SCHAPELLE Corby's family have denied the lawyer who appeared on TV claiming the convicted drug smuggler would celebrate her freedom with a "big marijuana joint" had ever worked for them.

Kerry Smith-Douglas appeared on Channel Nine's Today in a bizarre interview where she was introduced as Corby's former lawyer to talk about the impending parole.

"Yes, it's very exciting, there's going to be a lot of parties going on once she is released, and I can't wait," she joked.

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SCHAPELLE Corby has paid an extraordinarily high price after being convicted of smuggling 4.2kg of cannabis into Indonesia.

Corby has been incarcerated in the living hell of Kerobokan Prison in Bali for 10 years.

She has been in and out of hospital for treatment for depression, amid grave concerns for her psychological health.

From the start of her dreadful ordeal, the Queensland beautician has denied she knew anything about the large quantity of marijuana Indonesian customs officers say they found in vacuum-sealed plastic in her unlocked boogie-board bag.

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A "SIGNIFICANT" drug dog operation was carried out in Newcastle CBD on Saturday night to crack down on and discourage street-level drug dealing.

Twelve venues were searched from 11pm to 2.30am with a drug detection dog brought in from Sydney.

Newcastle City Chief Inspector Dean Olsen said three people were found with small quantities of pills believed to be ecstasy.

"There were three drug seizures which were small quantities of pills," he said.

"This is part of an initiative addressing potential problems in the city it's not just alcohol we're targeting.

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Mixed Messages on Booze Just Stir the Pot

HYPOCRITICAL parents are teaching their children the dangers of drugs while drinking to unhealthy excess and smoking deadly tobacco, according to a federal MP.

Greens health spokesman Richard Di Natale has joined several politicians to argue alcohol is just as dangerous as marijuana, despite it being widely accepted and legal.

"It's no wonder that some kids are confused when they see people smoking a drug, and drinking a drug, sometimes to excess and sometimes causing harm, and those same people are telling people not to use drugs," the doctor and former drug and alcohol clinician said.

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WHAT an indictment on our system of law: 160 people arrested on one day, mostly for cannabis, at Sydney and Melbourne music festivals. Concertgoers were dancing, having a good time. No reports of major violence. Contrast this with the alcohol-fuelled murderous thuggery and violence on the streets of our cities.

Has the alcohol lobby really got that much political clout?

Sue Ellerman, Richardson, ACT

[end]

AN EPILEPTIC girl who was having up to 60 seizures a day and who was given only months to live has made a miraculous recovery since her mum started giving her liquid cannabis which was made in Nimbin.

Doctors at one of Australia's leading hospitals have acknowledged the "remarkable improvements" in the girl's condition one year after she started taking the drug.

But health representatives have warned families not to use medicinal marijuana, saying it remains illegal across Australia.

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HOW great to see the major parties falling into line yet again on a social issue - both don't want to legalise marijuana because the world will end as we know it.

How many other social issues do most Australians support and yet our Parliaments do not? Gay marriage? Euthanasia? Legalising cannabis? (81 per cent in one 2010 poll).

Let's look at firstly legalising cannabis for medicinal purposes and then general use.

Peter Allan, Blackburn

[end]

The hunt for the Mr Big behind the drug trade is over at last. We have found him. It is you. The urban, educated middle classes of the rich nations, who take drugs or don't object to others taking them, fuel the enormous demand for marijuana, cocaine and heroin.

Without their dollars, euros and pounds, there would be no billions to fight over, no gangs, no narcostates or narco-terror.

Yet for some reason, whenever we discuss the alleged "war on drugs", we never mention demand. There are evil dealers, whom we all deplore. There are still more evil traffickers and gangs, whom we deplore still more.

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Police Arrest Female Officer With Link to Drug Trafficking Accused

A FEMALE police officer closely linked to the alleged ringleader in the state's largest cannabis trafficking operation has been charged following a lengthy AntiCorruption Branch investigation. The officer, Senior Constable Amanda Boughen, a patrol officer based at Holden Hill, is facing one count of obstructing or attempting to pervert the course of justice. While the exact nature of her alleged offending cannot be revealed, investigations by The Advertiser show that Sen-Constable Boughen, 40, of Mawson Lakes, is the former partner of Storm Alexander Strang - the alleged ringleader of the $40 million cannabis trafficking syndicate smashed by police in January.

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First Interview After Parole Release Could Fetch $3 Million

CONVICTED drug smuggler Schapelle Corby could command almost $3 million for her first TV tell-all interview, putting her parole confession on par with the payday that welcomed the Beaconsfield miners back to the land of the living.

Sean Anderson, the superstar agent who negotiated Australia's richest deal ever for a prime-time TV news story on behalf of miners Brant Webb and Todd Russell, said Corby could match the money they made if she was able to speak freely about her Balinese jail ordeal.

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I TOTALLY disagree with that reformed addict who blames his addiction on cannabis use.

He admitted to being addicted to alcohol, cannabis and meth. I'd say he had a predisposition to abuse any drug he consumed.

Millions of people use drugs every day responsibly.

When teenagers take that first step into getting "high", the legal pathway compels them to drink alcohol. Now that's a bad choice. Why? Just read the tabloids everyday - drunken violence - trails of victims and shattered lives.

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The Pendulum Has Swung Too Far, Savaging Trust

I'M old enough to remember New York in the 1980s. It was violent, exhilarating and sometimes desolate. As the crack epidemic laid waste to AfricanAmerican neighbourhoods, in particular, the city felt like it must have in the gang-ridden New York of the 19th century. The number of murders in the city kept rising until, in 1990, a modern record of 2254 victims was marked. The city was ungovernable, we were told. And then Rudy Giuliani governed it.

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SCHAPELLE Corby's hopes of being granted parole after almost a decade in a Balinese prison have taken a leap forward.

Indonesian officials yesterday visited her cell and inspected the home of sister Mercedes where she will have to live if released.

If Corby becomes the first foreign prisoner in Indonesia granted parole she must live with Mercedes and Balinese husband Wayan Widyartha in the traditional compound home they share with their three children and his extended family in Kuta.

Sources said three female parole board officials yesterday morning first talked to the 36-year-old in her cell at Kerobokan Prison.

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THE idea that Prof Robin Room's pro-marijuana legalisation opinion risks sending a dangerous message to young Australians ("Drug debate out of puff", HS, July 10) is misguided. His basic point is not as absurd as it has been made out to be: like alcohol, marijuana is hardly good for humans to consume but, on the balance of evidence, pot is almost certainly less socially deleterious than booze.

Nobody denies that marijuana is associated with various mental health problems; but by the same token, all one has to do is go out on a Saturday night to see the equally real problems associated with alcohol consumption.

Given we live in a society that tolerates (indeed, celebrates) the consumption of alcohol, it is the current criminalisation of the relatively socially benign drug cannabis that is surely the more confused message.

James Clapham, Toorak

[end]

THE head of Australia's leading alcohol research body has said that marijuana should be legalised in an effort to curb binge drinking.

Director of the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, Robin Room, said marijuana should be legalised (under strict controls) because the social harm associated with it was significantly less than from drinking.

"It makes sense to legalise marijuana in a controlled market," he said.

"We are in a situation where we need to look ahead. I think we need to have the discussion and it makes a lot of sense in terms of, among others, cutting down government costs to have a fairly highly controlled legal (cannabis) market and, while we are at it, tighten up the legal market of alcohol in the same way we tightened up the market of tobacco."

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Thank you Gary Christian (Letters, July 11). In the British Medical Journal (March 3, 2013) Professor John Henry wrote " cannabis is as dangerous as cigarette smoking - it may be even worse", adding users are up to six times more likely to develop schizophrenia. Dr William Oldfield wrote puffs by cannabis smokers " are two-thirds larger, they inhale a third more, and hold down the smoke four times longer . . . chemicals in cannabis smoke are retained in the body to a much higher degree, and cannabis today is 40 times stronger than that used in the 1960s".

Colliss Parrett

Barton, ACT

[end]

Alcohol policy research director Robin Room (July 10) says his drive to legalise cannabis is driven by his deep concerns about the damage done by the legal drug alcohol.

There is one death for every 320 alcoholics and other problem users of alcohol each year. Heroin kills one in every 100 users from overdose, plus other ways it kills.

Alcohol does so much damage in Australia because 80 per cent of Australians use it. Less than 3 per cent use heroin, speed, ice, cocaine and ecstasy, and 10 per cent use cannabis. These drugs are used less precisely because they are illegal.

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However strong your beliefs, it doesn't make economic sense to incarcerate people for drug use.

Locking people up for such a "misdemeanour" is counterproductive, as it costs the taxpayer more and reduces the number of taxpayers. Taxing cannabis will provide money for school education campaigns on negative aspects of its use, extra money for hospitals, roads and, importantly, free up police resources.

In The Netherlands, which has legalised its use, fewer people use cannabis than in Australia. Only "medicinal use" of cannabis is taxed in California and it provides huge government income.

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Legalise Marijuana to Cut Alcohol Dangers, Urges Professor

THE head of Australia's leading alcohol research body has called for marijuana to be legalised to reduce the harm of drinking.

Robin Room, director of the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, says marijuana should be legalised under strict controls because the social harm associated with it was significantly less than from drinking.

"It makes sense to legalise marijuana in a controlled market," he told the Herald

Sun yesterday. "We are in a situation where we need to look ahead. I think we need to have the discussion and it makes a lot of sense in terms of, among others, cutting down government costs to have a fairly highly controlled legal (cannabis) market and, while we are at it, tighten up the legal market of alcohol in the same way we tightened up the market of tobacco."

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A WOMAN who turned to smoking marijuana after a series of tragedies has been warned by magistrate Graeme Tatnell to stop using the drug.

Lorraine Skarpona, 50, was charged with possessing dangerous drugs after police raided her Urangan home on April 23.

The police searched her room before finding a black bag that had "a strong smell of cannabis," police prosecutor Michael Quirk said. Skarpona opened a zipped section of the bag, 31.7g of the drug was found.

Skarpona told police she didn't know how it got there.

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