Pubdate: Fri, 25 Jan 2002
Source: Otago Daily Times (New Zealand)
Copyright: Allied Press Limited, 2002
Contact:  http://www2.odt.co.nz
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/925
Author: Penelope Debelle

RELAXED MARIJUANA LAWS EXPLOITED

While our Parliamentarians continue to debate whether to decriminalise the 
personal use of cannabis, South Australia's 14-year experiment with 
decriminalisation appears to have fostered a bigger drug trade. Penelope 
Debelle, of the Sydney Morning Herald, 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 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 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 - 
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," the 
Australian police minister, Robert Brokenshire, says. "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. 
Another 191kg of cannabis was seized from couriers using commercial 
aircraft and, just before Christmas, two buses on their way to Sydney were 
intercepted each carrying 10kg 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 cannabis has 
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 the 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."

The government wants to license the shops selling the 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 Australia 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 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 about 5m high 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 500g of cannabis worth 
$A4000. Ten of these, three or four times a year, can bring in between 
$A120,000 and $A160,000.

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

"It is far better 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."

Dr Adam Sutton, a lecturer in criminology at Melbourne University, 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 worst possible way.

"My argument is you get a kind of anti-biotic 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 was particularly disappointed because governments in other States, most 
recently Western Australia where two plants and up to 25g of cannabis was 
decriminalised in November, have been persuaded to move the other way. 
Besides, he says: "No-one has ever been able to reduce the supplies of 
cannabis, so surely you should move towards making people more responsible 
in how they use it."

Police have begun enforcing the one-plant rule but the response of South 
Australia's legions of marijuana growers seems defiant. Hydroponic sales in 
the state slumped badly in the latter half of the year after a series of 
police busts, but have 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 its 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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