Shipping into Australia?

[Torsten]

do you mean act?

Ooops, sorry. Forgot that Lophs are also specifically scheduled prohibited plants in ACT.

In Qld a live plant is regarded as a 'substance' and the drug act prohibits all substances that contain scheduled substances. ie, in Qld you can be charged for possession of mescaline if you carry a Loph or Trich on you. This is different to other states, incl NSW where the scheduled'substances and any 'admixtures' are prohibited. A plant is not an admixture and hence a live plant is not prohibited purely on the basis of its content. The dried herb on the other hand IS regarded as an admixture.

In ACT the actual species Loph is listed as a prohibited plant.

[teonanacatl]

What about the growth of trichs or lophs rather then "if carry them on you"

[apothecary]

Tort, what you post here contradicts my previous understanding of the issue, please clarify because the implications are pretty huge (and probably require a new thread in legal?).

Are you really saying in QLD it is illegal to grow any plant that contains illegal substance? Or are you referring only to, for example, unrooted cuttings of Trichocereus.

[teonanacatl]

yes my point exactly...........

[incognito]

n Qld you can be charged for possession of mescaline if you carry a Loph or Trich on you.

r u serious?????

surely the powers that be cannot be going THAT insane? thiscarrys huge implications. so say i send a trich to qld, could i be charged under QLDlaw of supplying an illegal substance???

and as far as lophs being a prohibited......weed? what threat do they pose local flora and fauna???

this is very insane.

[gerbil]

Most 'weeds' you'll find are particularly relative to a real or supposed threat posed to economic loss particularly focussed in the agricultural sense.

Haven't read it for years, but from vague memory lophophora weed status was relative to grazing animals in an agricultural situation.

State by state is different, but there are many complex classifications of 'weeds'; generalising a bit, though still holds strong with our current and ongoing western mentality, environmental 'weeds' (i.e. what you are talking about, or at least a section of it) are generally a lower priority than those that pose threats to agricultural productivity.

Edited November 11, 2007 by gerbil

[Torsten]

Tort, what you post here contradicts my previous understanding of the issue, please clarify because the implications are pretty huge (and probably require a new thread in legal?).

Are you really saying in QLD it is illegal to grow any plant that contains illegal substance? Or are you referring only to, for example, unrooted cuttings of Trichocereus.

yes, that is exactly what I am saying. This is what the ACC officers that raided me stated and which is what caused a lot of confusion. The ACC officers were Qld based and familiar with Qld law and federal law, but not NSW law. They said that on the basis of Qld law they would charge me for possession of mescaline and possession of ephedrine based on the peyotes and ephedra plants I have in the nursery. The NSW state cop had no idea which is why it took an additional 2 hours to get the legal advice from the NSW Ministry of health.

Upon reading the Qld and NSW acts I can see why they can do this in Qld but not NSW. The explanation is given in my previous posts.

Yes teo, anyone can get busted in Qld for possession of mescaline if they have mescaline containing cacti in their collection. I would avoid using the names of the cacti as so far they only seem to get a hard on over Lophs.

[teonanacatl]

oh fuck time to move state!!

I take it 1g cactus containing mescaline =1 g mescaline? even going on freshweights rather than dry weights to i guess.

So since they know this I guess we should spread that information around?

Edited November 11, 2007 by teonanacatl

[Torsten]

I take it 1g cactus containing mescaline =1 g mescaline? even going on freshweights rather than dry weights to i guess.

There is a general move away from this process as I think it leaves the doors wide open for expensive appeals. In most cases these days it seems the charges are initially for the whole lot and then get reduced as the analysis becomes available [usually only mere days before the court case].

So since they know this I guess we should spread that information around?

I was told there are plenty of precendents, so I guess the smart thing to do would be to find one before advertising this as fact . I won't get time for that till the new year, but I am sure apothecary or you could help out? Forget about aksing solicitors though - they are useless when it comes to this sort of stuff.

[teonanacatl]

ive got exams so im of no use for a while. One of my lecturers said that they mentioned at a forensics confrence he went to that they were busting people for mescaline but not for pure compound but cactus.

[apothecary]

I promise to do some digging today. No exams till the 23rd.

The implications of this really are huge? No Acacia/Psychotria, cacti (probably everything falling under the analogues clause?! ), Ephedra, Banisteriopsis.

Funnily Tabernanthe is probably the least illegal of these then?

Whether law enforcement will even bother making these plants their problem is a different question but the previous line of legality will definitely have to be withdrawn.

This is really fucking outrageous!

[Auxin]

Is there a trace of DMT in Acacia pycnantha? It would be hilarious if the national flower of australia was an illegal drug that you can be arrested for growing.

[occidentalis]

Is there a trace of DMT in Acacia pycnantha? It would be hilarious if the national flower of australia was an illegal drug that you can be arrested for growing.

It would be

but even so, there are active maidenii's in QLD. That's quite a joke in itself.

[gerbil]

Whether law enforcement will even bother making these plants their problem is a different question but the previous line of legality will definitely have to be withdrawn.

I suppose that's the key thing, agenda and discretionary use of power; very scary and gives enforcement agencies the ability to pick on people they don't like / have a gripe with and or just feel the need. If this is the case, I don't see it much different from the way race is used in many situations world wide, particularly in the US, if someone in power doesn't like the look of you / doesn't like your nursery etc.

The first thing I thought of was agriculture and toowoomba canary grass.

Re: acacia pycnantha, even if not, you'd imagine there'd be large potential for some sort of B-carboline or similar.

What next, making babies is deemed as tryptamine (amongst the other wide array of substances) possession and production?

But it boggles my mind, if they take this stance then essentially everything in QLD would be illegal in one way or another, if they think biochemistry is static to a few species they are kidding themselves, but I didn't have much faith in a lot of them being well educated in reality in all honesty, more so they can only work within the confines of a set of papers which make absolutely no sense in the real world.

[Torsten]

when I explained to them that the RTA and councils would be guilty of cultivating DMT theyw ere quite stunned. I don't think they realise just how widespread these compounds are in nature. The thing is that I can't find any cases that went beyond magistrate levels. This means there is no precedent for other cases [precedents are only set by higher court, not a court of the same level]. Ray won his ephedra case a few months ago and I think this might be going into appeal. if so then we should all unite behind him because this could be the test case that is needed to bring some sense to the Qld laws. The judge said that the material he was busted with was a green herbal material and that the scheduled states 'ephedrine' which the MSDS describes a s a pure crystalline white powder. ie, she took the opposite line to what the law says. If this can be upheld in appeal then this would break the link the Qld authorities try to make between a herb and a substance. In fact it would even eliminate dried herbs from the 'admixture'/'other substances' concept that is used in other states. ie, if he wins the appeal then the government would have to specifically legislate for each and every herb or would have to change the wording of the admixture laws.

I will find out more about this in the next few weeks.

[apothecary]

Ok just from some cursory searching I could actually only find very little information.

Here are all the court cases I could find that had anything to do with any relevant psychotropic substance I could think to search.

None of them meet the criteria for being a precedent in any case about growing these plants being illegal.

http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp...A/2006/482.html

http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp...ct/1998/58.html

http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/disp.pl/...s/2005/654.html

http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp...t/1998/243.html

I checked the court pages for each state separately but all that came up was these ones which are on AustLii anyway.

[occidentalis]

http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp...A/2006/482.html

off topic, but...

The police also found two mobile phones, two sets of electronic scales, two calculators, clip seal bags and other paraphernalia which gave rise to the count on the indictment of possession of things for use in connection with the supply of a dangerous drug.

I have all those things in my house (clip seal bags are for seed collecting, scales are for cooking) and none of them are related to drug use or supply...

would this charge need a possession charge to go along with it or could they just charge someone who was in possession of those things without any drugs? (i'm presuming this is only applicable in queensland)

[apothecary]

It doesn't say where or how they were discovered. My guess is all together in one place with the drugs, otherwise I doubt they would contain calculators in that charge hehe.

If your seal bags are with your seeds, your scales with your spices, etc then you can probably say that.

I have seen and heard of a few cases where they simply test the scales for presence of drugs, or maybe go through your rubbish check for baggies and test them for drugs etc.

My findings don't really seem to mesh well with various rumours (although they might just be rumours ) has there only ever been a single court case in Australia that had anything to do with mescaline (I found one Psilocybe related case where the author of the document claimed mescaline was in Psilocybes), only one case that actually made it to court ever to do with DMT, and only in very minor amounts in both cases?

[JustAskSally]

I know this thread has strayed a little from the original topic but i was wondering if anyone out there has imported live plants into aus or tried to?? I have inported heaps of different seed the latest being brug, but have brought in heaps including Loph, trich, turbinicarpus, mamarilia, Echinocactus, Nicotonia T & R, datura M, HBWR and even a few P.C prints, and the only thing i have ever had a drama with was some funky kind of restricted salvia Xtract which was picked up by customs and subsiquently destroyed by fire (which is what i was planning anyways) and i read somewhere in this thread about having a 2%chance to make it here.. Well i strongly disagree because i have never had 1 hastle bringing in seed and now i am fairly keen to try and import a A.fissuratus plant 3" here from the states..

I read somewhere that it is the sellers or exporters responsibility to ensure that they are sending this type of thing to a country and I as an australian citizen cannot be blamed if they dont follow the right channels when exporting to a country that prohibits the importation of live material..

i.e. australian law cannot prosicute me if it is picked up before it gets to me, and it is the exporters/senders fault so they are to blame and can be prosicuted by australian law but because they live in america under american law they ultimately cannot be prosicuted...

Hope this makes sense and someone can clarify

Peace

[occidentalis]

I read somewhere that it is the sellers or exporters responsibility to ensure that they are sending this type of thing to a country and I as an australian citizen cannot be blamed if they dont follow the right channels when exporting to a country that prohibits the importation of live material..

No, it doesn't work like that

It is the recipients responsibility and you as the recipient will be charged with whatever the relevant charges are in a customs or CITES situation, or will lose your plants in a quarantine situation.

[apothecary]

I read somewhere that it is the sellers or exporters responsibility to ensure that they are sending this type of thing to a country and I as an australian citizen cannot be blamed if they dont follow the right channels when exporting to a country that prohibits the importation of live material..

You can get away with something like this maybe once, maximum. They will send you a thing explaining the situation and you have to sign it, next time they have proof you knew what the consequences were.

Edited November 12, 2007 by apothecary

[Torsten]

i am fairly keen to try and import a A.fissuratus plant 3" here from the states..

without quarantine permit you are looking at several thousand dollars fine if you get busted and it is apparent that you knew you were rbeaking the law [eg by asking the supplier to mislabel etc].

Ariocarpus is also covered by CITES as far as I know.

I read somewhere that it is the sellers or exporters responsibility to ensure that they are sending this type of thing to a country and I as an australian citizen cannot be blamed if they dont follow the right channels when exporting to a country that prohibits the importation of live material..

Wrong, it is always the importers responsibility to check the local laws. However, you are only an importer if you requested the shipment. If a supplier sends you something that you did not ask for then this is not your fault. However, the onus to prove this may be on you.

[JustAskSally]

I did receive one letter from customs once which i never signed (and was never asked to), and i would never ask the supplier to deliberately mislabel it as to get it through, Im really glad i asked here before actually going through with the transaction because i sure as hell cant afford a few thousand dollar fine, hell i cant even afford this plant (legally) that i have been so keen to add to the collection..

Ok.. So live plant's (e.g. a living cacti) is horrendously wrong to import, but with things like live plant material (seed) is generally overlooked and un-important?? Why?? I can understand that some places are have concerns with over harvesting of wild specimens and this would, to a small extent, help the situation, and also there are some pests and/or diseases that may come through with the plant, but if the seed is freshly harvested from the mother with pests or disease's wouldn't it be fair to assume that it is just as possible for these to carry with the bag of seed???

So can i be slapped with that fine for importing seed here, as seed, in my opinion, is live plant material and falls under the same laws??

Anyways thanks for the great advice all i was so close to telling him to ship it and now i think i should maybe pull my thumb out and grow 1 from seed for myself..

Peace

[Torsten]

ISo can i be slapped with that fine for importing seed here, as seed, in my opinion, is live plant material and falls under the same laws??

Why don't you read the advice provided above [re ICON database] instead of making assumption of laws that don't exist.

[JustAskSally]

K thanks Tor