 16, has severe drug-resistant epilepsy which he has battled for years and dramatically changed the quick-witted teenager's life. He is now waiting to learn if he earned one of 30 spots on a clinical trial set to start by the end of the year. [continues 304 words]
THE establishment of a national regulator to supervise and allow Australian farmers to grow medicinal cannabis has passed the Senate, but hurdles remain to making the drug legal for medical purposes. The Turnbull government bill was passed in the Senate yesterday, with bipartisan support, to allow patients to access medicinal cannabis products produced and grown in Australia. Health Minister Sussan Ley described the new laws as the "missing piece" for patients, but Greens leader Richard Di Natale said there was still work to be done. [continues 86 words]
GOOD on you, Annastacia, for giving the green light for a medicinal cannabis trial. I hope it doesn't take donkey's years to allow it. I don't have anyone in my family who needs it for epilepsy but I could sure use it for arthritic pain. At my age I'm not likely to become a junkie and would it really matter if I did? Quality of life is the most precious of one's life and everyone deserves it. Joan Dunlop, Toowoomba [end]
If you do not use it, then you cannot abuse it -- that is the in-your-face view of cannabis as detailed this week in Toowoomba by a leading brain expert. Dr John Anderson is a consultant psychophysiologist based in Sydney. He told students in Toowoomba this week that cannabis was not a soft, recreational drug that should be legitimised. He also emphasised that while most people knew of the cancer-causing effects of tabacco, cannabis was 50-70% cent more carcinogenic. [continues 234 words]
EVERY week reports surface that used syringes are found in parks, walkways, or around flats after being discarded by junkies and hopheads -- so-called welfare and do-gooding groups treat addicts as some kind of poor misguided people looking for some kind of release from so-called pressures and stress. Thanks to these Michael Moore look-alikes the numbers of addicts increases weekly and besides robberies, we have young girls prostituting themselves to buy products that are illegal. And no matter how rose tinted the glasses are, when you look closely, addicts are criminals, using prohibited drugs. Athletes caught using drugs get punished. Why not junkies? Duffy - --- Checked-by: Mike Gogulski [end]
Julie Mason's Aug. 27 Page One article, "Study questions DARE program," highlighted exactly what is wrong with our current approach to the drug problem. While it is patently obvious that the war on drugs is a complete and expensive failure, our elected officials continue to promote empty but "politically safe" programs over more effective strategies. The truth is that DARE (while popular with politicians, police and some parents) fails to produce results. Studies of other cities have shown this; we now have proof that it is true even in our town. [continues 291 words]
WITH reference to the front page article in The Chronicle of August 25, I cannot believe there should be a "Drug dilemma" when the obvious answers to the heroin problem is withdrawal of the free needle and syringe scheme, which never should have been introduced. It would have been unthinkable, by those men (of high ideals) that we buried in New Guinea, that the people, who they gave their lives to protect, would be issuing needles and syringes to a minority group as an encouragement for continuation of their lethal habit. In conjunction with the withdrawal of that free needle scheme, there could be an offer of detoxification treatment -nothing else. J. M. OHLIN Latham - --- Checked-by: Richard Lake [end]
THE LEGISLATIVE Assembly Speaker, Greg Cornwell, was 100 per cent correct when he said, in the article "The drug dilemma" (The Chronicle, August 25): "I don't believe we've even started to fight". And anti-corruption Royal Commissioner Athol Moffitt's reported statement in the same article that harm minimisation is a defeatist strategy is also 100 per cent correct. The community is not stupid, and it knows full well that the message "don't take drugs" will not be observed by all. It wasn't with tobacco so why would it with heroin or cannabis etc? [continues 187 words]
AS THE first anniversary of John Howard's scuppering of the ACT heroin trial passed last week, debate continued to rage about how best to tackle a drug problem that seems to be worsening. With the number of reported overdoses rising (up from eight fatal cases to 10 in the ACT in the last financial year) and growing police concerns about the increased availability and purity of heroin on Canberra's streets (recent seizures have included heroin up to 85 per cent pure), most agree that current policies are not working. [continues 781 words]
