American control of Australian laws

[RobbieGanjaSeed]

For those that know me, you'll already be aware of my views that we need across the board law reform for all drugs. Not just grass.

 

All drugs are a personal choice, and prohibition of ANY substance only and always creates criminal activity, police/government corruption, danger to users, especially youth, and more addicts strangely enough.

 

Each and every one of the spin offs listed there are a huge topic in and of themselves, but I think would go pretty much un-challenged by all who study this subject.

 

There's an article I want to post here in a minute, that shows the incredibly heavy hand that America has in our affairs. Regardless of if you agree with heroin trials or not, I belive very strongly that we are Australians. That this is Australia, and we should have the right, by the normal processes of democray and progressive "Common Law" changes to modify laws within our country to whatever we want.

 

This is a matter of sovereignty . Sovereignty is simply the right to rule under our own power, in our own direction, without unwanted interference from any other country. Especially if that country resorts to threats to have their ways change ours, without concern for what we want at all.

 

Some time ago, I re-printed an article here by the Age, titled " Why Australia will never have drug law reform". A rather sad and hopefully overstated title, but an incredibly revieling article. The article brought out a situation where by a man called "Bob Gebrald" (He's probabaly sent someone after me alreay for writing this), had actually planted spies within our country, following speaches by David Penington (sp).

 

David Penington has been travelling this country tirelessly trying to force governments to implicate the enless suggestions founded in royal commisions to decriminalise pot, legalise pot, legalise prostitution, provide heroin to addicts (to stop them from stealing), and other associated issues.

 

As we're all aware, each royal commision has made such reccomendations, and as we are also aware, they never happen. David Penington was aware of a certain familiar face in the crowd each confrence he spoke at, and thought she was a very interested reporter or such. It turns out her job in Austrlaia was too expressly report anything and everything penington said. She was to report back to Bob Gebrald, a man that washington endearingly calls their "diplomatic watchdog". He was the guy soley resposible for arresting entire families in South America for farming coca. Not huge aches as Iundertsand it, just tribal use I think. Even so, regardless, these guys were dead set peseant class people. the tv shows that revealed what Gebrald did there, showed small outhouse type buildings, crammed pack with families. Husbands and wives, elderly and children, right down to infants. They couldn't move in the room without standing on someone to some extent, and they were locked up indefinately. babies died by scores.

 

It was heralded by the USA as a triumph.

 

All this is to paint a picture of how the Americans intefere in other country's policies.

 

When Pennington was in the middle of a series of talks given suporting the use of safe injection rooms for heroin, the Bob Gebrald's spy alerted her boss to come quickly to stop what was going on.

 

Bob Gebrald didn't go see David Penington, he didn't go to the people who were proposing the trials, to see what they were in fact wanting to do, or achieve, nor in fact did he go to Canberra, the place you'd expect an international diplomat to go when addressing matters of international concern.

 

He went to Tasmania.

 

Why?

 

At the time, and perhaps even now (I'm a bit out of touch), the swinging vote in Fedral Government was held by a seat in Tasmania. Bob gebrald went about making a series of public appearances inviting people of concern involving the legal opium trade down there.

 

He spoke of he wonderful way the state hd been handling the industry, and how it was a world standard , BS, BS, BS....He generally made a huge suck to the state and all the farmers, generally building themup, enticing them with the ever present hope of larger quotas.

 

Then he would make a mention of the heroin injecting trials being discussed. he made it clear that it was very much against the American agenda, and that a country that needed to show their serious concern for drug control, if they expected to continue to grow poppies. All the countries that grow legal opium hope for a larger slice of the pharmacutical trade each year. It's known as the 80/20 rule. Tasmania, along with Inida and so forth all want more quotas.

 

By and by, it was made known that if Heroin injecting rooms went ahead, then the Opium trade in TAsmania would be in jepardy. The INCB is officially a UN body, but of course, it's all american by membeship, and controlled by them.

 

Not only did they elude to the reduction of poppy quotas, which would bankrupt the state, they mentioned the possabilities of trade emargoes against Australia, including medial supplies, such as up to date anti-biotics.

 

Many people thought it was alarmist stuff, that America wouldn't do it. Well John Howard thought they would, and he made it clear that he would oppose any heroin injecting trials. The farmers, although not sure what to make of the overall issue, were definately opposed to any trials for their income's sake. And of course, the Tasmanian politician (who's name eludes me), used his power of veto to stop anything official in the arena of drug law reforms. This basically included heroin trials, but the marijauan issue was being bantered about more at that time around the country at large than ever before. Even that went cold, because we were reminded the same treaties banned pot aswell as heroin.

 

If anyone is interested in why the heroin trials get more approval than pot, and I'm aware it aggrevates many pot smokers, is because the treaty allows for one exception to all this Bullshit these laws stem from. That is, for scientific trials. So long as the research's end isn't to overthrow prohibition, certain exceptions to the law can be made for periods of time, to see what scientific dtat can be gleaned from it.

 

Heroin being afar more dangerous drug, falls more into the centre of this scientific research, of harm minimization.

 

Well, they're on it again...

 

Reprinted from "Injecting room like Asian Opium Den", The Age Australia, Feb 26.

 

Sydney's heroin injecting room has been compared to an Asian opium den by an international drugs control body campaigning for its closure.

 

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) has condemned the NSW government for promoting illegal drugs in the inner-city Kings Cross injecting room.

 

"To provide a venue for an illegal activity is a shot for drug traffickers and is against all international convention," said board member Professor Hamid Ghodse, speaking as the INCB's annual report was released today.

 

"We are very saddened the government provides a venue for illegal drugs. It's similar to the opium dens of the early 20th century.

 

"It's odd that we closed the opium dens and now we have injecting rooms."

 

Ghodse said the INCB would continue to negotiate with Australian authorities and the NSW government to try to close the room in Darlinghurst Road "as soon as possible to come into line with international convention".

 

The INCB is an independent body set up to promote government compliance with United Nations drug conventions.

 

The Sydney injecting room was scheduled to close following an 18 month trial last October but the NSW government voted to extend the scheme an extra 12 months after it had attracted 30,000 visits in its first year.

 

But Ghodse, a former INCB president who is also professor of addictive behaviour at the University of London, rejected claims that the vote to keep the room open proved it had been a success.

 

"It is illegal. If you decriminalise crime, then there is no crime and no prisons. Can you say it is a success because there's no prisons?" he said.

 

"An injection room is the lowest level of service. Rich countries should provide good medical service and support."

 

Similar rooms operate in Germany, Holland, Switzerland and Spain.

 

The INCB report also said the number of heroin related deaths in Australia had dropped but Ghodse said the board was not convinced that was linked to the injecting room.

 

He said the availability of heroin had been considerably reduced after police dismantled several trafficking rings from south-east Asia, including one which smuggled a large consignment to Brisbane from China in March 2002.

 

According to the report, Sydney remained the focal point for heroin distribution in Australia while cocaine abuse was also most prevalent in NSW.

 

The board reported on the seizure of more than 300,000 ecstasy tablets also last March year following a multinational operation involving Europe, Canada, the United States and Australia.

 

It expressed its concerns over trafficking rings using Pacific islands as staging posts and for money laundering and commended Australia's agreement with Vanuatu in which the two countries exchange financial intelligence.

 

The INCB said it was worried by the lack of drug control in Papua New Guinea and appreciated Australia and New Zealand's continued support of their Pacific neighbours in drug law enforcement.

 

Now, make what you will about heroin injecting rooms. Perosnally I think they're great. In countries that have taken the step to do this, the amount of people that willfully come off smack is higher than any country that trys to force people into programmes with huge prison sentences.

 

Just think, a man or woman gets up this morning and thinks they might want to get off the junk. Who will they turn to? All their friendds are users, and will laugh at them, or if not, are sure no use in helping them. Their friends and families have abandoned them, they live soiled lives with nothing to take holf of when they finally see the way their life is at. Going to a doctor, or similar is a threat that it could be a serious drastic step right now, that they mightn't be ready to cope with. Remember, coming off smack is a very hard thing, and a person needs to be prepared for what they're going to face.

 

If they're daily visiting a clinic with nurses, and councillors, then they are in contact with people that can support them instantly they discide to make that change, and this is what staistics have shown.

 

In countries where Heroin has been supplied to people that are certified as seriously lost on the stuff, crime has dropped momumentally. In some areas of London, crime almost stopped. Crime related to drug thefts I mean. Switzerland, or is it sweeden, has adopted a very liberal approach where an addict pays for their junk, and uses it in a building, in front of a nurse, the needle is left in a sharps container. Heroin is incredibly cheap to make, and the cost of administering it in this fashion works out to around the cost of a pot of beer. More people have willfully sought rehab programmes in that district now they have this system than ever before. Crime is almost zero, and addiction rates are much, much lower than USA, the country that shows us what zero tolernace leads to. The highest adddiction rates in the world to hard drugs, more deaths, more prisons, more all things bad...

 

Of course, all this is Heroin, and you might think it is irrelevant to us, but it's not. The Americans recently poured money into Holland. To support any groups that would like to see the end of the pot scene there. And they're making progress.

 

I have an aquaintance that doesn't live in Amsterdam, but in Holland. he said the scene has changed now to where he is slightly paranoid.

 

The issue isn't the drug, it's our soveiriegnty. Do we have the right to determine the direction of our country, or not? What right does America have in telling us what we can or can't do?

 

I know we're tied into treaties that stipulate we must do this and do that against the drug world. But America frequently tears up treaties at will. The kumoto agreememnt was a classic. They didn't want to curb world pollutuion (or their contribution to world polution at least), so they threw their copy of the treaty away. They do this as they please, wth whatever they please, while holding the rest ofus by the balls a they see fit.

 

The treaties we are being held ransom to, that prevent us from ever legalising any drug, including grass, are so old, they are comletely irrelevant. In fact, they were irrelevant to us (Australia) at that time too, which is why they signed it so eagerly. It didn't really effect us, so why not sign was the thought of the day. What a blunder....

 

If we have no soverignty, what do you do to change a law?

 

If a country has an elected government, and that government makes a law, or is in charge of the possible changing of that law, then we have a case to argue. We can petition that government . We can pressure the society, where-as the courts will start to hand out more lenient penalties, thus creating the changes through "common law".

 

But if another country, that we have no way of petitioning, no way of voting out, no way of pressuring or appealing to in any way is controlling our laws, how do we get our voices gheard?

 

In the final analysis; is this democracy?

 

rob

[Chev]

I believe that people who really do want to come off smack benefit from the methodone, but there is a good percentage who just use it as a free hit twice a day. There's a clinic less than half a kilometre away, so I actually drive past it multiple times a day, and pull up at the front multiple times a week to use the pharmacy. They even deal shit out the front. Behind the Green Door.......... :: It actually is green! But I will admit, I do think that it has reduced crime by quite a bit. Everybody has their demons, some more severe than others. We may not be able to cure that person's addiction entirely, but controlling it is surely better than ignoring it, and punishing them for it.

The issue isn't the drug, it's our soveiriegnty. Do we have the right to determine the direction of our country, or not? What right does America have in telling us what we can or can't do?

This is our country, and there's enough Americanisation already. We don't need them to tell us what to do, or not to do. That's bullshit. Australia should become a Republic, tell everyone to get fucked

[budsta]

I believe that people who really do want to come off smack benefit from the methodone,

Personally I'm not too sure that methadone is of much benefit - some find it harder to quit the juice than the herion itself.

 

One of herions original uses was to help opium addicts overcome opium addiction, it was later realised that the smack was harder to quit than the opium itself. Maybe the same is true of methadone? I know some who have managed to stop herion use with comparative ease compared to quitting the juice.

 

It is the 'street' grade level heroin that is much more harmful than pharmeceutical grade heroin. If pure herion is taken it is suprisingly not very harmful to the human body (barring overdose levels of course) & many doctors & others have had a (pure) herion habit for many years with little or no non reversable physical adversities. Of course this is not to say regular use of any opiate does not change one mentally or any particular individual in other ways -some can cope better than others as with any substance & a lot depends on the individuals own reasons for using the drug & any preconceptions about the drug concerned.

 

I see no reason to not totally decriminalise all drugs. We need honest & open education not prohibition.

I would have to very much agree with Rob when he states: All drugs are a personal choice, and prohibition of ANY substance only and always creates criminal activity, police/government corruption, danger to users, especially youth, and more addicts strangely enough.

 

Personally I reckon the human mind can be stronger than any drug - with the posible exception of nicotine - boy, that is the hardest drug of all to kick for some! Perhaps it should be banned!

 

Has anyone read Ben Elton's "High Society"? If not I highly recommend as a good read from the legalise all point of view.

 

Lets hope Aus does not merely become a puppet of the USA - oops - too late I fear.

[Guest Field_of_Light]

I dont personally know toomany people that use methodone as a free personal hit.....

 

Far from it...they are addicts for whatever reasons they choose to be or not....its better for them and society if they refuse or cant get themselves off the methodone to be on it....

 

It is better for society...Im not going to justify why...everyone has an opinion of it but those who have family memebers on it....generally do think differently than the hardcore mainstream people that see all done users as useless

 

Done users can contribute just the same as you or i.....just the same as you or i can choose not too contribute to society....

 

Peace

[Chev]

I dont personally know too many people that use methodone as a free personal hit.....

Sorry, but I do.

Far from it...they are addicts for whatever reasons they choose to be or not....its better for them and society if they refuse or cant get themselves off the methodone to be on it....

Exactly what I said:

Everybody has their demons, some more severe than others. We may not be able to cure that person's addiction entirely, but controlling it is surely better than ignoring it, and punishing them for it.

Done users can contribute just the same as you or i.....just the same as you or i can choose not too contribute to society....

Totally agree.....

 

Personally I'm not too sure that methadone is of much benefit - some find it harder to quit the juice than the herion itself.

I have heard that from some people. Makes sense, your body would get used to using it at the same time, everyday. Or something like that..... It'd suck. Being on methodone, it'd totally suck. So would being on H.

[pipeman]

I 100% agree with budsta about pure heroin not being dangerous. Heroin in fact causes very little damage to the human body, and if legal and cheap would not result in many of the social problems associated with it under the current laws.

 

but RobbieGanajSeed's point wasn't about heroin, it was how the US controls and bullies Australia and the rest of the world. It is disheartening to think about it and until the ugliness of the Bush administration I never realised how bad it was.

 

Look at how France and Germany are being punished economically by the US now for their stance against the Iraq invasion. Now I'm under no illusions that their objections were founded on principle, both countries had significant financial interests in Iraq that would be cut off by the US led invasion. But irrespective of their motives, its an example of how the US imposes its will and screwed up "ideals" on the rest of the world, and punishes those who do not fall in line.

 

The US may be the most modern superpower, but socially and culturally they are still in the dark ages, and at the moment there is no one to stop them. There is an anti-US sentiment growing around the world as the farce of the Iraq war is becoming more obvious, all we can hope for is that it continues to gain momentum.

[Buster]

I think a good few people here share the same opinion of the US goverment and we all know what that opinion is ! I F*ckin' hate the Bastards and their bully boy tactics. As far as I'm conserned the word Coruption was invented for the Bush Administration.

 

The way they've handled the Iraq was a joke. There's even been a suicide by an official who wanted to get the truth out in the open but because of the US's heavy handed attitude, they put the guy under so much pressure that he took his own life, and thats just fucked IMO!

 

I dunno about the scag (heroin) issue, I've seen a couple of people I know who've lost relationships and had the life sucked out of them by their habit. I think anything as addictive as heroin is dangerous but I do agree with budsta about a strong mind being more powerful than any drug, the trouble is but not everyone has a strong mind so there will always be addicts.

 

I read an intresting book about a speed addict once. He had shit loads of money and lived a good life with his wife and kids until he got hooked on sulph and lost everything. He was living on the streets of London for a few years but pulled his self out of it and worked his way back up to a decent way of life again.

It's a good read and a true story: The ADDICT by Stephen Smith.

[RobbieGanjaSeed]

When the Pennington/Gebrald issue took place, I posted the article here at this site. The original article is proving hard for me to track down, it should be on the old data base of ozstoners if anyone can still access it. I seem to have lost it, and DRCNet's search engine is down.

 

But the thing is, the origianl article eluded to America threatening us with trade embargos, and Un sanctions. Many people considered me an alarmist, as it was just before the present enlightenment that we are finally awaking to in this country regarding USA. Everyone was convinced that America wouldn't do it to us (australia), some saying they "liked us too much to do that". I believe America has no loyalty to anyone. I'm probably a terroirst for writing this right now.

 

This new INCB interference was exactly what the USA threatened us with. It might seem like an idle kind of threat, a toothless tiger if you will. But consider the cold tactics behind involving the INCB.

 

As I said before, the Tasmanian poppy industry keeps that state flowing in a lucrative income. Without it, and I don't know what they'd do. John Howard knows, and it'd involve him folking out $$ to prop the state up that's for sure.

 

The INCB gets to say if a country has the responsible attitude required to grow opium in a modern world. They hold the liscencing powers for opium farming. This is America's hand, make no mistake about it, in controlling us. In controlling our own right to find a solution to heroin users, dieing, stealing, and transferring disease.They said they'd do this, some 18 months ago, and quietly, they have.

 

The INCB as I understand it, also has the power to reccomend to the UN trade embargos against a treaty nation breaking away. That's us apparently, and that was another USA threat 18 months ago.

 

This is how the USA is dealing with our attempts to reform heroin laws. They have the levergae with the poppy trade.

 

If I can find the original article, I'll post it.

 

Now, just out of interest, I stated before that ANY substance when prohibited would create all manner of shit. In Canada, a few years back, the government (in an attempt to stop smoking , yeah...right), increased taxes on cigarrettes something like 800%. It's hard to say exaactly how high they took it % wise, because the way the taxes were recovered. The federal government made a direct tax, and each province was resposible in some manner for more taxation. I'm really at a loss to undersdtand what their tax system was, or how they collected it, but what resulted, and was intended, was a sort of monetarily imposed prohibition of tabbacco.

 

Here's what happened.

 

The enormous profits in the contraband tobacco market also attracted non-native criminal organisations. Organised smuggling networks were spreading across Canada. Asian and traditional organised crime groups were also becoming heavily involved in the lucrative tobacco smuggling trade. Distribution networks, once used to move drugs across the border, were now being used for tobacco.

At the same time, Canada experienced a dramatic increase in personal smuggling of tobacco. Average law-abiding citizens were using inventive and sophisticated concealment methods to smuggle tobacco products and avoid duties and taxes. The contraband tobacco problem was not restricted to the border. Retailers in large cities experienced a wave of break-ins and armed robberies, some resulting in the murder of innocent bystanders. Significantly, security cameras captured images of thieves ignoring cash registers for the more lucrative cigarettes on the shelves. The black market was thriving. Clearly, Canada had reached a crisis situation.

Annex 13

Tobacco smuggling in Canada

(referred to in paragraph 6.2.4)

by Michael Crichton

Chief, Intelligence Analysis

Customs & Trade Administration

Revenue Canada

 

Of course, tabbacco is a very addictive substance. My father for example is dieing of lung disease caused by years of smoking, but still he cannot give it up, and he has tried hard. But the point is, taking anything in demand, and prohibiting it can only EVER cause greif to a society. The HUGE profits created by prohibition is what society is really afraid of, but the government cleverly shifts that fear onto the drug user, or tabbacco user or whoever. The hand is quicker than the eye.

 

cheers

rob

[RobbieGanjaSeed]

Finally, I found it. It took a lot of effort so I hope someone finds it interesting, so here it is....

Why the US won't let Australia reform its drug laws. The real drug war. Background for IoS Article

See: Independent on Sunday THE DRUGS WORLD WAR - WHAT WENT WRONG?

By DAVID MARR and BERNARD LAGAN

Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia

Saturday, July 19, 1997

 

http://www.smh.com.au/daily/content/featur.../features1.html

 

DAVID Pennington, investigating drug law reform for Victoria's Premier, Jeff Kennett, flew to Hobart in January, 1996 to meet Bob Gelbard, President Bill Clinton's chief international drugs law enforcer. The meeting was at the request of the United States embassy in Canberra, but it was Pennington and several other members of Kennett's Drug Advisory Council who flew south.

 

The Dallas Morning News recently praised Gelbard as one of the US State Department's "diplomatic Dobermans". A former ambassador to Bolivia - he was there when the Americans sent troops to try to bust the cocaine industry - Gelbard was later promoted by Clinton to be Assistant Secretary of State for Narcotics and Law Enforcement and took the hard line he had worked in Latin America into the wider drugs world. Last year was a busy time for Gelbard. He saw Colombia punished for its part in the drug trade, cutting most US aid to the country and revoking President's Ernesto Samper's US entry visa because of his ties to the Cali cocaine cartel. Gelbard was in Nigeria lecturing its military ruler, General Sani Abacha, over his regime's entanglement with drugs. He joined in Clinton's public vilification of Burma, which led to aid and trade cuts for its regime's failure to clean up the local opium trade.

 

To the meeting in Hobart, the American diplomat brought an embassy officer whom Pennington had noticed at every public meeting his inquiry had held. He understood the woman, in her late 40s, had "an intelligence role in providing information to Washington as to what's going on in this country with a particular interest in the drug issue".

 

Gelbard took "a very traditional law enforcement position", at odds with Pennington's view that Australia should be relaxing its tough, prohibitionist drug policies. He found the American's message "heavy-handed". Gelbard was "scathing" about liberal Dutch marijuana laws and Pennington recalled him saying: " "The United States Government viewed with concern any countries who appear to be or are actively considering liberalisation of drug laws.' He told us he had a close interaction with President Clinton, that he had written a speech for the President in which the President indicated that with the Cold War now over the next frontier was the war on drugs."

 

Gelbard's meeting with Pennington - revealed here for the first time - is a reminder that this country is not free to take radical action to solve its drug problems. Australians talk most of the time as though this country - indeed, the individual States - can decide the fate of their own narcotics laws. This is a delusion.

 

As a good citizen of the world and a loyal supporter of the United States, we have signed international treaties which pledge Australia to stick to the prohibition strategy that has brought us to the position in which we now find ourselves, a sad situation nearly all local authorities - including Pennington - acknowledge must be changed.

 

But Australia cannot now make any radical break with the past or with our allies.(Ed. Note This really is not accurate. The treaties lack any enforcement mechanism, and they have opt out provisions.) The treaties are the work of the United Nations - and before that, the League of Nations - but the passion and policing are mainly American. Wherever a nation seems about to break ranks, the US will be there, cajoling or threatening. As a result, the UN and US between them have achieved a remarkable international consensus, the more astonishing for surviving the almost universal verdict that the strategy of drug prohibition has failed.

 

In the past, the American Embassy has lobbied here against the decriminalisation of marijuana, even though 11 US States have taken that step. More worrying for the US is the prospect that Australia, like Switzerland, might experiment by prescribing heroin to see if that radical step might break the terrible cycle of crime and death that heroin addiction now brings in its wake. Pennington recalled that Gelbard was "scathing" also about the Swiss heroin trial.

 

So, too, is the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB). From its nest of glass towers in Vienna, this UN agency supervises the drug treaties signed by most of the world this century. Scientists and medical people sit on the board, but career anti-drugs campaigners and lawyers have the numbers. Running the team is a former public prosecutor from Germany who is forcefully opposed to radical change in the world's approach to drugs. The INCB has the power to cut off the supply of pharmaceuticals - and other legal drugs - to errant nations. But its day-to-day impact is to cast a legal grid over the world's drug debates.

 

In 1995, an unknown Australian diplomat in Vienna approached the INCB to test its attitude to an Australian heroin trial in Canberra. A few lines of a leaked and partly censored account of the meeting between the diplomat and the board's secretary, Herbert Schaepe, were revealed a few weeks later on the ABC's (Ed. Note: This is the Australian Broadcasting Co.The American ABC is too busy reporting on the dangers of marijuana.See Prime Time Live's "Junior High" Journalism) Four Corners. Schaepe "was clearly not pleased with the prospect of the ACT trial". He belittled the Swiss trial and all such trials, saying they were doomed to failure. But the INCB would allow a trial to go ahead as long as it was "part of a genuine commitment by the Government to achieve a drug-free society rather than a concession to living with drugs".

 

That would be that - but for Tasmania, the weapon the INCB and the US could, if they wished, use against Australia if we ever found the courage to undertake fundamental drug reform. Tasmania has one of the world's most efficient and profitable legal opium-growing industries. It exists and prospers only with the say-so of the INCB and the US. According to the notes from that meeting with Schaepe in Vienna, relations between the INCB and Australia are "already testy ... as a result of [censored] past contention that our licit industry was overproducing".

 

After that meeting, the diplomat cautioned Canberra that the Tasmanian industry meant we must "deal with the INCB regularly and on an intimate level. Our concern is that [censored] could make life difficult for us in our annual negotiations on poppy production. [censored] we see this as a real risk and one that should certainly be borne in mind when weighing up the overall pros and cons of the trial."

 

Switzerland and the Netherlands are at the forefront of radical drug reform. Change has been contested by the INCB but there has been no international lever to compel those two countries to stay in line. They don't need US aid. President Jean-Pascal Delamuraz of Switzerland can hardly be banned from entering the United States. But Tasmania's very profitable opium industry could be closed down by the UN or the US, putting out of business 700 growers and a couple of processors earning between them $80million a year. The State most opposed to the ACT heroin trial - indeed campaigning against it here and in Vienna - is Tasmania.

 

The poppy farmers have condemned the ACT trial to the Herald as a foolish exercise that could jeopardise their industry. Rod Thirkell-Johnston, president of the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association, spoke to Four Corners of their "mistrust and fear" of the US's response to the ACT experiment. "The big problem we have is that the trial's being conducted in Canberra, which is nowhere near Tasmania, which has a minimal relationship with Tasmania, but unfortunately the Americans use the argument that Australia is one country and you can't isolate segments of it."

 

Tasmania's Minister for Justice, Ron Cornish, has written to just about every Federal and State minister over the past few years condemning the trial as a breach of our international treaty obligations. He is not saying it's necessarily a bad idea - just that it's against international law. The Tasmanian Government is now shying away from this absolute verdict. Last week, a spokesperson told the Herald that there was "no official legal opinion". What matters more, perhaps, is that the extraordinary meeting between David Pennington and the heavy from the State Department, Bob Gelbard, took place in Ron Cornish's office.

 

Officially, Gelbard was on the island to check out the opium industry. "He came out here," said Julian Green, head of the Poppy Advisory and Control Board, "to see what he understood, and proved to him to be, the most efficient producer of crude morphine and morphine-based drugs in the world". American officials, from Congress and the US Drug Enforcement Agency, come through Tasmania regularly. They keep a close eye on the industry and always raise the possibility that the US will lift its quota of Tasmanian product, a quota known as the 80:20 rule.

 

This is the perpetual hope of the industry, which resents the privileged access of Indian and Turkish legal opium product to the United States for the manufacture of morphine and codeine. This hope also keeps the Tasmanian industry in line. Again Gelbard was holding out the prospect of a better quota for the island, but Green denied the ambassador was using this to gather opposition to the Canberra trial. "It wasn't a factor," Green said." He did say to a journalist in Tasmania that the heroin trial in Canberra is an Australian issue."

 

Not only was Gelbard suggesting the opposite in private with Pennington, but nearly a century of successful US diplomacy has made sure that challenging the ground rules on heroin is not just an Australian issue. Very far from it...

 

WHEN America won the Philippines in its war with Spain, it discovered opium smuggling was rife in the islands. A passionate fear of opium had appeared in the US after the Californian gold rushes and this was mixed up with white distaste for the Chinese who smoked the stuff. Race was, and remains, a potent element in all of this: America set out in the first years of the century on a mission to protect the world, but especially the white world, from the scourge of opium.

 

Not much might have come of this, but Britain elected its first anti-opium government a few years later and after centuries of protecting the trade - indeed fighting wars to force opium into China - Britain was also keen to see opium controlled. So in 1909 America called a conference in Shanghai that set out, for the first time, to fight drugs through inter- national co-operation. In a sense, every treaty since has been a forlorn attempt to make that Shanghai agreement work.

 

Australia was locked into the system after World War I by the Treaty of Versailles. In Geneva a few years later we joined the rest of the world in putting cannabis - the oldest continuously used drug on Earth - on the banned list. Once available over the counter here as Cigares de Joy, cannabis had just about disappeared by the time we signed this Geneva convention. Perversely, the fact that the drug problem didn't seem to affect Australia much made us even happier to sign these treaties. As the academic lawyer Desmond Manderson wrote in his book From Mr Sin to Mr Big, "Australia was blown along by the winds of international opinion without genuine commitment or thought".

 

The US had far higher ambitions than Britain. It wanted to make the globe free, for the first time in human experience, of all recreational drugs except cigarettes. This amazing ambition survived even the failure of domestic Prohibition of alcohol - not that the UN will concede, even now, that this failed. The latest World Drug Report of the UN's International Drug Control Program, released in late June, concedes the crime, the violence and deaths from moonshine in America in those Prohibition years but concludes it is "difficult to extrapolate lessons for modern times".

 

Others have drawn the conclusion - and it's virtually a consensus now - that absolute prohibition of drugs and alcohol cannot work. But this worldly realism is emphatically rejected by the US and the UN, which have, between them, persuaded the world that with greater dedication, tougher measures and more treaties, success is still possible. So they have held the line for nearly 90 years in what must be seen as an absolutely successful diplomatic effort.

 

As the conventions got tougher and tougher, Australia kept signing them. Only once was there any resistance here. The US was all along determined to wipe out opium's powerful derivative, heroin, by banning even its medical use and after World War II, through the World Health Organisation, it imposed that rule on the world - even though heroin was then still the best pain-killer available. Australian doctors fought back but were ultimately brought into line by Canberra. In Britain, a powerful counter-attack by the medical profession preserved their right to prescribe heroin. That survives - heavily circumscribed - even today.

 

Still we had no heroin problem of our own. That came in the early 1970s - by courtesy of the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). As the Vietnam War wound down, the DEA very successfully stopped heroin following the troops home. "The DEA in effect compelled the syndicates to sell heroin originally produced for American addicts in alternative markets," wrote the academic Alfred McCoy in his book Drug Traffic, Narcotics and Organised Crime in Australia. "In short, the DEA simply diverted South-East

 

Asian heroin from the US into European and Australian markets, evidence for what we have called the iron law of the international drug trade."

 

Now, when we needed the conventions, they were no help to us. Heroin washed into Australia and the cycle began of crime, corruption, addiction and death. The treaties we had entered into did little to inhibit supply and left us unable to take any radical initiative to cope with the unfolding disaster. Yet in 1988 we signed another of these agreements - the Vienna Convention - in which we made the strongest promises yet to keep recreational use of drugs in Australia a crime.

 

The former Chief Judge of the ACT, Russell Fox, QC, was one of those calling on Australia not to ratify the treaty. "Australia should not, at this time, reaffirm (and strengthen) unsuccessful treaties of 20 and 30 years ago which tie our policy on most drug use to complete and unqualified prohibition. The inevitable result is a most dangerous illegal market, which is by definition uncontrolled. There can be no quarrel with the making of international arrangements or with an attempt to eliminate illegal traffickers. The real question is how this can best be achieved..." But we ratified in 1992.

 

Where does that leave us? In the sort of confusion that lawyers love and timid politicians use to make sure nothing is done. But two things are absolutely clear: no Australian State or Territory can go it alone on drugs. The Commonwealth has all the authority here because of its treaty obligations. Canberra can overrule any State initiative. The reforms Bob Carr might be persuaded to make in NSW are really a side issue. Nothing of much consequence can happen about drugs in Australia without Canberra's approval. It's John Howard's position that matters and that's profoundly unadventurous.

 

The second consequence of our international entanglements is this: the Vienna authorities won't let us pursue the path of legalisation. We can't contemplate making drugs - or some drugs at least - available over the counter like cigarettes and alcohol. Though the INCB in Vienna is frankly encouraging treaty States to find ways other than imprisonment to punish marijuana smokers, it still insists that even personal possession and use of marijuana remain crimes. What we call "decriminalisation" of marijuana in South Australia, the ACT and Northern Territory, the INCB calls a crime with a very light punishment. But Vienna is not looking at the "decriminalisation" of heroin. That drug remains as absolutely demonised in the thinking of the United States and the INCB as its parent, opium, was in Shanghai in 1909. As Herbert Schaepe remarked in the course of ridiculing the Swiss trial and Australia's wish to follow the Swiss lead: "Heroin is too dangerous a substance to be playing with."

 

WHEN the Australian health ministers meet in Cairns at the end of this month to discuss the proposed Canberra trial, they will have with them the promising results from Switzerland - a "striking decline of criminal activities" and dramatically improved addicts' health - and an information paper (so far secret) prepared by the Federal Department of Health's National Drug Strategy. It concludes - despite the arguments from Tasmania - that a heroin trial can be held in Canberra without breaching our treaty obligations. Australia, like Switzerland, will use the exemption under the treaties for "medical and

 

scientific research ... including clinical trials". The National Drug Strategy's paper was prepared in response to the latest round of objections from Tasmania in the middle of last year when the island was arguing that a trial measuring outcomes such as burglary and muggings was neither medical nor scientific because criminology was not, Tasmania reasoned, a science.

 

But the bigger treaty question looms beyond the trial itself: if we find the courage to hold a Canberra trial and it matches the encouraging results from Switzerland, will the treaties allow us then to prescribe heroin, not as an experiment but as a day-to-day practice of medicine in Australia?

 

The answer is unclear. The aim of the treaties is a drug-free world, but maintaining a supply of legal heroin to addicts continues in Britain on a very limited basis despite the disparaging views of the INCB that the British system "fell into disrepute" in the 1960s. Now Britain is preparing its own heroin trials with a view to one day restoring prescription on a much wider basis. Among Australian health authorities, the surviving system in Britain is used to argue that day-to-day prescription of heroin is, at the very least, not impossible under the treaties.

 

The Swiss are much more confident they can prescribe heroin day-to-day if and when their trial succeeds. Margaret Rihs, the head of the Dependency Research Program for Switzerland, told the Herald: "Heroin is given to get addicts into treatment. All treatment is better than no treatment. They can then start reconstructing their lives and eventually the aim is that they will not need heroin."

 

The Swiss have had to battle all the way. Our diplomat in Vienna cautioned the Australian Government that it should not underestimate the lengths the INCB may go to express "displeasure were the program to go head" because of "the experience the Swiss have had [censored] in relation to their program..."

 

Now that Swiss program may be about to hit the wall. A national referendum for "Youth Without Drugs" has been called by an outfit known as the Society for the Psychological Knowledge of Mankind. This group is allied to parties of the far Right in Switzerland and appears to have a great deal of money to promote the idea that heroin and methadone should be banned. Rihs notes that the INCB "pays attention to" the society's submissions and appears to treat it at times as speaking for the Swiss people. Previous polls on the heroin trials have been city-based, but this vote on September 28 will involve the whole - far more conservative - Swiss electorate. It's thought to have a fair chance of success.

 

That would please Vienna, not so much because the INCB believes controlled prescription of heroin can't be handled properly by the Swiss - or the Australians and British for that matter - but because of the message heroin trials in the West would send to Pakistan, Burma, India, Bangladesh and other countries where heroin production and addiction are already completely out of control. The fear is that these governments would set up "trials" of their own as fronts behind which they could capitulate in the fight against drugs. Perhaps so, but Australia is now asking how much good sense and good medicine we should sacrifice to the failed objectives of world prohibition. Despite the relentless optimism of the INCB's reports, it is clear that the treaties 158 nations have now signed are not working. Here are a few facts from

 

The Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1996, published about 90 years down the track from that first conference in Shanghai:

 

In South and Central America: despite all efforts, more cocaine and heroin is heading for North America than ever before and causing even more drug-related crime and corruption on the way.

 

In "the biggest illicit drug market in the world", the United States: regular heroin use is rising while more young people than ever are trying cannabis, cocaine, LSD and other hallucinogens. The INCB deplores the referendums held in California and Arizona that have allowed easy use of cannabis "for alleged medical purposes" and congratulates Washington on its firm stand "against such indirect but evident attempts to legalise cannabis". Concern is also expressed that "well-financed, non-profit foundations sponsor institutions that are developing strategies for the legalisation of drugs".

 

In Asia: heroin is everywhere, opium smoking is being replaced "unfortunately" by heroin-injecting, Burma remains one of the largest opium suppliers to the world, codeine cough syrups are being abused, and cannabis, growing both wild and under cultivation, is supplying Europe.

 

In Europe: cocaine and heroin are in slight decline, synthetic drugs are on the rise, but cannabis remains the continent's favourite drug. The INCB is very worried about hydroponic cultivation of cannabis indoors - particularly in the Netherlands - and deplores the "ambiguous message" of an energy drink launched in Liechtenstein with the name Ecstasy. But the massive drugs impact of the fall of the Iron Curtain is masked by diplomatic language about "new socio-economic frameworks" needing to find ways "to prevent drug-related crime and to ensure more effective border controls". Drugs can now move unchecked across the former Soviet Union from the "Golden Crescent" of Afghanistan and Pakistan almost to the Baltic.

 

In the face of all this, the United States and the United Nations expect the world to keep on keeping on, trying to snare with treaties an international industry now turning over $400billion a year. The treaties aren't working - except to circumscribe and complicate the task of those who want to grapple with the real challenges of living in a world awash with drugs.

[sols]

g'day; Canada has tax policy as.......GST plus Provincial tax.

GST = 7%

PST (provincial sales tax) = 7%.

these taxes are displayed different to Oz. in OZ the GST is included in the total cost, in Canada it is added on-top of product purchase price.

USA (land of the free,lmfao) must pay GST on everything including food.

 

p.s, for those who care.......i return to Oz on 10th sept. will chat and/or visit soon

 

whats the capitol city of Australia?

 

Washington D.C (Howard's mate works there).

 

Americans are generally very nice people, however......the USA social system sucks the big one. imho, Americans need to wake up to their government, "patriotism" has blinded them.

i respect the "patriotism" of Americans, but i loathe the USA political system.

 

also....American's need to accept that other nations hate their president as much as they do. don't let patriotism get in the way of common sense!

 

 

from my personal experience, it is ok if an American hates their government but...you do not dare say bad of American politics if you are not American. so aussie beware