Drugs are bad ... mkay? BUT the War on Drugs is badder!

Drugs are bad ... mkay? BUT the War on Drugs is badder!

One of the fallacies that dominates the thinking of many people, is that if something is legalised, then it is being condoned.

Drugs are a case in point.

Legalising drugs doesn't necessarily mean or imply that proponents advocate blazing up at every given opportunity.

Instead, the case for legalisation is in response to evidence that criminalising drug use causes more harm than it prevents. The irony is that legalisation, or even its poor cousin, decriminalisation, actually saves lives and makes it easier for users to get off the drug.

Why?

Criminalisation means that drug users become criminals if busted and may end up being jailed. Prison is not a rehabilitation centre, it's a place to network with other criminals. Prison is nothing more than a school for developing or honing ones criminal skills. Recidivism rates have increased in Australia as incarceration rates increase. With prisons at bursting point, the courts should be limiting incarceration to those who have committed serious crimes against other persons or property, not those whose actions are not harming others.⁽¹⁾

Perhaps the most ubiquitous drug has been marijuana, or cannabis. Modern society was founded on the cannabis plant⁽²⁾, from the hemp products used on the ships that facilitated international trade and colonisation,to the paper used for writing, manufacture of clothing, provision of food and nourishment, to the spiritual element of the plant that is mentioned in ancient scripture of numerous religions. The bible refers to it as both incense and intoxicant, for example, one of numerous scriptures where it appears is Exodus 30:21-25, in which God drops a recipe on Moses for making a holy anointing oil that includes myrrh, sweet cinnamon, sweet 'calamus', cassia and olive oil. Calamus is a modern translation of the original word 'kaneh bosm', which is the Ancient Hebrew word for cannabis.⁽³⁾

Marijuana is the people's drug. It is easy and quick to grow, doesn't require a degree in chemistry, and there have been no deaths from the direct consumption of the natural grown product. However, the prohibition of this drug has destroyed countless lives, through execution, incarceration, children being removed from parents by over-zealous authorities, wars waged in developing countries that have directly killed innocent people, increases in famine and starvation as a result of removing such a viable food source. Having a criminal record makes it more difficult for people to be accepted back into society. Many employers will not employ people who have a criminal record or have spent time in the big house.

The decades-long US-led War on Drugs has been a dismal failure. The United States started it with the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. This was followed by the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, which had nothing to do with keeping Americans safe from marijuana and everything to do with pandering to big business, in this case, the DuPont Corporation.

Of course, pandering to big business is not going to resonate well with the electorate, so the government resorted to the old chestnuts: fear and racism. It produced ludicrous propaganda movies, with one of the most famous being Reefer Madness. This little piece of blatant fear-mongering, showed how quickly murder and mayhem would ensue from one toke of a reefer! Shock, gasp, horror! Lock up your daughters and protect them from the evil herb!

This followed on from newspapers in the early 20th century reporting that cocaine-crazed black men were raping white women. William Hearst, the newspaper owner, reveled in sensationalism and had used racism for years to attack African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and Latinos, going back to the 1898 Spanish American War. The demonisation of the world's most useful and versatile plant to a sinister turn through terminology. Everyone knew the usefulness of hemp. Hell, they were either growing it or wearing it. They knew of the medicinal qualities because most had used cannabis tinctures. So the demonisation could not refer to hemp or cannabis if it was to be most effective. Hearst used a Mexican colloquialism that had the added benefit of not only being unknown to most English-speaking people, being Mexican added to the mystery and fear. The word: marijuana ... or as it became known in the United States by people who couldn't reconcile the letter 'j' being pronounced as an 'h': marihuana.⁽⁴⁾

The ubiquitous hemp plant had been used for the production of clothing, rope and medicine until 1937. Up to 90% of rope products were manufactured from hemp⁽⁵⁾. After 1937, this was replaced by petrochemical products mainly manufactured by DuPont. Both of these Acts effectively outlawed cannabis products, including cannabinoid medicines which had been used to treat conditions such as glaucoma, asthma, tumours, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, back pain, muscle spasms, arthritis, herpes, cystic fibrosis, rheumatism, migraines, as well as provide nausea relief and increase appetite in patients undergoing cancer treatment. In the 19th century, cannabis tinctures were prescribed to men, women and children in daily dosages that would equate to today's marijuana user's moderate to heavy intake over a one to two month period⁽⁶⁾

 It was used as currency for decades in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries. Farmers were encouraged to grow it during this time. During World War 2, farmers were again encouraged to grow it for the war effort⁽⁷⁾. The American government considered hemp to be a patriotic crop and produced posters and movies declaring Hemp For Victory. After the war, it was again demonised as a killer crop and was again rebadged as marijuana.

Videos of both Reefer Madness and Hemp for Victory are embedded at the bottom of this article.

Hemp is a crop that was the staple go-to for civilisations around the world for centuries. It has the potential to end starvation in developing nations, yet the War on Drugs has decimated hemp crops. In the 19th century, Australia survived two famines through a reliance on hempseed for protein and roughage.⁽⁸⁾

American conservative commentator, William F. Buckley Jr, stated, 'Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could'.

As previously seen, racism played a significant role in the demonisation of marijuana and it didn't stop in the 1930s. In 1994, John Ehrlichmann, a former assistant to disgraced President Richard Nixon, admitted that Nixon's war on drugs during the 1960s and 1970s was based on the exploitation of racism and fear. Ehrlichmann stated:

'The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did'.⁽⁹⁾

Like any product, the drug industry obeys the laws of economics, namely supply and demand. It also follows the law of greed, that is, the maximisation of profit, which can occur through driving the price up or diluting the product.

Despite the best efforts of drug enforcement agencies boasting of large-scale drug busts and increasing numbers of users incarcerated, drug overdose deaths have increased 540% and drug problems worsened since 1980⁽¹⁰⁾. This is a result of the 'balloon effect', that is by squeezing the drug industry in one area, only results in shifting the problem to another area.

Efforts to stop the supply of drugs have done nothing other than shift the problem to other regions or products. For instance, in the 1970s, the US targeted marijuana production in Mexico and Jamaica. While production of marijuana in these regions reduced, the overall production of marijuana merely relocated to other regions, such as Colombia. As US efforts zeroed in on Colombia's marijuana production, the Colombian producers expanded into other areas that were easier to transport, namely cocaine. Targeting supply-side factors is like squeezing a balloon; one area may be constricted, but it will pop up in another area. Demand for marijuana did not decline, while supply and demand for cocaine increased.

United States efforts to target methamphetamine commenced with regulating the precursor ingredients that the large drug labs were using to produce it. This initially saw a reduction in hospital admissions of people addicted to meth. However, the regulations did not stop the small scale producers, and resulted in the spread of small meth labs all over the country using readily-available over-the-counter chemicals, such as cold and flu medication. While the final product was less pure than that developed by the large-scale producers, it was still an effective methamphetamine. There was also an increase in do-it-yourself production. So the balloon effect of targeting supply, initially reduced usage, but ultimately ended up increasing supply using smaller labs selling cheaper product and eventually increasing demand. And then the government focused on the ingredients that the small labs used. This reduced local production, but increased imports from countries such as Mexico, which facilitated the growth of drug cartels throughout this region.

Targeting marijuana in Mexico did effectively reduce marijuana production there, however, the Mexican drug cartels increased as they expanded into more lucrative and easier to transport products, such as heroin, cocaine and crystal methamphetamine (ice), which was driven by demand to fill the void created by the reduction in domestic US production following law enforcement efforts at home.

In terms of harm to the individual and its flow-on effects to wider society, the banning of drugs in general has done more harm than good, with increases in consumption and prices, increased organised crime, increased property and violent offences as poorer users try to find money to pay for the drugs, increases in HIV/AIDS because of poor injection practices, increased drug purity and potency, increased hospital admissions because of the higher demand and increased potency, increase in human rights abuses and environmental damage in developing nations being forced to comply with US drug policy in order to access aid funding.

Prior to banning of drugs, usage was lower and subsequently there were fewer addicts. The 19th century and early 20th century saw the usage of drugs such as opium, cannabis and cocaine. From a health perspective, marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco.

The wiser alternative to the war on drugs, is to treat drug use as a health issue rather than a criminal one. This strategy is known as 'harm reduction'. In Australia there has been much controversy about the opening of drug injection rooms. In Switzerland, a similar program established heroin maintenance facilities, providing a safe environment to treat and stabilise addicts. This resulted in a sharp decrease in drug-related crime and a third of the addicts obtaining employment. There was a 50% reduction in the number of injection-related HIV/AIDS cases⁽¹¹⁾. It did not result in an increase in drug use.

In Holland, authorities provide facilities to test the purity of ecstasy tablets. Users are warned if dangerous chemicals such as strychnine are identified. Additionally, Holland decriminalised marijuana and hashish, resulting in fewer arrests for minor possession, no increase in drug use, heavy investment in treatment, prevention and harm reduction⁽¹²⁾.

In the year 2001, Portugal decriminalised all drugs, and has since proven to be an exemplar for harm reduction. Its model was to treat drug possession and use of small amounts of drugs as a health issue rather than a criminal one. While drugs remain illegal, people caught with drugs may face a small fine and possible referral to a treatment program. They do not get jail time and are not saddled with a criminal record. There has been a significant reduction in the number of overdose deaths, with Portugal recording 3 deaths per one million citizens, compared to the European Union which records an average of 17.3 deaths per one million. In the UK, there are 44.6 deaths per million.⁽¹³⁾ There has also been a 90% reduction in drug-related HIV/AIDS infections, significant reduction in use of dangerous 'legal high' drugs such as synthetic marijuana, 44% reduction in incarceration of drug-related offenders, and a 60% increase in the number of people in drug treatments⁽¹⁴⁾. Following decriminalisation, there was a slight increase in drug use, that peaked in 2007, but has since been declining, with two of the three measures used showing lower drug use than in 2001, as shown in the following table⁽¹⁵⁾.

A number of Australian jurisdictions have decriminalised marijuana, with no significant increase in drug usage. Additionally, there are some areas with harm reduction programs in place, such as safe-injection rooms in Sydney's Kings Cross and trials of similar facilities in Melbourne's Richmond precinct. The number of ambulance call-outs in Kings Cross have reduced by 80%, there has been no increase in crime, and the number of publicly discarded needles and syringes has halved. Similar facilities in Vancouver, saw a 35% reduction in fatal overdoses and 30% increase in people seeking detox and addiction treatment.⁽¹⁶⁾

Globally the war on drugs has failed. In 1998, the UN unleashed a war on drugs as well. Like the US-led one, this was also a failure. The winners of the war are the criminal organisations raking in $320 billion per annum. There have been thousands executed, millions incarcerated, including more than 1.4 million in the US during 2014

A number of countries still have the death penalty for possession and trafficking. Every year, Iran executes hundreds of people for drug offences, including juveniles, yet drug addiction doubled in the six years from 2011 to 2017⁽¹⁷⁾.

Clearly, even the harshest penalties do not deter people from using drugs.

While there is little attention given to the hundreds of people executed globally each year because of drugs charges, there have been some high profile executions, including Indonesia's execution of Bali 9 duo, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in 2015, and Malaysia's execution of Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers in 1986. Some people have no sympathy for drug traffickers being executed. Their argument is that had these people succeeded in their drug trafficking countless lives would have been ruined with the drugs. However, this argument fails to consider the fact that most drug dealers do not push drugs onto people. Drug users have a way of finding the drugs themselves. People who start on drugs generally have a desire to try them without anyone needing to force the drugs onto them.

The argument that traffickers could have killed innocent people is absurd and fails to acknowledge the responsibility that drug users must take for their habit. The term 'pusher' is a misnomer. Drug 'pushers' are drug dealers. It is rare for one to actively force people to take drugs. Dealers are simply meeting the demand of the market.

People should not be executed because of the demand of people who fail to take responsibility for themselves or who blame others for their situation.

In 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a report condemning the war on drugs as a dismal failure that has destroyed lives. It acknowledged the balloon effect discussed above, in which the war on drugs has merely displaced the areas of production, as well as resulted in substance displacement, in which users have moved to new substances when their drug of choice experiences supply shortages because of law enforcement actions. Ironically, marijuana has often been described as a gateway drug, despite any evidence to the contrary, however, the gateway is provided through the War on Drugs itself as it targets supply-side activities. Additionally, as users are interacting with dealers, they are exposed to other drugs and may be more willing to try those. Among the Global Commission's recommendations were replacing criminalisation and punishment with health and treatment services, as well as recommending governments experiment with legal regulation of drugs to undermine the power of organised crime and safeguard the health and security of citizens.⁽¹⁸⁾

In 2016, an international commission of medical experts found that drug laws caused 'misery, failed to curb drug use, fuelled violent crime and spread epidemics of HIV and hepatitis C through unsafe injecting'. The commission was established by the esteemed Lancet medical journal and John Hopkins University. The report stated that drug laws had 'harmed public health, human rights and development'. It asked the UN to support decriminalisation of minor, non-violent offences and made a number of recommendations, including 'move gradually towards legal, regulated drug markets ... '.⁽¹⁹⁾

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, acknowledged the damage caused by the war on drugs when it noted, 'Global drug control efforts have had a dramatic unintended consequence: a criminal black market of staggering proportions'.⁽²⁰⁾ 

After almost 20 years of the UN war on drugs, the United Nations and the World Health Organization have released a joint statement on ending discrimination in health care settings, which includes calling on member states to take 'targeted, coordinated, time-bound, multisectoral actions', including:

Reviewing and repealing punitive laws that have been proven to have negative health outcomes and that counter established public health evidence. These include laws that criminalize or otherwise prohibit gender expression, same sex conduct, adultery and other sexual behaviours between consenting adults; adult consensual sex work; drug use or possession of drugs for personal use; sexual and reproductive health care services, including information; and overly broad criminalization of HIV non-disclosure, exposure or transmission.⁽²¹⁾

There are two main approaches that could be taken: legalisation or decriminalisation. There is no country of recent times that has legalised all drugs, so it is difficult to fully understand the impact that this would have. However, it is anticipated that legalisation would carry the following benefits:

• reduce black market activity and organised crime involvement
• enable regulation that can ensure purity of product, for instance, similar to alcohol content labels found on alcohol products
• enable taxation of drugs which can be channeled into harm reduction strategies, such as health treatments
• reduction of people incarcerated, so any addictions can be treated as health issues rather than criminal issues

If legalising is a step too far, then drugs should certainly be decriminalised which will realise the following benefits:

• addresses demand-side, rather than supply-side issues through education, treatment and harm reduction activities
• keeps people out of the criminal justice system
• reduction in associated crime
• reduction in HIV/AIDS that occurs from poor injection habits, by providing education and safe-injecting facilities
• reduced cost to tax-payers, through reducing policing and incarceration issues
• reduced burden on welfare systems as users do not have criminal records, providing them with a greater chance of obtaining employment
• reduced numbers of overdoses through providing safe-injecting rooms, drug purity testing, education and treatment
• instead of increased recidivism under criminalisation models, decriminalisation increases the access to detox and addiction treatment programs

The war on drugs has stigmatised and demonised users as criminals in order to garner public support and create an 'us and them' mentality. Yet, not all drug users became addicts and those who do have often suffered traumatic experiences⁽²²⁾ which is another reason why drug use should be treated as a health issue. It should include education programs in schools, so that people learn to appreciate it as a health issue and are more willing to seek help if they need it, without stigma or the threat of incarceration.

In the United States, legalisation of marijuana in states such as Colorado, Washington and California, has had a dramatic impact on Mexican drug cartel's profits. Legalisation has led to a burgeoning market for domestically grown cannabis which has produced lower prices and higher quality than produced in Mexico and Jamaica. Legalisation is achieving what the drug war failed to do as the following graph shows.⁽²³⁾

After decades of policies that have wreaked havoc across the globe with no reduction in drug use and massive increases in organised crime, it is clear that a change in tactic is long overdue. The evidence clearly shows that decriminalisation and harm reduction programs achieve what the war on drugs could only dream of.




References

1. The Guardian, Christopher Knaus, Prisons at breaking point but Australia is still addicted to incarceration, 29 December 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/29/prisons-at-breaking-point-but-australia-is-still-addicted-to-incarceration. Accessed 30 December 2017.

2. Robinson, R., (1996), Chapter 4 - A Global History of Hemp, The Great Book of Hemp. Park Street Press, Rochester, Vermont.

3. Bennett, C., Osburn, L., Osburn, J., (1995), Chapter 5 - Ancient Hebrews, Green Gold, The Tree of Life - Marijuana in Magic & Religion, Access Unlimited, Frazier Park, CA 93225.

4. Herer, J., (1995 Australian Edition), Chapter 4 - The Last Days of Legal Cannabis, The Emporer Wears No Clothes.

5. ibid, Chapter 2 - Uses of Hemp.

6. ibid. Chapter 12 - Cannabis use in 19th century America.

7. ibid. Chapter 9 - Economics: Energy, Environment and Commerce.

8. ibid. Chapter 8 - Cannabis Hempseed as the Basic World Food.

9. Harper's Magazine, Dan Baum, Legalize It All: How to win the war on drugs, April 2016, https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ Accessed 30 December 2017.

10. Laffiteau, C., 2011. The balloon effect: The failure of supply side strategies in the war on drugs. Academia. edu, 1, pp.1-18.

11. Reuters, Stephanie Nebehay, Swiss drug policy should serve as model: experts, 26 October 2010, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-drugs/swiss-drug-policy-should-serve-as-model-experts-idUSTRE69O3VI20101025. Accessed 30 December 2017.

12. Open Society Foundations, Kasia Malinowska, For Safe and Effective Drug Policy, Look to the Dutch, 16 July 2013, https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/safe-and-effective-drug-policy-look-dutch. Accessed 30 December 2017.

13. The Washington Post, Christopher Ingraham, Why hardly anyone dies from a drug overdose in Portugal, 5 June 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/05/why-hardly-anyone-dies-from-a-drug-overdose-in-portugal. Accessed 30 December 2017.

14. Business Insider, Drake Baer, 6 incredible things that happened when Portugal decriminalized all drugs, 26 April 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com/what-happened-when-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-2016-3. Accessed 30 December 2017.

15. Transform Drug Policy Foundation, The success of Portugal's decriminalisation policy - in seven charts, 14 July 2014, http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/success-portugal%E2%80%99s-decriminalisation-policy-%E2%80%93-seven-charts. Accessed 30 December 2017.

16. Alcohol and Drug Foundation, Medically supervised injecting centres, 17 February 2017, https://adf.org.au/insights/medically-supervised-injecting-centres/. Accessed 30 December 2017.

17. The Independent, Bethan McKernan, Number of drug addicts in Iran 'doubles' in six years, 26 June 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-tehran-drug-addiction-opium-heroin-afghanistan-taliban-a7809046.html. Accessed 30 December 2017.

18. Global Commission on Drug Policy, (June 2011), War on Drugs, https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/themes/gcdp_v1/pdf/Global_Commission_Report_English.pdf. Accessed 30 December 2017.

19. The Guardian, Sarah Boseley and Jessica Glenza, Medical experts call for global drug decriminalisation, 25 March 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/24/medical-experts-call-for-global-drug-decriminalisation. Accessed 30 December 2017.

20. The Guardian, Jamie Doward, The UN's war on drugs is a failure. Is it time for a different approach, 3 April 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/02/un-war-on-drugs-failure-prohibition-united-nations. Accessed 30 December 2017.

21. World Health Organization, Joint United Nations statement on ending discrimination in health care settings, 27 June 2017, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2017/discrimination-in-health-care/en/. Accessed 30 December 2017.

22. News.com.au, Katie Horneshaw, Why you should stop judging addicts, 8 March 2016, http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/mind/why-you-should-stop-judging-addicts/news-story/e8c46674873e0c07e8abdeb7af4a3933. Accessed 30 December 2017.

23. The Washington Post, Christopher Ingraham, Legal marijuana is finally doing what the drug war couldn't, 3 March 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/03/legal-marijuana-is-finally-doing-what-the-drug-war-couldnt/. Accessed 30 December 2017.

Embedded movies

Reefer Madness (1936):

https://youtu.be/EOH6MA3GotE 



Hemp for Victory News Reel (1942):

https://youtu.be/UfOVto_PFlQ

Drugs, welfare and ideology - a policy doomed to fail

Drugs, welfare and ideology - a policy doomed to fail

Budget 2017 was released with much fanfare and back-slapping by the Federal Treasurer, Scott Morrison, who described it as a fair budget. Certainly, compared to the budgets that were released under the Prime Ministership of Tony Abbott and his feckless Treasurer Joe Hockey, this one was pretty tame. Some described it as a Labor-light budget because of its high taxing elements on the banks and the increase in the Medicare levy.

However, it still had the hallmarks of a Coalition budget with its attacks on students and the unemployed while providing businesses with a $65 billion tax cut⁽¹⁾. How much of this saving will be converted into jobs is debatable, considering the massive profits some companies are already making, but who aren't creating jobs anyway. University fees will rise by 7.5% and the repayment threshold for HECS will drop by around $11,000 to $42,000.

In relation to the unemployed, Morrison decided the big issue was drug use. The 2017 budget will introduce a two-year trial of random drug testing of 5000 recipients of Youth Allowance and Newstart. If someone fails the drug test, they will no longer receive cash payments, but instead be given the paternalistic cashless debit card. This card can only be used for certain purchases, like food.

Alex Wodak of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation stated that the unintended consequence of this, would be that users will move to other often more dangerous drugs that can't be detected through these tests. For instance, the tests will not detect cocaine and heroin, but will detect cannabis and speed. Wodak pointed out that the drug with the biggest social impact, alcohol, will not be tested. For those who fail the tests multiple times, they may be referred to treatment programs, however, existing programs are greatly underfunded⁽²⁾. So the drug tests themselves will fail to fully address drug and alcohol issues, while potentially causing even more problems.

The United States already has drug testing of welfare recipients in some of its states. The results are startlingly dismal. A Think Progress survey of seven states spending more than one million on drug testing programs, found that welfare recipients were testing positive at a much lower rate than the general population. The results ranged from 0.002% to 8.3%, however, the national drug use rate is 9.3%. Of these states, all but one, had results less than 1%. ⁽³⁾

Arizona's results were even more disturbing. Out of 87,000 welfare recipients tested, only ONE returned a positive result. With that person removed from welfare, the state of Arizona saved $560 out of its $200 million welfare program. ⁽⁴⁾ What an amazing return on investment.

Perhaps the reason for the lower rate of drug use in the unemployed, is because of the cost of drugs in the first place. If you want to stop drugs, create more unemployment and poverty. (That's a joke, Coalition ... not a challenge!).

So why would Morrison think Australia's results will have be any different to those in the US? What is he hoping to achieve? The tests might reveal evidence of drug use, but not the extent of it. The tests won't detect whether someone is a recreational user or an addict.

And so what if someone on welfare uses drugs? If they are an addict, yes, this should be treated (not punished), but taking their cash away isn't going to fix this. If anything they will turn to crime to get drugs. For those who are using recreationally, the chances are that this isn't impeding their ability to work. There are plenty of recreational users who still function well in their jobs, not turning up to work wasted. If the drug use isn't impeding their ability to work, then why test it? Morrison will argue that it is tax payers money so welfare recipients shouldn't be using drugs. Many would agree. But so what if they can budget enough to buy a small amount of herb, or if their mates give it to them. Is Morrison saying those on welfare can't have fun? Perhaps check people's welfare status before they waste tax-payers money at a theme park or the movies. Hell, they shouldn't even be eating McDonald's. Welfare recipients should be a dour lot, eating nothing but bread and broth. Is this what Morrison envisions of welfare?

Welfare is a safety net, which has a massive return on investment. It is one of the main factors that reduces crime. If people have no money, they will resort to crime in order to live. Welfare prevents this. One only has to see the levels of crime in America where they have far less effective welfare programs.

Interestingly, a number of federal politicians, including Labor's Sam Dastyari, Green's Sarah Hanson-Young and Independent Jackie Lambie, have argued that if welfare recipients are to be tested, then politicians should be too⁽⁵⁾. After all, it's not like pollies haven't been caught using drugs.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of this policy is the testing of sewage to identify suburbs with high drug use⁽⁶⁾. It doesn't take much to recognise the flaws in this. Poo doesn't come with a welfare card, so testing sewage will not indicate whether the owner of the poo had a job or not, nor will it help much that the poo is mixed in with other people's poo. Dare I say it? This is a shit policy.

The idea to drug test welfare recipients is nothing more than the Coalition's war on welfare, war on the poor. It panders to the right-wing who see welfare as a dirty word ... until they are without jobs ... while worshipping big business and the wealthy. It is an effort to placate the right-wing while the Coalition raises taxes that will have their greatest affect on the poor, such as the increase to the Medicare levy. While it is good for the Coalition to fully fund the NDIS (which Labor had already provided for in their budgets), they are expecting low paid workers to take on the burden. In the meantime, they will give tax cuts of $65 billion to big business and remove the deficit levy from high income earners, effectively providing a $16,000 a year tax cut to people earning more than a million dollars⁽⁷⁾.

A few years ago, then Treasurer Joe Hockey declared that Australia was a nation of 'lifters and leaners'⁽⁸⁾, effectively stating that those on welfare were leaners, while the uber-rich are lifters, even though they screw the poor to the wall through casualisation, not paying penalty rates and down-sizing. Hockey attempted to force people under 30 to wait six months before getting welfare payments. Not surprisingly, that was struck down by the Senate, however, the Coalition continues to punish welfare recipients rather than address the drivers of welfare, namely a casualised workforce, underemployment and unemployment.

Given the evidence demonstrating that welfare drug testing programs do not work, it is unlikely that the trial will proceed and if it does, it is even less likely, that it will continue beyond the trial phase.

The drug testing trial is another waste of tax-payers money by the Coalition to further their ideological demonisation of the poor.

References:

1. ABC News, Henry Belot, Federal budget 2017: Company tax cut to cost extra $15b per year, Scott Morrison reveals, 11 May 2017, http://www.abc.net.au/news/story-streams/federal-budget-2017/2017-05-11/company-tax-cut-to-cost-extra-$15b-per-year-morrison-reveals/8518642. Accessed 12 May 2017.

2. Huffpost Australia, Josh Butler, Here's How the Welfare Drug Tests Will Work, 10 May 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/05/10/heres-how-the-welfare-drug-tests-will-work_a_22078785/. Accessed 12 May 2017.

3. Think Progress, Bryce Covert, What 7 states discovered after spending more than $1 million drug testing welfare recipients, 26 February 2017, https://thinkprogress.org/what-7-states-discovered-after-spending-more-than-1-million-drug-testing-welfare-recipients-c346e0b4305d. Accessed 12 May 2017.

4. Mic.com, Gregory Krieg, Arizona Drug Tested Welfare Recipients - Here Are the Shocking Results, 22 July 2015, https://mic.com/articles/122607/arizona-drug-tested-welfare-recipients-here-are-the-shocking-results#.mR3FPpZRK. Accessed 12 May 2017.

5. Huffpost Australia, Josh Butler, People Say Politicians Should Be Drug Tested Too, 10 May 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/05/09/people-say-politicians-should-be-drug-tested-too_a_22078611/. Accessed 12 May 2017.

6. The Guardian, Paul Karp, Scott Morrison says sewage will be tested to find areas of high drug use for welfare trial, 11 May 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/may/11/scott-morrison-says-sewage-will-be-tested-to-find-areas-of-high-drug-use-for-welfare-trial. Accessed 12 May 2017.

7. Australian Financial Review, Joanna Mather, Keep deficit levy for 'millionaires': Labor, 26 March 2017, http://www.afr.com/news/politics/keep-deficit-levy-for-millionaires-labor-20170326-gv6oqw. Accessed 12 May 2017.

8. Sydney Morning Herald, Federal budget 2014 - full speech, 13 May 2014, http://www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget/federal-budget-2014--full-speech-20140513-3887i.html. Accessed 12 May 2017.

Cannabis - God's gift to the world.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.  And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:11)

God gave us cannabis; a herb yielding seed and he saw that it was good.

Some translations of the bible simply replace the word 'herb' with the word 'plant'. Either way, cannabis is a plant or a herb which yields seed.  It was created by God and for good.  Now if it was good enough for God to create this plant for us, then it is good enough for us to use it.  

Cannabis is arguably the most useful and beneficial plant in God's inventory, yet man saw fit during the 20th century to ban it.  Please explain how one bans nature?

For thousands of years, all civilizations relied on hemp (a product of the cannabis plant) for clothing, shipping, building and food.  Even the mighty American empire was founded on hemp and into the 20th century many American farmers grew the product for use in maritime and military applications.  During World War II, the US government encouraged and relied on farmer to produce hemp.  The US government was so proud of their reliance on hemp that they produced a short film called "Hemp for Victory".

Products made from cannabis have the ability to reduce our environmental footprint, improve our health and remove our reliance on expensive medicines.  Some of the products derived from cannabis include:

• biodiesel fuel
• medicinal use
• building products such as decking, fencing, roofing
• other products such as brake linings
• hemp was used for years by sailors for sails, ropes, rigging, nets, clothing, shoes, flags, shrouds and oakum. The word canvas is derived from the Greek word kannabis.
• it was used for years for linen, drapes, rugs, tents 
• food, eg oils, seeds, dietary fibre
• clothing
• paper

Cannabis does not have a negative impact on the environment, unlike cotton.  For example, cotton requires significant pesticides and fertilizers.  Cannabis has no natural weed or insect enemies and grows rapidly unlike forests, it requires a quarter of the land that cotton does and does not deplete the soil like cotton does yet produces clothing which is finer, softer, warmer and more durable than cotton.  To increase the fibre quality of hemp products, the plants are grown closer together.

The hallucinogenic properties of cannabis are caused by a compound called tetra-hydrocannabinol (THC). Governments of some countries, including Australia, have authorised the regulated production of low-THC cannabis for industrial purposes.  This type of cannabis does not have the hallucinatory effects that THC-containing cannabis does, nor does it have the medicinal properties THC-containing cannabis does. It is the THC which provides the healing and relieving properties of many illnesses including bronchitis, asthma, whooping cough, convulsions tuberculosis, nausea, epilepsy, stroke, wasting from cancer, AIDS or anorexia etc, attention deficit disorder, tourette's syndrome, migraine, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, bipolar, alzheimers, glaucoma and treats the side effects of chemotherapy.  Medical investigators in Spain have discovered that cannabis shrinks brain tumours (refer to http://www.csdp.org/publicservice/cancerstudy.htm).   For thousands of years, the inhalation of marijuana smoke has been used to treat the symptoms of asthma as it causes bronchial dilation for more than an hour which makes it more effective than a bronchiodilator.

Won't legalisation increase people's usage of it?  Cannabis is not a physically addictive drug. Police can test if someone is under the influence although this testing is flawed, because it does not show if the person merely was in the presence of someone smoking it nor does it show the level of THC in their system.  THC can remain detectable for up to 8 weeks but it does not affect the person for that period of time.  Driver testing needs to be improved to determine if the person's driving is impaired. Having said that, there is a big difference between someone driving under the influence of cannabis and someone driving under the influence of alcohol.  Under cannabis, most people can still judge distance, they aren't encouraged to speed and are generally aware of their limitations and modify their driving to account for it.  Under alcohol a driver's ability to judge speed and distance is greatly affected as is their ability to drive in a straight line or to negotiate corners.  Persons driving under the influence of cannabis do not have this problem.

Benefits from legalisation:

• tax for the government if grown commercially
• keeps normally law abiding citizens out of the prison system (which is merely a university for crime).
• it is not a 'gateway' drug in the sense that using it does not encourage a person to step up to other drugs. However, whilst it remains illegal and users are buying it from drug dealers there is the possibility of dealers offering other drugs such as LSD, cocaine, speed and so on which users may be enticed to buy. Legalising cannabis will remove this problem.

No-one has ever directly died from the ingestion of cannabis whereas many legal compounds have directly caused the deaths of thousands of people. The below table is reprinted from www.jackherer.com and similar statistics are provided at http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30

In Section 8, pages 56-57 of Judge Young's ruling on the United States Department of Justice (Drug Enforcement Administration) Matter for the Petition for Rescheduling of Marijuana he stated:

• 4. Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality.
• 9. In practical terms, marijuana cannot induce a lethal response as a result of drug-related toxicity.

Refer to: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/YOUNG/index.html

Marijuana has been consumed by millions of people over thousands of years with NO recorded fatalities.  During the 19th century many pharmaceutical medicines were prescribed by doctors to treat a range of ailments.  It was even prescribed to children at levels which far exceed that ingested by the average cannabis user today.  The worst effect documented was paranoia.

It is without doubt the most useful plant that God has given us, yet governments persist in maintaining the criminalisation of it. Perhaps governments and pharmaceutical companies are more concerned with the loss of revenue from people being able to self-medicate rather than being reliant on expensive and often times ineffective remedies. The world will not end with the re-legalisation of cannabis and in fact, will be greatly improved through the increased production of cannabis, resulting in reduced harmful effects on the environment and improved health and treatment of ailments.

Re-legalise cannabis.