A leading Canberra doctor behind a plan to roll out a private pill testing trial at music festivals believes it could persuade up to 60 per cent of people who use the service not to take potentially dangerous drugs.

Fairfax Media revealed on Sunday that Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation president Dr Alex Wodak and Canberra physician Dr David Caldicott planned to run the trial at Sydney music festivals without police or state government approval, potentially breaking the law.

The controversial service, which would allow festival-goers to submit their drugs for testing at music venues would "save people's lives", Dr Caldicott told The Canberra Times.

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A Perth-based medicinal marijuana company hopes to grow its first crops and manufacture products in WA by this time next year.

Laws to create a national licensing scheme for growers passed Federal Parliament yesterday, paving the way for the legal use of cannabis by people with painful and chronic illnesses.

The changes to the Narcotic Drugs Act create a national body that can issue licences to growers to cultivate medicinal marijuana.

Auscann, which is backed by former Liberal MP Mal Washer, plans to apply for a licence.

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THE establishment of a national regulator to supervise and allow Australian farmers to grow medicinal cannabis has passed the Senate, but hurdles remain to making the drug legal for medical purposes.

The Turnbull government bill was passed in the Senate yesterday, with bipartisan support, to allow patients to access medicinal cannabis products produced and grown in Australia.

Health Minister Sussan Ley described the new laws as the "missing piece" for patients, but Greens leader Richard Di Natale said there was still work to be done.

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THE New South Wales Government's Stoner Sloth anti-marijuana campaign cost taxpayers $350,000 and 265 public servant work hours just to be internationally ridiculed.

Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi uncovered the details under a freedom of information request into the failed #StonerSloth social media campaign.

It set the government back $351,790, including $36,386 paid to advertising firm Saatchi and Saatchi.

The government spent $115,000 on research, including $64,000 for market research, $28,000 for a Sax Institute and University of NSW literature review on the effectiveness marijuana education campaigns and $23,000 for University of Technology Sydney research.

Production company 8Com took home $59,000 and $99,990 went to media agency Universal McCann.

Actors, including the hirsute star, were paid $28,000. According to PriceOfWeed.com, the government could have bought about 30kg of high-quality marijuana for the total amount.

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The Turnbull government will on Wednesday introduce a national scheme into Parliament to licence medicinal cannabis growers.

Although medicinal cannabis is available for particular patient groups and clinical trials, it is now illegal to grow and import most medicinal cannabis products, leading some patients to buy them from the black market and run the risk of prosecution for drug use and possession. Health Minister Sussan Ley hoped for bipartisan support for legal changes that she said would help chronically ill patients in allowing therapeutic products to be grown on a larger scale to meet patient demand. She was confident a single cultivation scheme rather than state- and territory-based schemes, would hasten regulation and patients' access to medicinal cannabis. "A national regulator will also allow the government to closely track the development of cannabis products for medicinal use from cultivation to supply and curtail any attempts by criminals to get involved," she said. It is unclear whether the scheme will gain enough Senate support, because it differs from a separate Greens-led bill for a national regulator that would oversee growth, manufacture and distribution of medicinal cannabis. This model, introduced into the Senate in 2014, has support from both Liberal and Labor senators.

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Given that the evidence is clear that the current regime of drug prohibition isn't working, it can only be that ideology is overruling sense when we continue this absurd and costly war on drugs.

Climate change sceptics seem to fit the same criteria yet their motives seem less clear. Science told us that cigarettes are bad for us and we acted on that advice albeit after much resistance.

Could we please cut to the chase on these others issues and save ourselves a lot more grief ?

Greg Leisner Copeland

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The Herald identifies that organised crime groups have become so successful at importing drugs into Australia that the wholesale price being paid for ice, cocaine and ecstasy has dramatically fallen in the past 18 months ("Drug supply soars as imports get cheaper", January 22).

Australia has been involved in other wars that were debacles: Vietnam and Iraq. But even those saw governments of the day eventually admit the country's folly and withdraw.

I can only hope that our longest war, that on drugs, will reach a similar ignominious end in my lifetime. Then perhaps all the politicians with an interest in this war - as well as law enforcement officers, judicial and magisterial officers, corrections officers, lawyers, probation and parole officers - can begin to put their efforts into something that is not such a stupendous dead end, insofar as the betterment of society is concerned.

I am worried that there may be some truth in the words of a police officer in that superb crime drama, The Wire, when he said "the war on drugs is not a war because wars have an end".

Joe Weller Lewisham

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But Cannabis Users Say They Are Avoiding Detection

POLICE have warned Northern Rivers cannabis users that every police car is a potential drug testing unit.

But cannabis users say they are outsmarting mobile drug swab tests by swigging vinegar, gargling mouthwash, drinking chocolate milk and chewing on vitamin C.

Thousands of people are using Facebook groups to avoid roadside drug tests.

With one in four Northern Rivers motorists testing positive for cannabis between April and December 2015 an average of 141 positive tests every month literally thousands of residents have taken to social media to prevent detection.

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Sydney Awash With Cocaine, Ice, Ecstasy

Organised crime groups have become so successful at importing drugs into Australia that the wholesale price being paid for ice, cocaine and ecstasy has dramatically fallen in the past 18 months.

The NSW Crime Commission says the illegal drug trade remains the main source of income for organised crime in Australia and at present illicit substances are in "plentiful supply".

Fairfax Media has learnt that the wholesale price paid by Australian criminal groups to import cocaine from overseas was as high as $280,000 a kilogram three years ago. Eighteen months ago it had dropped to $240,000 a kilogram and now sells below $200,000 and as low as $180,000. The cost for a kilogram of ice has fallen in the past 18 months from $220,000 to as low as $95,000 and ecstasy had dropped from $65,000 to $37,000.

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As the Status of Drug Use in Victoria Is Debated, Lessons Can Be Learnt From the US.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In January 1964, the Beatles first broke onto the US Billboard chart. In January, the US surgeon general announced that scientists had found conclusive evidence linking smoking to cancer and thus launched a highly successful 50-year public-health fight against tobacco. In August, the North Vietnamese fired on a US naval ship in the Gulf of Tonkin, which led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the public phase of the Vietnam War. Alongside an accelerating deployment of conventional troops would come their widespread use of marijuana and heroin.

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OPINIONS of The Northern Star's online readers are divided on the controversial issue of saliva testing motorists to identify who is driving with illicit drugs present in their system.

When the paper shared to its Facebook page a story about Monday's anti-saliva testing protest held outside Lismore Court, more than 40 readers commented.

The majority of the comments supported the use of random drug testing by police.

Sara Elizabeth Carr posted: "Don't do drugs or drink and drive. Simple."

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PROTESTERS against saliva testing drivers gathered outside Lismore Local Court yesterday as more than 50 people faced the magistrate on drug driving charges.

Inflatable joints, large hand made banners and signs including 'swab testing is not impairment testing', 'change the law not our lives' and 'good medicine' dominated the peaceful rally a protesters heard from a number of speakers.

Nimbin Hemp Embassy President Michael Balderstone told protesters due to the alarming statistics police had gathered about drug driving, they plan on trebling the number of saliva tests in NSW next year.

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THE ice epidemic has emerged as a key driver of this year's horror New South Wales road toll, which has shot back up to the highest level since 2013.

Almost 50 per cent of motorists who failed roadside drug tests in 2015 took ice, while 72 per cent took cannabis, 6 per cent took ecstasy - and a whopping 97 per cent had a combination of drugs in their system.

After years of falling crash rates, including a record low in 2014, this year's road toll has spiked 12 per cent with 333 deaths so far in 2015, up from 298 last year. Back in the 1970s around 1300 people died each year on NSW roads.

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Where is the "war" against drugs when we all know the penalties are so ineffective ("Death, 60 arrests at Stereosonic", 6/12)? If there were significant penalties, would people be arriving at such events in large numbers with illegal drugs? If they don't care about the law or health, then punish them with something they do understand. Money and possessions are treasured above most other things in our society, so why not place a nominal fine of, say, $10,000 on those found carrying drugs and higher for those under the influence? Confiscate cars, phones, computers and cash up to that value and hold it in trust for one month, six months, a year or indefinitely, subject to drug test results.

Philip Eagles, Mill Park

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SO 'ICE' is an epidemic.

In 2013 it was established that less than 7% of Australians over the age of 14 years had used methamphetamine at least once in the past year.

Methamphetamine first synthesized from ephedrine in 1918 (and amphetamines synthesized in 1888) were used during the Second World War o enhance endurance during long range bomber flights.

Servicemen often believed it was bromide to suppress their libido.

Truckies used amphetamines to combat fatigue and increase alertness.

Today, amphetamines are still used medically to treat narcolepsy (a sleep disorder) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

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WITH the Stereosonic music festival coming to Adelaide tomorrow, parents will be asking, "What do we need to do to keep our children safe?" This follows the tragically predictable death at the Sydney event last weekend of a yet another young Australian.

It's as if we are faced with some sort of horrendous "toxicological terrorism" - we don't know where the next death will be, just that inevitably, there will be another.

Having become a parent myself in the decade since I last wrote about drugs in The Advertiser, it's a question that has become a very personal one for me.

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Australia No Longer in the Lead

Australia is caught in an irrational, unwinnable war against drugs that is just a "war against its own children", health and legal experts say.

A new group run or supported by some of Australia's top drug experts, Harm Reduction Australia, will argue more needs to be done to support harm minimisation - including the decriminalisation or even legalisation of some drugs.

Australia uses only about 2 per cent of its drug spending on harm reduction activities, compared with 66 per cent (about $1.1 billion) on law enforcement. Australians spend more than $7 billion a year buying illicit drugs.

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Turn the subject to drug use and suddenly it's a war with far too many people fearful of being branded as soft on drugs.

Imagine sitting in your home with friends, some are having a glass of wine and some are smoking a cigarette on the balcony after a calorie-laden dinner. A loud bang and yelling at the door silences everyone as the reality hits that you are about to be arrested and charged for drinking, smoking and unhealthy eating.

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I can anecdotally state that nearly every person in prison is there as the result of drugs: using, dealing or an act of madness fuelled by "something" ("War on drugs hurts those at risk: experts", November 26). Nearly everyone does "something". Beer o'clock, drinkies, shots after work, wine while making dinner, cones behind the shed, lines in the office, party pills before the parade - and then there is ice.

Organised crime steps in to make a market in anything declared illegal. The last thing major players in the drug game want is for any relaxation of laws. The consequence is globally savaging and individually ruinous.

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Five weeks ago, Bill Shorten visited Cherie and Trevor Dell in their Sydney home to talk about how medicinal cannabis is helping their daughter Abbey, aged 3.

The very next day, the police came knocking.

Abbey suffers from a genetic disorder which results in constant violent seizures.

They tried every legal medicine and treatment under the sun but found that nothing worked. Eventually, desperate to relieve Abbey's suffering, they turned to underground suppliers that provide illegal medicinal cannabis oil to families in need.

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