"Drug epidemic is making us all sick"

[freddie]

Great letter MiickEe.

 

Al B, The alleged Paul Dillon quote was well spotted. How the fuck did you pick up on that.

 

MediaWatch has been dealt in. Noise Ltd has a real bad habit of letting ppl post really heinous, defamatory nonsense in their comments and never verifying if the person named as the author actually wrote the comment.

 

This just got a whole lot more interesting.

[Al B. Fuct]

Al B, The alleged Paul Dillon quote was well spotted. How the fuck did you pick up on that.

 

I'm familiar with Mr Dillon's opinions, writing, tone and level of knowledge. The fraudulent comment was everything Paul Dillon isn't.

 

I have no love lost on they way the govt uses NDARC; the selective application of real medical and psychological evidence compiled by real, live, educated, competent drug researchers shames all the good people who work for NDARC. Govt having access to academics in the field of drug research is somewhat better than the govt coming up with their own opinions about the real effects of drugs when they are gauging prohibition and penalties. I say 'somewhat' because sometimes govt completely ignores even NDARC, acting arbitrarily and capriciously in drug policy. We've got prohibition, haven't we?

 

I can also tell you that Centrelink workers are no happier about the govt's Welfare To Work and WorkChoices, but they also have to administer programs around this bad govt's rules.

 

MediaWatch has been dealt in. Noise Ltd has a real bad habit of letting ppl post really heinous, defamatory nonsense in their comments and never verifying if the person named as the author actually wrote the comment.

 

This just got a whole lot more interesting.

 

It has the potential to be a lot more interesting. I'm helping it along by sharing the story out to The Age, SMH & ABC News. The story also has gone out on the drug policy activist's mojo wire.

 

Noise Ltd deserves a serve for letting Piers Akerman or Gary Christian ghostwrite a comment in Dillon's name. It's organised rumourmilling like this that will get you stuff like race riots on an otherwise nice, quiet beach.

[DownUnderDoper]

There has been a lot of studies released recently that have been quite heavily destroying the Govt perpetuated myth that there is such a thing as a "Safe level of consumption" for alcohol.. with the Govt (and Opposition) getting more and more frenzied about opinion polls in the lead up to the election this could have the potential to go either way if it hits the question list for this weeks press conference(s)...

[Stoney]

noice bit of detective work there Al B fuct

 

i bet he aint impressed that someone is using his name and dribbling SHIT

 

anyhoo good spot

 

cheerz

[Al B. Fuct]

Cheers for that, Stoney.

 

I've had another exchange with Mr Dillon:

 

From: Al B.

Sent: 07/08/2007 10:58 AM

To: Paul Dillon

Subject: Re: would the real Paul Dillon please stand up?

 

Hi Paul,

 

Don't know if you've tried to contact Noise Ltd about the fraudulent

comment, but I sure have. They will not publish my comment in which I

reveal the hoax.

 

Remarkably, the fraud is still on their website.

 

You may wish to file a complaint with the Press Council.

 

http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/complain.html

 

cheers

 

Al B.

 

To which he replies:

 

Subject: Re: would the real Paul Dillon please stand up?

From: Paul Dillon <p.dillon@unsw.edu.au>

Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2007 12:08:23 +1000

To: Al B.

 

Thank you Al - I have tried unsuccessfully as well. I'm now resorting to

Media Watch.

 

Paul

Sent from the blackberry device.

Faculty of Medicine, UNSW.

 

hey HEY hey... I'm liking where this is going.

[Al B. Fuct]

There has been a lot of studies released recently that have been quite heavily destroying the Govt perpetuated myth that there is such a thing as a "Safe level of consumption" for alcohol.. with the Govt (and Opposition) getting more and more frenzied about opinion polls in the lead up to the election this could have the potential to go either way if it hits the question list for this weeks press conference(s)...

 

Absofuckinlutely.

 

None want to touch the impact of alcohol with ye olde bargepole.

 

Now, if one of you sods were to diligently research politicians' interests in booze sales through their financial connections to pubs, clubs, liquor stores, wineries, breweries or other alcohol related businesses, I bet the reason why they don't want to talk about alcohol would become blindingly obvious...

 

Australia has an entrenched alcohol culture like few other places outside of France and Russia. No American employer would even dream of serving alcohol to employees for fear they'd smash on the way home and the employer would be on the hook. In Aus, Friday drinkies are the stuff of tradition.

[miickEe]

Haha, unravelling quite a bit here aren't we.

 

If as many people died, were neglected, terrorised or orphaned by disease as they are by drugs, the use of drugs, the pursuit of drugs and the abuse of drugs, we would declare a national emergency.

 

I don't think he realises that the number of deaths resulting from the regulated use of alcohol and tobacco in conjunction (and possibly on their very own) dwarf the number of annual deaths caused by unregulated, unsafe use of all illicit drugs combined. I think it would be more accurate to state that if as many people died, were neglected, terrorised or orphaned by disease as they are by legal drugs such as alcohol or tobacco, however preventable these deaths may be, we would declare a national emergency.

 

And what really annoys me is that he associates drugs with violence - which is fair when you keep prohibition in mind - but he uses that argument to valid his argument for prohibition. Doesn't prohibition blatantly encourage underground economies and allow organised criminal organisations to operate almost undeterred, ultimately resulting in an exponential increase in violence? Doesn't prohibition propagate a mindset of alienation and fear, associating citizens with criminals and possibly encouraging users/abusers to resort to crime to feed their habit, which has constantly spiralled out of control due to social, financial and legal factors caused by prohibition itself? Doesn't make sense..

[Chato]

Very interesting an i too am liking where this is going

 

Are you going to let him know where you were made aware of the article Al, that is guessin that you first read the articles as result of this thread.

Just curious.

 

Looking forward to further developments.

 

peace

c

[Al B. Fuct]

Chato, I did first read the hoax comment as a result of this thread. I let Dillon know rather roughly where I was tipped off from, a cannabis users' forum, but not specifically by name. If I know Google, this discussion will pop up in searches eventually, though.

 

Dillon contacted The Courier-Mail today and apprised them of the fraud. The hoax comment was removed within 5 mins. However, what's disturbing is that comments from myself and others revealing the hoax which were added to the Sweetman story were never published. The webmasters blew off the complaints and the defamatory hoax comment got a couple of days airtime- and definitely defamed the real Mr Dillon. Readers here quite reasonably identified "Dilon" as a bum and lamented party political bias in NDARC where there should be none.

 

Dillon indicates to me that he's not only been on to MW but to JJJ's Hack program as well. I've also fed the tale on to the Tech section writers at the SMH. There may be a couple of miles in this mule yet.

 

If this gets picked up by bloggers, corporate & state media, the hoaxer's stunt is going to backfire massively. A lot of ppl are not aware that there's active campaigns like this being orchestrated by zero-tolerance-throw-the-layabout-druggies-in-gaol wowsers. It will do nothing but educate more people about the true nature of harm-minimisation but more to the point, the character of ZT sabotage artists. We needn't be paranoid, folks- we really do have people out to get us.

 

I've been supporting Dillon in dealing with this garbage, first because no-one deserves to be Joe-jobbed like that, but second because I am fully jack of ZT moralists getting a free fucking kick in the meeeeeeja. Noise Ltd should have their knucks rapped for this. If Dillon doesn't have time to fill out the forms, I'll happily draft a complaint to the Press Council on his behalf and let him sign it!

[freddie]

Al B. Fuct, well done. Love your work and I'm watching with interest.

 

We needn't be paranoid, folks- we really do have people out to get us.

 

I am starting to come round to this view. The Dillon impostor has done something really quite serious and the sunday mail compounded the problem. The fact is it stayed there for a day even after the paper knew that it may be a fraud. Unbelievable.

 

 

I sometimes try and comment on online stories related to cannabis and more often than not my comments are rejected despite me being polite and reasonable. They seem to have no problems with the anti-drug comments though.