Pubdate: 20 January, 1998

CANNABIS CERTAINLY NO SOFT DRUG

I WOULD love to know who advised the Victorian Police Commissioner that
cannabis/marijuana is a "soft" drug. Such statements lead young people to
experiment with it.

In 1996 the Commonwealth authorities advised there were "major health
concerns" that present cannabis is 1-15 times stronger than the marijuana
in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1993 a new miniature variety was produced in
Holland (where else!) called "skunk" with THC as high as 30 per cent. In
Australia it is called "madweed".

Students using marijuana are often tense, anxious, disruptive, restless,
rowdy and given to daydreaming. It mangles memory and has major and
devastating effects on the short-term memory of the learning disabled and
those with low IQs. Marijuana and other illicit drug use in adolescence
strongly predicts continued use in adulthood and also may forecast
increased delinquency, unemployment, divorce, abortions and health problems.

A Swedish study found that those who had used cannabis over 50 times had a
risk factor of schizophrenia six times greater than non-users and that
suicides increased sharply with its use. The tar from marijuana is more
carcinogenic than that from tobacco.

Tobacco-smoking rates have fallen from 75 per cent in 1947 to about 27 per
cent in 1997 primarily as a result of making it socially unacceptable. If
we do the same with cannabis, heroin, et cetera, we will get the same
result. Currently we are going in the opposite direction.

COLLIS PARRETT, Bruce
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Pubdate: 26 January, 1998

PROHIBITION SERVES ONLY TO SUPPORT CRIME

COLLIS PARRETT should spare us his tired 1950s anti-drug fixation (Letters,
January 20) His all too frequent correspondence consists of hearsay and
half truths supported with alarmist, generalist and often dubious statistics.

The claim that "...cannabis is 1-15 times stronger than ... in the 1960s
and 1970s is insupportable using any objective scientific criteria, or just
another dodgy statistic with which to push his prohibitionist barrow.

What has irrefutably increased well over 10-fold in 20 years, is the price
of cannabis. Yet the price of heroin has diminished substantially, if one
takes into account the recent high-grade heroin seized.

Does the simplicity of this dichotomy mean nothing to Mr Parrett? Perhaps
that prohibition never worked and never will? Prohibition serves only to
support and exacerbate crime and corruption.

Mr Parrett's generation of policy-makers has failed sdismally with regard
to drug policies, yet he and many like him squealed the loudest against the
heroin trial.

In conclusion, I suggest Mr Parrett take note of the recent Bureau of
Criminal Intelligence report that recommended decriminalisation of cannabis
Australia-wide.

ADAM RICHARDSON, Downer
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Pubdate: 30 January, 1998

YES, CANNABIS IS STRONGER NOW

ADAM RICHARDSON (Letters, January 26) accuses Collis Parrett of using
"hearsay and half-truths" and a "dodgy statistic".

What Collis Parrett wrote (CT, January 20) is correct.

The Commonwealth Department of Health 'Handbook for Medical Practitioners
and other Health Care Workers on Alcohol and other Drug Problems', on May
8, 1995, states "Recent studies have documented a number of health, social
and psychological problems related to the regular use of cannabis.

"Major health concerns revolve around the knowledge that the cannabis of
today is markedly (10-15 times) stronger than the cannabis used in the late
1960s and early 1970s"

HELEN MILLER, Flynn
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Pubdate: 1 February, 1998

LIKE SMOKING, DRUGS CAN BE BEATEN

ADAM RICHARDSON'S criticism (CT, Letters, January 30) of my letter on
cannabis (Letters, January 20) is wrong on all counts.

That cannabis is 1-15 times stronger than the marijuana used in the 60s and
70s was a basis for "major health concerns" expressed in the 1993 'Handbook
of Medical Practioners and other Health Workers on Alcohol and Other Drug
Problems' in "my policy generation", as Mr Richardson chooses to call it. I
was largely instrumental in 'prohibiting' cigarette ads on TV, smoking in
enclosed public places, on aircraft, increasing tobacco taxes and
introducing low-alcohol beer.

The Bureau of Vriminal Intelligence Report only confirms what everybody
already knows - that the 13-year-old "harm minimisation" strategy has
failed miserably and is resulting in hundreds of deaths annually.

Any governments that don't change their drugs policy in 13 years have
become addicted to inertia and bad advice. In making smoking socially
unacceptable, under a policy of abstinence, supported strongly by
appropriate prohibition, snoking rates fell from 75 per cent in 1947 to
about 27 per cent in 1997. This policy will work against all illicit drugs,
if adopted.

Thankfully lives are being saved by new treatments like Naltrexone based on
the commonsense policy that it is better and cheaper to make people
opiate-free than have them legally or illegally addicted indefinitely.

COLLIS PARRETT. Former Deputy Director, Drugs of Dependence, Commonwealth
Department of Health
and Member Drug Watch (Australia)
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Pubdate: 4 February, 1998

TAKE DRUGS OUT OF THE HANDS OF CRIMINALS

COLLIS PARRETT (Letters, February 1) is confused about what "harm
minimisation" is.

For legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol, he trumpets the praises of his
accomplishments in prohibiting cigarette ads on TV, prohibiting smoking in
enslosed public places and aircraft, increasing taxes and introducing
low-alcohol beer. Mr Parrett should know that these are all harm
minimisation strategies.

And yet he also says that the "13-year-old harm-minimisation strategy has
failed miserably and is resulting in hindreds of deaths annually".

These deaths are largely from heroin, not cannabis, as the reader might
think, but the increase in deaths commenced from 1954 when prohibition was
introduced, not 1986 when the policy of harm minimisation on drugs was
introduced.

Successful harm-minimisation strategies such as those for alcohol and
tobacco have not been implemented for cannabis because of the complications
of prohibition.

Cannabis may well have become stronger over the past 40 years. But where
are the strength warnings for the 31 per cent of Autralians who use
cannabis? Just as the strength of alcohol in beer is identified, wouldn't
it be better if strengths of cannabis were also identified? But this is
difficult while the market is regulated by organised crime.

The best harm-minimisation strategy would be to have drugs regulated by
democratically elected governments, not organised crime.

M McCONNELL, Higgins
-

Pubdate: 6 February, 1998, for the following two letters.

TOBACCO POLICY GOOD FOR OTHER DRUGS TOO

IT IS a shame that Colliss Parrett, (Letters, February 1) does not realise
that the policies he advocates for tobacco are based on the
harm-minimisation concept that he so strongly opposes for other drugs.

If he had applied prohibition to tobacco we would have seen an expanding
black market, people in jail for not being able to conquer their addiction
and increased corruption. It would simply mean more harm.

Instead, people like me have worked to minimise harm bu regulating tobacco,
limiting availability, reducing the number of places where smoking is
allowed and by restricting advertising.

Similarly when I introduced legislation to decriminalise cannabis and when
I first proposed the ACT heroin trial in 1990, I was seeking to reduce harm
to individuals and to the society as a whole.

The Australian harm-minimisation policy has been spectacularly successful
in reducing deaths without increasing drug use when compared to the US
policy of prohibition.

Despite huge resources expended on their drug war, US and Australian usage
rates are almost identical except for much higher use of cocaine in the US
and our slightly higher use of amphetamines.

However, the US has had an overwhelmingly bigger HIV/AIDS epidemic.

MICHAEL MOORE, ACT Legislative Assembly
-

CANNABIS IS NOT STRONGER NOW

HELEN MILLER repeats the discredited myth that cannabis today is markedly
stronger than the cannabis used in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Letters,
January 30).

This myth is the result of bad data. The researchers who made the claim of
increased potency used as their baseline the THC content of marijuana
seized by police in the early 1970s. Poor storage of this marijuana in
evidence rooms without air-conditioning caused it to deteriorate and
decline in potency before any chemical assay was performed.

Contemporaneous independent assays of unseized "street" marijuana from the
early 1970s showed a potency equivalent to that of modern "street" marijuana.

Actually the most potent form of this drug that was generally available in
the USA was sold legally in the 1920s and 1930s by the pharmaceuticaal
company Smith-Klein, under the name "American Cannabis".

PETER WATNEY, Holt