'Sell dope in post offices'

[apothecary]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/sell-d...9839539291.html

Cannabis would be sold legally in post offices, in packets that warn against its effects, under a proposal outlined by the head of one of Sydney's major drug and alcohol clinics.

The director of the alcohol and drug service at St Vincent's Hospital, Alex Wodak, said Australia needed to learn from the tobacco industry and the US Prohibition era in coming to terms with his belief that cannabis would replace cigarettes in consumption levels over the next decade.

"The general principal is that it's not sustainable that we continue to give criminals and corrupt police a monopoly to sell a drug that is soon going to be consumed by more people than tobacco," he said.

"I don't want to see that [industry] fall into the hands of tobacco companies or rapacious businessmen. I'd like to see it fall into the hands of the failed businesspeople Australia seems so good at producing or the Australia Post that seems so successful in driving away customers."

Dr Wodak made the proposal for taxed and legalised cannabis at the Mardi Grass festival in Nimbin yesterday, but said he would be happy to express his opinion to the Federal Government.

"In general terms, among senior doctors, professors, deans, college presidents, I can tell you, from having done a straw poll, there's very strong support for ending the distribution of cannabis by a monopoly of criminals and corrupt police," he said.

"[but] among rank and file doctors, they probably have opinions that represent the opinions of the general community."

Dr Wodak believed his proposal could reduce cannabis consumption, based on comparisons between consumption in Amsterdam and San Francisco.

He chose Australia Post for distribution as it could be regulated and had branches spread across the country.

"What I'm talking about is not pro-cannabis, but it's not anti-cannabis," he said. "It's about reducing cannabis harm and one of those harms is police corruption."

[Conan Troutman]

'A smoking gun in the drugs debate'

Miranda Devine

May 8, 2008

Dr Alex Wodak's plan to have the Government sell cannabis in little packets at the post office wasn't just a throwaway line to a bunch of senile hippies at the Mardi-Grass festival in Nimbin last weekend.

It was part of a considered strategy by the esteemed director (for 26 years) of St Vincent's Hospital's drug and alcohol service to convince authorities to legalise marijuana and other illicit drugs.

In evidence to last year's inquiry into the impact of illicit drug use on families by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs, chaired by Bronwyn Bishop, Wodak again advocated the legalisation of cannabis, describing it as "the least-worst option".

Wodak, also president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation and the International Harm Reduction Association, asserts that more than 2 million Australians are cannabis users and thus prohibition is a losing battle.

But just because there are Australians who smoke cannabis is not a sound reason to legalise the drug, particularly at a time of mounting scientific evidence of its long-term devastating health effects, in particular its link to schizophrenia.

It is exactly the wrong time to legalise cannabis, just as its popularity among young people is diminishing, as shown by the latest Australian Secondary School Students' Use of Alcohol and Drug Survey.

Cannabis use by 12-to-15 year olds in the previous month plummeted from 15 per cent in 1996 to 6 per cent in 2005, with the percentage of 12 to 15 year olds who had ever tried cannabis falling from 28 per cent to 13 per cent. The evidence is that fewer children are even experimenting with cannabis, which is a far more potent drug today than it was when Nimbin's hippies were young.

While the 6 per cent of young teens who are monthly tokers is still a worry, the trend is distinctly downward after two decades of rising drug use.

That is a success in anyone's language and it is perverse for Wodak and others in the "helping" professions to deny that success, and pour scorn on the federal "Get Tough on Drugs" approach that underpins it, and which the Rudd Government has shown no signs of dismantling.

Rather than drug harm-minimisation advocates admitting they are wrong and that their careers up to this point were misguided, they have stepped up their attacks, describing the so-called War on Drugs as a failure and those who disagree as "zealots", "ideologues" and "evangelists". But this is the pot calling the kettle black, for what else do you call people who refuse to change their minds in the face of overwhelming evidence but zealots? Even harm minimisers admit that legalising cannabis will create more cannabis users - because the stigma associated with breaking the law will no longer apply. Thus we would expect more mental health problems.

But Wodak has minimised evidence of the link between cannabis and mental illness, both at Nimbin last weekend and to the Bishop inquiry, when he said: "Cannabis probably does not precipitate severe mental illness in people who have not been previously mentally ill."

It is irresponsible for a doctor in his position to play down serious research showing the link between marijuana and schizophrenia, and not just for those who are already psychotic.

What he is doing is no different from the tobacco industry denying the links between smoking and lung cancer.

Medical opinion is moving against him, with the journal The Lancet, on July 28 last year, recanting its 1995 editorial which claimed smoking cannabis was not harmful to health, and citing studies which showed "an increase in risk of psychosis of about 40 per cent in participants who had ever used cannabis".

Another long-term Swedish study of 50,465 Swedish Army conscripts has found those who had tried marijuana by age 18 had 2.4 times the risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia in the following 15 years than those who had never used the drug. Heavy users were 6.7 times more likely to be admitted to hospital for schizophrenia.

In a study of 1037 people in Dunedin, New Zealand, those who used cannabis at ages 15 and 18 had higher rates of psychotic symptoms at age 26 than non-users. In both studies, the link between cannabis and psychosis remained even after controlling for the possibility that people had pre-existing symptoms.

Wodak also claimed this week that cannabis "is soon going to be consumed by more people than tobacco". But the facts just don't support his assertion. According to the United Nations the number of smokers worldwide has grown, from 1.1 billion in 1998 to a projected 1.3 billion in 2010, whereas only 147 million people consume cannabis. It will take a lot of Nicorette patches before cannabis replaces tobacco as the world's most widely-smoked drug.

For a full demolition of the soft-on-drugs approach, the Bishop report is a goldmine, concluding: "The evidence received … in the course of this inquiry has shown there is a drug industry which pushes harm reduction and minimisation at the expense of harm prevention and treatment [which has as its aim] making an individual drug free."

The inquiry found the push for legalisation of illicit drugs flies in the face of overseas evidence. Sweden, once a harm minimisation pioneer, has learnt from bitter experience, adopting a restrictive drug policy, criminalising illicit drug use, and providing early intervention and treatment, with spectacular results.

Last year a UN review of Swedish drug policy found: "The vision of a drug-free society … has, on occasion, been derided as 'unrealistic', 'not pragmatic' and 'unresponsive' to the needs of drug abusers … The ambitious goal of the drug-free society has been questioned … Nevertheless … the prevalence and incidence rates of drug abuse have fallen in Sweden while they have increased in most other European countries. It is perhaps that ambitious vision that has enabled Sweden to achieve this remarkable result."

Which brings us back to Wodak. Isn't it about time that the Mercy nuns who founded St Vincent's Hospital account for their head of drug and alcohol services?

[Conan Troutman]

LINK

who else is angry?

[Yeti101]

who else is angry?

I'll put my had up for that.

I read this in the SMH today. Goddamm it, I can't stand her. She is a master of mis-information and deeply bitter now that her best buddy JH is out of office.

On the up side most people seem to ignore her.

[nabraxas]

She is a master of mis-information

so which bit is mis-informed?

Cannabis use by 12-to-15 year olds in the previous month plummeted from 15 per cent in 1996 to 6 per cent in 2005, with the percentage of 12 to 15 year olds who had ever tried cannabis falling from 28 per cent to 13 per cent.

--that?

The Lancet, on July 28 last year, recanting its 1995 editorial which claimed smoking cannabis was not harmful to health, and citing studies which showed "an increase in risk of psychosis of about 40 per cent in participants who had ever used cannabis".

--that?

Another long-term Swedish study of 50,465 Swedish Army conscripts has found those who had tried marijuana by age 18 had 2.4 times the risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia in the following 15 years than those who had never used the drug. Heavy users were 6.7 times more likely to be admitted to hospital for schizophrenia.

--that?

n a study of 1037 people in Dunedin, New Zealand, those who used cannabis at ages 15 and 18 had higher rates of psychotic symptoms at age 26 than non-users. In both studies, the link between cannabis and psychosis remained even after controlling for the possibility that people had pre-existing symptoms.

--or that?

[Yeti101]

OK, so I might have worded that a bit too strongly for my own good ( I have learn to think before I type!) She clearly didn't make those studies and their figures up. I am probably guilty of judging the content of this particular article in the light of how much she has annoyed me in the past. I'm agree (and I mean this with no sarcasm) that my last post was not at all well thought out and I probably deserve a flogging for it.

Thanks for keeping me on my toes nabraxas, some days I think I'm so clever that it's good for someone to pull me up and remind me that not every whim and emotive reaction I have is pure gold just because I was the one thinking it. Please consider me firmly chastised.

Back to Miranda, I was more disappointed that on the same day that research comes out that showed alcohol as being even more dangerous, she chose to attack cannabis. I might add that she has defended alcohol in the past, claiming or at least implying (if my memory is correct) that it is the least dangerous drug one can indulge in. The content and nature of the studies she cited, in both cases, or how selective she was in choosing them is probably worth looking at, preferably by someone with some expertise rather than just opinion (ie not me).