Insight 17/5 Sbs

[internationalist]

Author:SBS

Date:17/5/05

Source:SBS

Copyrigth: SBS Australia

 

Was very interesting, heres the link to get the full transcript

http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/index.php

ill just post what i think was the most important and what i believe is right on the money:

 

JENNY BROCKIE: Alex Wodak, can I involve you in the discussion at this point because you've campaigned long and hard for decriminalisation of drugs over many, many years. Now, when you hear David describing his research and you hear Chris talking about the people turning up in his practice with psychosis and with problems from marijuana, does that shift your view at all about the issue of decriminalisation, for example?

 

DR ALEX WODAK, AUSTRALIAN DRUG LAW REFORM FOUNDATION: No, it intensifies my view because I think if drugs like cannabis are so dangerous that they can cause schizophrenia or depression or the other serious harms that people allege - and they might be right - then why would you give that drug to Al Capone to distribute? Why would you give it to criminals and corrupt police? Why wouldn't you regulate the drug as carefully as you can and have age limits so that kids below a certain age can't purchase it like we have with alcohol?

 

DR ALEX WODAK: If we go back 30, 40 years, the two major drug problems we had in Australia were tobacco and alcohol and they're still serious problems today. In fact they're much more serious than any of the drugs we've talked about tonight. But we've made major progress with tobacco. 60% of men smoked in the 1960s, 18% smoke cigarettes today. The deaths from alcohol have declined amongst men and women during the 1990s. And the reason for that is despite tremendous opposition from the very powerful alcohol and tobacco industries, we've made progress because science has had a chance with alcohol and tobacco. Science has been kept out of the illicit drug debate unfortunately because of the politics of it

 

DR ALEX WODAK: Evaluation of advertising campaigns like we've seen tonight shows very consistently dismal findings. And I think people have been optimistic in believing that these advertisements are intended to have a real benefit. The real benefit that the Government is after - and whoever's in government doesn't make much difference - the real benefit is trying to lift the political stocks of whoever's in power. And we have to remember cannabis is smoked by 2.5 million Australians in the last 12 months. It's not a minority niche drug. The cannabis industry's twice as big as the wine industry in Australia now. It's got an annual turnover in 1997 estimated at $5 billion. We have to get real about it and we have to realise that alcohol prohibition failed in the United States in 1932, cannabis prohibition has failed all over the world.

 

ive only listed Dr Wodaks view because i believe his ideas are the most sane and sensible and are very much what i think, am even considering joining up to the ADLRF i suggest people do to

 

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~adlrf/joinus.html

Edited May 20, 2005 by internationalist