Prime Minister Should Back Bill Legalising Medical Marijuana to Ensure It Passes, the Greens Say.

Richard Di Natale is forging ahead with his bid to legalise medical marijuana and warns the Turnbull government would be foolish to stand in the way.

The Greens leader will ask the Senate to vote on his bill co-sponsored by Liberal, Labor and crossbench senators next month and he's calling on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to get on board to ensure its success.

Senator Di Natale will personally press Mr Turnbull for his support when the pair meet in Canberra this week.

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Most wars end. One of the longest in history, the Hundred Years War, finally ended in 1453. However, a war that has been fought internationally for nearly as long, the "war on drugs", continues almost unabated, causing havoc and misery for many people in our community.

Winston Churchill once said: "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." Rarely do we look closely at the effectiveness of drug prohibition and the war on drugs.

A close analysis, however, shows that globally over the past four decades more than a $US 1 trillion has been spent on a strategy that has led to the incarceration of millions worldwide solely based on their drug choice, thousands have been put to death as a "deterrent" (including two Australians in Indonesia this year), families have been destroyed because of overdoses and HIV, young lives ruined because of a criminal record, law enforcement and public officials have been corrupted, and criminal gangs have reaped the rewards of a policy that has failed to curb demand. Yet illicit drugs are cheaper, and more available and accessible than ever before.

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With major police busts barely denting the illicit drug trade the time has come for a decriminalisation trial in Tasmania, writes Hans Willink

Decriminalisation does not mean legalisation. It does not mean that drug dealers can ply their evil trade with impunity.

THIS month police in Perth confiscated 320kg of methamphetamine, estimated to be worth $320 million, in what was Western Australia's biggest seizure of ice.

Politicians nationwide rejoiced. Federal Justice Minister Michael Keenan said "this seizure is a hammer blow for the organised criminals who peddle in ice".

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Regarding the ice epidemic ( SM, Aug 23), make no mistake, drugs are bad. But the war on drugs is worse. As the Americans found out during the 1920s prohibition on alcohol, such a war empowers organised crime. It is time to move away from policies that focus on law enforcement towards ones that include the legalisation of some drugs, decriminalisation of others, rehabilitation and treatment programs, as well as advertising campaigns.

Cameron Ljubic, Bethania

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I just finished reading the special report on ice addiction ("Wild trip into the ice storm", 23/8).

I have seen how this drug has taken hold, destroying families, jobs, and everything it touches. It's taking our children from us and turning them into people we no longer recognise. They are turning to crime, violence, and god only knows what else to get a hit. It's easy to say well, they do it because they had a bad childhood. Rubbish!

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"Dob in a drug dealer" will only put low-level dealers and your kids in jail. If someone is selling points to fund a habit, they are far from drug kingpins and are mostly people in their early20s who don't fear the consequences until it's too late. They'll be thrown into the system and come out hardened criminals. I've seen first-hand the damage ice causes and in no way condone its use, but our war on drugs isn't working and if we follow America, then we'll have one hell of a jail population and no real solution.

MULLUMBIMBY

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As a nation of ice users we all must unite to fight this evil drug which is destroying families, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and causing so much terror and pain. We must all unite to be vigilant and report any ice dealers and manufacturers using the 1800 333 000 police line (anonymous). All ice users must get help before it is too late. This ice war is a war we are losing. But we must win it for the sake of our young people, families and our most beautiful children. Please, we must.

BIDWILL

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TRUTH is the first casualty of war.

So when Tim Badrick (Letters, Aug 25) calls for mandatory jail sentences in the war on drugs, on the basis that "many ice addicts start out smoking cannabis", that ice is "the second worst drug on the planet" and opines about an "ice epidemic", then a reality check is long overdue.

According to the latest government statistics, only 2.1 per cent of Australians reported using methamphetamine in the 12 months prior to the survey - hardly an "epidemic" since use has remained stable for at least the last 10 years.

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Marc Lewis Argues That Addiction Is the Result of ' Deep Learning', Probably Triggered by Stress or Alienation. It Can Duly Be Unlearned... Via Better Habits

For a long time, Marc Lewis felt a body blow of shame whenever he remembered that night. " We thought you were dead," accused one of his mates, leaning over him. Lewis was slumped half-naked in a bathtub. " We were just talking about what to do with the body."

Lewis was at only the beginning of his odyssey into opiates. After this overdose, he dropped out of university and didn't pick up his studies for another nine years. At the next attempt, he was excelling at clinical psychology when he made front page news. He'd been busted raiding a pharmacy for goodies, hopefully Demerol or Methedrine. That was careless; he'd been successfully pulling off three or four break- ins a week.

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SIRS, Ia=C2=80=C2=99m writing about Kerri-anne Mesnera=C2=80=C2=99s colum= n: "=C2=80=C2=9CCrime thrives=20 on illegal drugs" (3-Aug-15).

Caffeine is a drug. How much crime and corruption do you have associated with it?

My guess is none. None whatsoever. Why? It'=C2=80=C2=99s legal.

Criminalise caffeine and the situation would soon change.

Kirk Muse

Mesa, AZ USA

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SOME find "getting high" a great rush and an escape from their stressful and frustrating lives, while others have paranoid hallucinations or worse.

Recently, the New South Wales Government announced the first medical marijuana trial.

It comes as ongoing media stories focus on drugs in Australian society.

As someone who has lived in five states in this country, reporting in each of those on drugs, and having been a teenager who tried marijuana, I have to say I agree with some aspects of the legalisation argument.

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AMERICA is once again in the grip of Reefer Madness. This time though, it's a mad rush to make a dollar out of the burgeoning legal marijuana trade, which has gained strong momentum on the back of a wave of legislative change washing over what has traditionally been one of the toughest countries in the Western World when it comes to drug laws.

Marijuana, or cannabis, is now legal for both medical and recreational use in Colorado, Washington, Alaska, and Oregon, and according to Wikipedia, 23 states have passed laws allowing some degree of medical use of marijuana.

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Matt Noffs means well. But he has fallen for a crackpot idea in his quest to help the addicts at the Ted Noffs Foundation crisis centre founded by his grandfather. He wants legally sanctioned "ice consumption rooms" where methamphetamine addicts can smoke, snort or shoot up to their heart's content. No surprise who has been whispering in his ear.

"Alex Wodak and I have been drawing up an idea of how an ice consumption room could work in the same way that they have, you know, crack rooms in the States, where people go to smoke crack," Noffs told ABC radio yesterday. "It's a ventilated room; you contain a person for a period of time."

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More people are buying recreational drugs such as ecstasy and cocaine online, partly because it is much cheaper than buying them on the street, where the price of drugs in Australia is more than double the global average.

An international survey on drug habits has detected a rapid increase over the past six years in the number of people who buy their drugs online using sites such as Silk Road, whose founder was jailed for life last month.

The Global Drug Survey 2015, which was conducted in partnership with global media organisations including Fairfax Media, polled 102,000 people from 50 countries, including 4030 from Australia, about their patterns of drug use.

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Dark web demand growing

Anyone following the Silk Road story could be forgiven for thinking that the online black market's shutdown in October 2013 and the sentencing of its owner to life in prison without parole last week meant the end of online drug sales. Nothing is further from the truth.

The results of the latest Global Drug Survey show the number of illicit drug users turning to the dark web the hidden internet accessible with easily-obtained free software is growing.

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NSW has decided that the best way to deal with the current ice problem is to have a media campaign.

Last Friday the NSW Bar Association hosted a conference with the single theme of a debate on the association's position paper titled "Drug Law Reform". Those who attended weren't the bleeding heart type. They included eminent health educator Professor David Penington, Associate Professor Nick Lintzeris from the NSW Ministry of Health, Professor Ian Webster from the University of NSW, senior members of the legal fraternity, Dr Alex Wodak from St Vincent's Hospital Sydney and former NSW Police Superintendent Frank Hansen.

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If Bans Do More Harm Than Good, It's Time to Try a Different Approach

Who suffers most from drug prohibition? The conventional wisdom is that Western countries pay a very high price for illicit drugs originating from and transiting through some developing countries. But the truth is the highest price for our failed "war on drugs" is paid by those relatively few countries where the drugs are produced or through which they move.

This perspective was usefully analysed in a recent report from the United Nations Development Program, headed by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark. Entitled Perspectives on the Development Dimensions of Drug Control Policy, it shows the worst damage from global drug prohibition is not in places such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, but in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Mexico.

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THE excuse wowsers use to get governments to waste billions of dollars on the prohibition of recreational drugs is that drugs kill users.

That argument has no validity in a world where governments are slaughtering thousands a year as punishment for drug trafficking.

The recent executions of Sukumaran and Chan by the Indonesians are only the tip of the iceberg. Around the world, thousands are killed every year.

The fact of the matter is, the cure is worse than the disease.

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Semantics instead of confronting this scourge won't help

IN a week the Geelong community has talked openly and honestly about ice, some bureaucrats and academics have sadly failed to do the same.

Concerning themselves more with the language used in the Addy's Breaking Ice series than with the people and truth behind our stories.

Epidemic is defined as "the occurrence of more cases of a disease than would be expected in a community during a given time period".

This week we have heard Geelong drug rehab providers say the number of people being admitted to their centres for ice addiction has risen by about 40 per cent in the last few years. We've heard the convener of a local family drug support service say the group - previously made up of family members of alcoholics, cannabis smokers, pill poppers and more - is now "all ice".

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Michael Coulter The war on drugs has filled our jails, enriched the worst among us, wasted police resources and blotted up millions of dollars that could have been far better spent.

'Are we in the grip of an ice epidemic? No. Are all ice users violent monsters? Certainly not.' 'Are we in the grip of an ice epidemic? No. Are all ice users violent monsters? Certainly not.' It would be nice to say that the war on drugs had achieved nothing. The truth is far worse.

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