Western Australia: MP looks at SA's marijuana laws

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by Simon O'Brien

Printed in Issue:20 April 2002

 

 

Simon O'Brien, Western Australian Legislative Council member for the South Metropolitan Region and Shadow Minister for Drug Abuse Strategy, recently visited South Australia to investigate that State's experience with liberalised cannabis laws.

 

His visit to South Australia was prompted by the WA Labor Government's announcement that it would pursue the decriminalisation of the possession of small amounts (up to 25g) of cannabis, and the cultivation of up to two plants. A summary of his report follows.

 

South Australian experience

 

The decriminalisation of cannabis in South Australia, in particular, its cultivation, has had adverse effects.

 

Hydroponics have meant an increase in indoor crops, with more potent cannabis being produced. Yields have increased, to up to one kg per plant per harvest, with four harvests per year.

 

Organised crime involvement in the cultivation and distribution of cannabis has increased.

 

Syndicates have allowed exploitation of the cultivation laws.

 

These organised crime groups are exporting the cannabis from the State and, in exchange, importing harder drugs, particularly amphetamines and heroin.

 

The phenomenon of "rip-offs", house break-ins to steal cannabis plants, is becoming widespread, with associated violence and tragically some deaths.

 

The price of cannabis has decreased dramatically as the market is flooded, and high potency cannabis is easily available.

 

Limited savings have been achieved, and nearly half of the Cannabis Expiation Notices (fines) eventually reach the court system so that there are in fact more cannabis convictions than under the previous system.

 

The reduction of the cultivation limit from ten plants, to three, and now to one plant, is indicative of the problems experienced with groups exploiting the expiable limit to cultivate cannabis for profit.

 

Two cautioning schemes

 

There are significant differences between the Coalition's cautioning scheme, introduced as a pilot in two areas and then expanded State wide, and that now being proposed by Labor.

 

Liberal: Applies to first time offenders only; does not include cultivation; does not support decriminalisation of possession or cultivation; requires attendance for education/counselling sessions.

 

Labor: Also applies to second and indefinite subsequent offences; includes cultivation of up to two plants; tends towards decriminalisation of possession and cultivation; not clear yet whether there will be any education/ counselling requirements.

 

Working group

 

A Drug Law Reform Ministerial Working Group was appointed by the Government after the Community Drug Summit to consider how to reform the law to decriminalise possession of small amounts and cultivation of cannabis.

 

The Working Group consists of John Prior (Chair), Simon Lenton, Dr Moira Sim, Steve Allsop, Jim Migro, Ross Tomasini, Andrew Marshall and Dr Robert Ali (consultant). It was due to report by March 31, 2002.

 

The Government has clearly indicated its desire to decriminalise possession of up to 25 g of cannabis and cultivation of no more than two plants, and the Working Party is likely to oblige the Government. [However, they may recommend only two plants per household rather than per person as a token acknowledgement of the South Australian problems.]

 

Implications of proposed changes

 

SA Labor leader Mike Rann has stated that organised crime syndicates in that State were still operating under the three plant limit. It is therefore reasonable that organised crime syndicates, including bikies, will operate under a two plant limit. Two hydroponically grown plants, harvested four times a year, can produce up to eight kg of cannabis a year - over five times the amount used in that year by an average daily smoker. Eight kg is 282 oz, with a street value of around $84,600.

 

With the establishment of syndicates exploiting the expiable cultivation limit in WA, it is likely that organised crime gangs will use marijuana or marijuana profits to finance entry into the harder drug market as has happened in South Australia.

 

This means the export of large amounts of cannabis interstate, and the import of harder drugs, such as amphetamines, ecstasy and cocaine.

 

Cannabis is currently priced at $25 per gram, and around $300 per ounce. It is likely that decriminalisation of cultivation of cannabis will lead to an increase in availability and therefore a drop in price. This will mean cannabis - cheap and easy to access - will become more popular among young Western Australians.

 

Reconciliation with other ALP policies

 

The Labor Government has recently introduced legislation targeting organised crime groups and their activities. However, it is now intent on introducing cannabis laws which will make it easier for organised crime gangs to become involved in cannabis cultivation, and finance harder drug operations.

 

Health Minister Bob Kucera has recently signalled his intention to further expand smoking restrictions in public places. Yet it is well documented that cannabis is far more carcinogenic than tobacco, and with a drop in price, is likely to be more popular among younger people.

 

It is difficult to reconcile Labor's decision to decriminalise marijuana with the now Minister for Planning and Infrastructure's previous comment that, "We need to let kids know that smoking marijuana is probably eight times as carcinogenic as smoking tobacco."

 

http://www.familylife.asn.au/24april2002.htm

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Previous Article

 

 

 

Marijuana trail that ended in the big smoke

There's something about marijuana, South Australian crime and a legal fiasco ... a cannabis leaf and a bong- smoker.

 

In the Athens of the South, an enlightened law change fostered a bigger drug trade. Penelope Debelle examines what went wrong.

 

 

 

They were meant to bring the law into line with community values on soft drug use, but changes to South Australia's legislation on personal cultivation of cannabis led to new links with hard drug syndicates in Sydney and Melbourne.

 

Now South Australia's status as a lifestyle mecca for potheads is being wound back. Late last year its 14- year experiment with cannabis decriminalisation was almost totally abandoned and a complete ban on hydroponic growing is on the way.

 

In 1987 the Labor government of John Bannon introduced a daring policy that decriminalised personal marijuana use. Instead of being jailed, personal users were fined for growing up to 10 marijuana plants.

 

Adelaide flourished as the nation's marijuana capital until 18 months ago when the Liberal Government began to wind back the laws, cutting the plant limit from 10 to three. In November it was cut to one.

 

Legislation is in the wings stipulating that this single plant must be grown outside. If the Kerin Government is re-elected, hydroponic cannabis - far and away the preferred growing mode of small private growers in South Australia - will be outlawed.

 

"The 1987 model failed and we were seeing drug networks set up," says the Police Minister, Robert Brokenshire. "When the Labor Party brought this in they waved the flag for small syndicates to set up drug networks and that is what has happened."

 

The minimal tolerance is a sign of the Government's belief that under the relaxed regime cultivation became so lucrative that drug syndicates proliferated and trafficking routes were set up into Sydney and Melbourne.

 

A pre-Christmas road safety blitz along the Sturt Highway, which runs from Adelaide into Victoria via Mildura, had unintended consequences. Police seized cannabis and other drugs worth $100,000 from cars stopped at random between Gawler, just out of Adelaide, and the Victorian border. Another 191 kilograms of cannabis was seized from couriers using commercial aircraft and just before Christmas two buses on their way to Sydney were intercepted each carrying 10 kilos of market-ready cannabis. Police have begun compiling a list of frequent users of the Sturt Highway in the hope of identifying drug couriers.

 

"We are not prepared to tolerate the trafficking of cannabis into other states," Mr Brokenshire said. "They were also using cash from cannabis sales to bring back harder drugs because the eastern states have heroin and ecstasy supplies and amphetamines."

 

Home invasions, many of them violent, have been a particularly nasty consequence of private crops grown at home.

 

But the nature of of cannabis had also changed. Instead of the hit and miss days of outdoor growing, cultivation methods have improved so much that more potent varieties emerged.

 

"The new varieties of cannabis with very potent THC component cause serious health issues," Mr Brokenshire said. "It builds up in your brain. At one of our schools I was told a doctor did a skull or brain x-ray on a young person who had been smoking quite a few cones for a couple of years and you could see the chemical deposit in his brain."

 

While it has no problem with lettuce and tomatoes, the Government wants to license the shops selling hydroponic cultivation equipment. There is a police warehouse in Adelaide filled with equipment used to grow drug crops.

 

There are almost 80 hydroponic shops in South Australia, compared with a handful in Sydney or Melbourne and there is little argument that those with names like Dr Hydro ("specialising in all hydroponic needs plus all your tobacco accessories, bongs, pipes and lighters") cater to the cannabis market.

 

"South Australia is definitely the biggest market in Australian and has been for the past five or six years," a national hydroponic wholesaler said.

 

The move indoors is a global phenomenon but its success in Adelaide is partly responsible for the tough new laws. Technological advances have made "cloning" - growing marijuana plants from cuttings - under lights vastly more efficient, safer, and more lucrative than the old outdoor method.

 

Instead of one crop a year, the indoor grower can generate four peak quality plants, all of them female.

 

"You don't get masses of males that you've waited for nine months for then discover they're rubbish," says James Dannenberg, who is standing as a HEMP (Help End Marijuana Prohibition) candidate in the state election. "This was particularly a problem when they cut the limit from 10 to three. When it was 10 plants if you got five males and five females it was still enough to see you through."

 

Mr Dannenberg says the change from 10 plants to three forced almost every grower indoors. "The choice was three plants outdoors once a year with the risk of snails, fence-hoppers, fruit fly inspectors, nosy neighbours or police looking over your fence on horseback as they do in some suburbs. Or three plants indoors, three or five times a year in the increased safety and security of your own home or back shed. You be the judge."

 

Mr Dannenberg said police claims of towering pot plants 16 feet high (the industry remains defiantly non-metric) were the exception. "The Government has demonised hydroponics and suggested that somehow our laws caused this explosion in hydroponic use," he said. "It is a global trend partly in response to the pressures of law enforcement on outdoor cultivation."

 

Police figures say a hydroponic plant can produce 500 grams of cannabis worth $4000. Ten of these, three or four times a year, can bring in between $120,000 and $160,000.

 

Mr Dannenberg said the relaxed laws allowed users who had previously brought from dealers to seize the means of production and grow for themselves and a circle of mates.

 

"It is far better off from society's point of view, from the police corruption point of view, from a criminological point of view to have lots and lots of Mr and Ms Smalls, each making a little bit of money, rather than Mr Big making squillions."

 

Criminologist Dr Adam Sutton, a Melbourne University lecturer in criminology who has tracked the South Australian experiment since the late 1980s, says prohibition does not work and users will be forced back into the drug market in the worse possible way.

 

"My argument is you get a kind of antibiotic effect - if you try and wipe out all the suppliers, all you end up doing is leaving the most virulent ones on the supply side," he said.

 

He is particularly disappointed because governments in other states, most recently Western Australia where two plants and up to 25 grams of cannabis was decriminalised in November, have been persuaded to move the other way.

 

Besides, he says, prohibition does not work. "No-one has ever been able to reduce the supplies of cannabis so surely you should move toward making people more responsible in how they use it."

 

The Labor leader, Mike Rann, has not campaigned against the changes, supporting the one-plant law but otherwise remaining silent. The Democrats say outlawing marijuana is the local version of the Tampa issue for both Liberals and Labor.

 

Police have begun enforcing the one-plant rule but the response of SA's legions of marijuana growers seems defiant. Hydroponic sales in SA slumped badly in the latter half of the year after a series of police busts but has begun to cautiously pick up again.

 

"I don't know of anyone who has pulled crops out," Mr Dannenberg says. "Some people don't know what the story is, whether it's 10 plants or one or three and others are saying if they are going to be a criminal, they may as well go the whole hog."

 

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