Now Here's A Shock, Cannabis Users Not Motivated To 'Get Clean'

NSW Auditor-General Wants Cannabis User Registered, Monitored As Criminals

By Darryl Mason

Can the Murdoch media's coverage of cannabis get any more cliched?



For tabloid media so obsessed with celebrities, it seems curious indeed they wouldn't use this opportunity to run a photo of a celebrity cannabis user, rather than a random 'cannabis enthusiast' that reinforces decades old cliches.

Here's just a small sample of celebrities they could have included a photo of as a 'cannabis enthusiast' :

Lady Gaga, Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino, George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Pink, Carl Sagan, US President Barack Obama, US President Abraham Lincoln, US President George Washington, Queen Victoria, Stephen King, Sting, Nobel Prize Winner Francis Crick, Bill Gates, Bill Murray, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Guy Pearce, Jennifer Aniston....

So why no celebrity 'cannabis enthusiasts' to detail a story such as this? Particularly in this all important clickbait age of tabloid media?

Because as a tabloid newspaper editor you must never, never, never associate successful, famous, accomplished people with cannabis use. That's just the way it is.

From the Daily Telegraph :

Dope smokers are making a mockery of lenient cannabis laws in NSW by refusing to undertake drug counselling when caught using marijuana.

The system - where police officers can formally caution people found with 15 grams or less of cannabis - has become so useless, according to the NSW Auditor-General Peter Achterstraat, that police should be harder on users.

Despite issuing 39,000 cautions in 10 years, Mr Achterstraat said "more needs to be done to increase the number of cannabis offenders getting help for their drug use".

Not only should police crack down on dope smokers, but the Auditor-General says the Health department should set up a register of users to help identify addicts and help them get cleaned up.

"The results are better for people cautioned a second time, with almost 38 per cent calling the helpline for the mandatory education session."

I wonder if the "mandatory education session" includes lessons on how cannabis can reduce the growth of lung cancer tumors by 50%?

Probably not.

Attached to this story about Nimbin, by Mandy Sayer in The Australian, is this block of ads :



Who knew you could advertise better ways to grow an illegal crop in such a bastion of conservatism?

Blaze on, Boomers, blaze on.

Cannabis : The Best Way NOT To Get Mixed Up With Heavy Drugs

Another War On Drugs myth destroyed, but don't expect it to drop out of common usage by most of the mainstream media anytime soon. Particularly those who rely heavily on pharmaceutical advertising dollars....which is most of them :

92% Of Australians Don't Enjoy The Trailor Park Boys And Bacon Dipped In Chocolate

The Daily Telegraph :



"Demon weed"?

This sort of thing was done so much better in the 1940s :

We Told Them Everything!

In 1977, Voyager 1 & 2 were set loose into the solar system. Voyager 1 is now 10 billion miles from home, and sometime in the next few years will reach interstellar space. Both spacecraft contain copies of The Golden Record, gold-plated discs filled with information about where Earth is located in the Milky Way galaxy, how our genitals work, far too much info about human DNA and various images of humanity at play and at work, and a selection of spectacular locations from across the planet.



One of those images is of Heron Island (image 41 in this collection)



Another shows the Sydney Opera House (image 95)



Maybe it's the booze-alternative talking, but I think that is monumentally cool.

It's possible that long after the Earth has been burned to a cinder by the death of our Sun, those images of Australia, and the greetings of Earthlings from more than 100 nations, will still be floating through the galaxy (fuel sources are expected to expire around 2020), waiting for something to find them, to fire up the disc player, push the right button and to learn all about our species, who we were, what we did and how we once dreamed of something bigger than ourselves and our petty squabbles that seem to consume too much of the lives we live on this little blue-green planet.

UPDATE : Carl Sagan says it all so much better :



I'm on a bit of a Carl Sagan jag at the moment, which never fails to refresh the mind and refill the well of wonder that can get a bit dry sometimes.

Carl Sagan On Cannabis : There Is A Religious Aspect To Some Highs

"Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds.

"When I'm high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time."

.

Children Of The Bong


Children in Jamaica sharing cannabis (photo source)

News.com.au runs this story and opens it up for debate in comments. The story :

Parents in an impoverished western Sydney suburb are plying children as young as six with cannabis to "keep them quiet", a leading children's charity has revealed.

Counsellors at the Mount Druitt branch of the renowned Ted Noffs Foundation say the disturbing practice is becoming a trend.

"We are seeing six-year-olds being given bongs by their families to keep them quiet, stop them crying, or put them to sleep," clinical psychologist Michael Kirton said.

The debate :

"I'm staggered to read this. Humankind is surely becoming the scourge of this planet and the sooner humans become extinct, the better off the world we be."

"You might as well just hand them over to the drug-dealer."

"....thats great...grow your children up with a drug addiction. It may calm them down, but wait 10 years and they will be bouncing off the walls if they dont have it constantly. Mt Druitt, what do you expect."

That's downright Westist.

"...find the suggestion of a 6-y-o smoking a bong to be highly doubtful. It's not as easy as it sounds; believe it or not, smoking a bong requires coordination to make it work at all."

"seriously, no way a six year old could smoke a bong. They'd be parachuting it and burning holes in the carpet."

"....that's my tax you're getting your kids stoned with."

"Ban Orchy bottles!!"

Everyone's a comedian when six year olds are allegedly punching cones in Mt Druitt.

Cannabis Causes Schizophrenia....Just More Drug War Propaganda?

By Darryl Mason

The reality has been set for millions of parents, by a steady stream of Reefer Madness-style tabloid headlines and talkback radio fearmongering, that their 15 year old kid occasionally sharing a joint with friends is running a very dangerous risk of triggering the onset of schizophrenia, suicidal downward spirals or an even worse range of psychoses that will inevitably, irrevocably, tear families and lives apart.

The Smoking Pot Leads To More Dangerous Drugs myth was dismissed years ago, but the Will My Cannabis Smoking Daughter Go Psycho? replacement has proven to be a very powerful PR tool for the cannabis prohibitionists.

But just how true are those original claims that cannabis = schizophrenia/psychosis?

A new study in the UK has cast doubt on the supposed link between cannabis use and schizophrenia.

But at least one Australian researcher says the study needs more evidence.

Professor Joseph Rey of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney, whose previous research has identified a link between cannabis and schizophrenia, is sceptical of the study's results.

"Not showing that there is a link does not mean there is no link," he says.

.........okay.

"...the evidence suggesting that cannabis use does increase the risk of schizophrenia is quite strong. We need more evidence to counteract what we already know."

More evidence.....

This latest study, led by Dr Martin Frisher of Keele University, examined the records of 600,000 patients aged between 16 and 44, but failed to find a similar link.

(The authors) point out that "although using cannabis is associated with a greater risk of developing psychosis, there is also evidence of increased cannabis use following psychosis onset."

According to the study, cannabis use in the UK between 1972 and 2002 has increased four-fold in the general population, and 18-fold among under-18s.

....the researchers found no increase in the rates of schizophrenia and psychosis diagnosis during that period. In fact, some of the data suggested the incidence of these conditions had decreased.

"This concurs with other reports indicating that increases in population cannabis use have not been followed by increases in psychotic incidence."

The Full Story Is Worth A Read

Alex Wodak, director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent's Hospital, wrote in the Melbourne Age, that the 'War On Drugs' has, ultimately proved to be a failure, and a full and proper debate about drug prohibition in Australia is now overdue :

It is now clear that support for a drug policy heavily reliant on law enforcement is dwindling in Western Europe, the US and South America, while support for harm reduction and drug law reform is growing.

Wodak turns back to the century old origin of the 'War On Drugs' :

One hundred years ago, the US convened the International Opium Conference. This meeting of 13 nations in Shanghai was the beginning of global drug prohibition.

Prohibition slowly became one of the most universally applied policies in the world. But a century on, international support for this blanket drug policy is slowly but inexorably unravelling.

Wodak cites the rapidly changing attitudes across the world towards drug prohibition, as a new generation of leaders with less hysterical attitudes towards drug use, probably because so many have used them in the past with no lasting side effects, begin winding back the tired old propaganda.

In January, Barack Obama became the third US president in a row to admit to consumption of cannabis. Bill Clinton had admitted using cannabis but denied ever inhaling it. George Bush was taped saying in private he would never admit in public to having used cannabis. When Obama was asked whether he had inhaled cannabis, he said: ''Of course. That was the whole point.''

Obama has candidly discussed his drug use. ''Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow [cocaine] when you could afford it.'' He has also admitted the ''war on drugs is an utter failure'' and called for more focus on a public health approach.

In February, a Latin American drug policy commission similarly concluded that the ''drug war is a failure''. It recommended breaking the ''taboo on open debate including about cannabis decriminalisation''. The same month, an American diplomat said the US supported needle-exchange programs to help reduce the transmission of HIV and other blood-borne diseases, and supported using medication to treat those addicted to opiates.

A few more example of the changing attitudes to drug prohibition, cited by Wodak :

....a national Zogby poll in the US provided evidence of changing opinion on the legalisation of cannabis: 52 per cent supported cannabis becoming legal, taxed and regulated.

In Germany, the federal parliament voted 63 per cent in favour to allow heroin prescription treatment.

In July, the Economic and Social Council, a UN body more senior than the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, approved a resolution requiring national governments to provide ''services for injecting drug users in all settings, including prisons'' and harm reduction programs such as needle syringe programs and substitution treatment for heroin users. This month, Mexico removed criminal sanctions for possessing any illicit drug in small quantities while Argentina is making similar changes for cannabis.

Portugal, Spain and Italy had earlier dropped criminal sanctions for possessing small amounts of any illicit drug, while the Netherlands and Germany have achieved the same effect by changing policing policy.

It is now clear that support for a drug policy heavily reliant on law enforcement is dwindling in Western Europe, the US and South America, while support for harm reduction and drug law reform is growing. Sooner or later this debate will start again in Australia.

The real debate will begin here, and soon, but we will first have to endure the blathering of the usual old cliche-spouting, fear-churning gatekeepers of drug prohibition in the Australian media, who will cite a handful of cases where drug use has destroyed lives while ignoring the many millions who have experimented with drugs of all kinds and suffered no long-lasting damage, to their health, their family lives, or their careers. Well, those who didn't get arrested anyway.

The winding back of drug prohibition in Australia is likely to be an occasionally ugly and misinformation-plagued debate, but a necessary, long-overdue one.

I'd imagine that cannabis, at least, will be all but legalised in Australia within a few years, if only because so many Baby Boomers already prefer it as an alternative to side effect-heavy pharmaceuticals when it comes to tamping down all those aches and pains of growing old, and vote-powerful Boomers simply won't tolerate being hassled, or fined, by the police for blowing scuds on the back lawn of their nursing homes.

Police Enjoy Excellent Free Rock Festival At Byron Bay With Smiling Happy People

By Darryl Mason

The NSW government missed yet another golden opportunity to raise a couple of hundred dollars in taxes over the weekend.

More than 200 people were caught with drugs at the Splendour in the Grass music festival...

Out of a crowd of 17,500 people. In Byron Bay. At a music festival where the Hilltop Hoods, Happy Mondays and Living End were playing.

One-hundred-and-twenty people were ordered to face court on drug charges, while another 89 were let off with a caution for having cannabis.

From the cautions issued by police to "Shit! I can't believe I left that in my pocket!" cannabis carriers at some of the festivals this year, it would appear you can get busted with no more than two cigarette-sized joints and not get fined, or have to turn up at court.

Police should ditch the cannabis 'cautions' altogether and thank the festival goers for not getting violently fucked out of their minds on alcohol. Ask a police officer who'd they'd rather deal with : a giggling kebab-obsessed cannabis user, or someone so savagely drunk and fired with aggro that even a taser to the nuts doesn't wind them down.

Put it this way, there are few, if any, cannabis-related glassings.

If the NSW government granted a permit to music festival organisers so vendors could, under police supervision, sell, say, two moderately strong joints, or happy cookies, to each ticket holder over 18, taxed at the same rate the government taxes alcohol sales, at least $200,000 would have been raised.

Similar rules for drink driving would also apply to cannabis imbibers.

The majority of people who now attend expensive music festivals don't want to bucket a quarter ounce in an afternoon, or get blitzed on scuds the size of wallpaper rolls. They want a couple of puffs, or a few bites of a brownie, to help kick the music along.

Then Wayne Swann and Malcolm Turnbull could sway together at Simon & Garfunkel without being criminals.

Sir Joseph Banks: Yes, I Can Score You Some Excellent Hash by Darryl Mason

Sir Joseph Banks : Yes, I Can Score You Some Excellent Hash

By Darryl Mason

Sir Joseph Banks, the father of colonial Australia, explorer, botanist, naturalist, grower of "luxuriant" cannabis plants in theNSW settlement of the early 1800s and drug dealer to English poets of the Romantic era.




Today, Sir Joseph Banks would be labelled a drug dealer.

In England, in 1803, Thomas Wedgwood was growing ever more curious about this drug called Hashish. He simply had to try some for himself. This was the era of English Romantics, and getting completely mangulated on new drugs in the name of Art, inspiration or revelation, was not so frowned upon. Clubs were formed at the height of English (and Australian) society for exactly these kind of experiments in appreciating how other, more ancient, cultures got high.

Thomas Wedgwood was sure his friend the Romanticist poet Samuel Coleridge would know where to get on. And Coleridge, lover of all reality-redefiners, did know where to get Hashish. He turned to his friend Joseph Banks.

Banks, being a botanist, and a friend to the Royal Family, located some quality bhang and forwarded it to Wedgwood and Coleridge with a note saying the cannabis resin-rich substance was popular across the East, particularly with "Criminals condemned to suffer amputation", and that the effects of Hashish included "almost frantic exhilaration."

Presumably that was an observation based on personal experience.

Interestingly, Joseph Banks was a firm believer that Hashish was, or was a constituent of, Nepenthe, the fabled drug of Homeric legend, "the one that chases away sorrow".

The above was drawn from Marcus Boon's book, The Road To Excess, and the Collected Letters of Samuel Coleridge (pub. 1956, Oxford University Press)
Sir Joseph Banks is now, not surprisingly, very popular with Australian Cannabis historians and hemp activists :

1788: Sir Joseph Banks, the man who sent hemp seeds on the First Fleet and recommended the scheme for a convict and hemp colony, must be claimed as hemp's historical Australian Godfather. He frequently supplied seed to prospective growers to encourage production in British colonies, such was the need of the times with hemp a vital military resource for seafaring nations like Britain.

1802 : NSW's governor wrote Banks that he had sown 10 acres of "Indian hemp seeds" that grew "with utmost luxuriance, generally from six to ten feet in height." The governor and Banks did not seem to know that CannabisIndica was any different from European hemp.

1808 - 1814: Shortage of hemp in Britain due to Napoleon's blockade. Colonies encouraged to produce hemp.

And here :

Even before Australia was claimed by England, British farmers grew hemp. Around the same time that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were growing hemp in the American colonies, Sir Joseph Banks made himself "the father of Australia" by being the first British official to suggest that convicts be sent to settle Australia.

Father Joseph was also a hempster. He and other British leaders said cannabis was the most important seed to be carried on seafaring exploration-conquest journeys, because hemp was essential to the survival of the British navy. They speculated that Australia would be an ideal "hemp colony."

Officials in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) grew thousands of acres of hemp during the 1800's.

And here you can read a remarkable take on our history which basically claims Australia was founded all but solely to grow hemp when American hemp farmers, including Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, revolted against England's rule of the American colonies and cut off England's hemp supplies :

The production of hemp (cannabis Sativa) was one of the prime motivators for the Anglo - European colonisation of the continent that became known as Australia.

Britain's economy and security was almost entirely dependent on the traditional hemp plant, Cannabis sativa. At the end of the middle ages, improved ship design and sail configurations required stronger sails. Hemp was the strongest natural fibre known to man. By using Cannabis, the strongest sails could be made for longer voyages.

Cannabis was as important to the economy of the Age of Exploration as fossil fuel oil is to the economy of the military industrial complex of the western world today. Furthermore, Cannabis retained its importance as a strategic raw material for over 400 years, until the development of steam shipping in the mid to late nineteenth century.

All of the European powers with settlements in the New World (American colonies) were particularly interested in growing hemp and laws were made stipulating that the recipients of land grants in the new colonies must devote a portion of their land and labour to growing hemp. All trade depended on it and all naval military strategy was equally reliant on a steady and secure supply of hemp.

The British colonies in the Americas lived up to their promise in securing Britain a supply of strategic raw materials and a wealth of trade and commerce. By the late 1700s a major ship-of-the-line in the British navy required 80 tons of Hemp in sail and rope, this equated with 350 acres of hemp production. The sails and rigging had to be completely replaced every 3-4 years. Hemp production was labour intensive and a source of cheap labour proved valuable to secure a constant supply. In the southern colonies of north America, African slaves were used to produce tobacco and cotton. In the northern colonies of New England, convict labour from Britain was employed. There were no penitentiaries until the 1800s. Convicted felons were bonded as servants until they had 'paid their debt to society' through labour. By 1770 (the year Captain Cook claimed Australia for the British Empire), over a thousand convicts a year were being transported mostly to plantations in Virginia and Maryland in North America.

When the thirteen colonies in North America declared their independence from Britain in 1776, Britain was dealt a serious blow. The British lost the battle of Yorktown in 1781 and the Baltic supplies of cannabis, tar and timber were seriously diminished by the League of Armed Neutrality (an alliance of Holland and other northern European powers). With the Baltic sea route blocked and the north American Colonies lost Britain was isolated from her sources of strategic raw materials. No Cannabis: No Canvas. No Canvas: No trade.

Britain desperately fought to regain control of the American colonies but to no avail. 1783 saw their final defeat and the British Navy and nation was in a desperate situation when proposals to found a colony in the distant land of 'New South Wales' began to appear at the Home Office.

The decision to found a colony in Australia was not an easy one. Australia was in an almost unknown part of the planet on the other side of the earth. Sailing time was about 6 months and it was considered by most people to be to far away to be a useful or reliable supply route for such important strategic materials.

Two of the major lobbyists for the founding of a colony in New South Wales were Sir Joseph Banks and James Matra (aka Magra). Both Banks and Matra had travelled on the Endeavour with Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook.

James Matra was an American loyalist. His family had lost their land and wealth in the War of Independence and formed part of a group in London who had lost everything by their loyalty to the British Crown. They lobbied to be compensated, if not by money then by being allocated land in other British colonies. JamesMatra's first proposals were to found a colony in New South Wales to be farmed under a plantation system by American loyalists and their bonded convict servants. Of course the colony would produce strategic raw materials for the British nation...producing hemp.

Sir Joseph Banks was a major influence in the direction and design of British policy. His fame, reputation, friendship with King George and Presidency of the Royal Society gave him profound influence. One of his main interests was the promotion of growing hemp as a strategic raw material for the British Navy within the British colonies.Sir Joseph gave a bag of hemp seeds as a gift to the First Fleet in 1788. A letter received by Joseph Banks from the East India Company in 1801 shows that he was still handing out bags of hemp seeds in the Australian colonies 13 years later.

If only they'd taught us that history of colonial Australian when we were in high school, we would have paid more attention.

Joseph Banks would certainly seem a fine and upstanding icon for Australia's growing anti-cannabis prohibition and pro-hemp movement.

We're Not As Stoned As We Thought We Were

Even Media Watch has noticed that stories about cannabis, and cannabis users, pull the eyeballs - half-closed, slightly bloodshot, reality-redefining eyeballs.

They take a look at the statistics behind these extraordinary claims from a recent story in the Sydney Morning Herald :

"One in three people have used marijuana and about one in six are addicted..."

"...up to a quarter of people aged over 30 were smoking cannabis weekly and one in five were smoking it daily."

Media Watch rewrites the lead, based on a more accurate interpretation of the 2004 National Drug Strategy Household Survey statistics the Herald used for its story :

"The 2004 National Drug Strategy Household Survey found that one in 25 people aged between 30 and 39 were smoking cannabis weekly and one in 30 were smoking it daily."

Well, that reality check isn't going to help the daily commuting, daily stoned paranoidians to mellow out now, is it?

When they thought One In Six Australians Were Addicted To Cannabis, and were smoking it daily, they knew could relax on the bus or the train, even when they were forced to sit facing the rest of the commuters, because, well hell, the odds were that out of the 30 or 40 people sharing the train carriage or bus, there had to be at least six or seven pot junkies struggling not to giggle or become overwhelmed with brain-freaking revelations just like they were.

But now they know, thanks to Media Watch, that their original paranoia was in fact correct. They really might be the only one in that bus or train carriage, after all, who is blasted to the Kuiper Belt, and everyone really is staring at them, and knows, yeah they all know, just what kind of 'special cookie' accompanied the morning coffee.

More From Media Watch

"I Know I Left It Somewhere In The Shed About Five Years Ago..."

By Darryl Mason

The Murdoch media's The Punch is worth checking out, and it will be (to media watchers anyway) fascinating to see how it evolves in the months ahead. It seems to have gotten off to a pretty decent start.

Eventually, if it survives and thrives, The Punch will become a test site for Rupert Murdoch's hilariously ill-fated fantasy to try and get people to pay to read what he hasn't paid anyone to write.

But is there something more suspect going on over there?

A conspiracy-minded friend, now living in England, thinks yes.

"Hey, I checked out that website you sent me the link for."
"Rate My Bourbon Vomit Wall Paintings?" I asked.
"No, the other one."
"The Punch."
"Yeah, The Punch."
"Yeah? What did you reckon?"
"S'Alright. It's a Murdoch thing, isn't it?"
"Yeah," I said.
"So where's all the tits?"
"........what?"
"There's no tits. It's Murdoch, and no tits."
"This is Australia," I sad. "Rupert's mum doesn't let him run photos of some 18 year old girl's tits in his Australian media."
"Oh."
"So did you read any of it?"
"Yeah, a bit. If it's not going to have tits on it, it needs more sports and movies stuff, somewhere I can say how much fucking arse Terminator 4 sucked."
"I think The Punch is supposed to become like the Blog Discussion Of The Nation or something like that.I think they have higher aspirations than running an open thread on 'Terminator 4 : How Much Does This Movie Suck Arse?"
"Yeah? Well, good luck to them....There's something else, though. It's weird."
"What's that?" I asked.
"It made me want to go back to smoking pot."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"The Punch. That website. I looked at it, and I thought, 'Fuck me, I'm suddenly hanging to punch down some brekkie cones'."
"I don't think you can blame some website for those thoughts, can you?"
"Yeah, I can. Maybe it's subliminal or something, but just after I looked at it, I'm thinking about which geezer at my local might be good to score some hash off and if I still had my old bong kicking around in the shed somewhere."

Ridiculous you say? Perhaps. But what about these screenshots from The Punch?






I put the following question to The Punch editor David Penberthy at Twitter :



I'll update on any replies from 'Penbo'.

Dozens Of Police Harass Old Hippies, Young Stoners For Minimal Result

By Darryl Mason

At least 25 police and four sniffer dogs were used to seize "a small amount" of cannabis from punters hanging around the Enmore Theatre for a Sydney gig last week by Cheech & Chong.

That's more than $70,000 of police resources to seize what was probably less than a half ounce of cannabis, by searching some 50 people and delaying the start of the show :

A New South Wales Police spokeswoman confirmed the drug operation was conducted in an area that included a nearby railway station and licensed premises near the theatre.

...six people were caught in possession of small amounts of cannabis.

The six were issued with caution notices. They were not fined nor charged.

Police like searching stoners. They rarely put up a fight, the intense paranoidia in those they pat down is good for giggles with other cops later, and stoners all but never pull knives or guns or start screaming and spitting in their faces.

Two dozen cops, four drug dogs? Thank Christ, crime has dropped in Sydney to the point where police have nothing better to do than to go searching for small amounts of cannabis amongst Cheech & Chong fans in Newtown and Enmore bars. The most surprising result would be if they found nothing at all.

Anyway, what Cheech & Chong fan would go out in public carrying large amounts of cannabis, or any other drug for that matter? If they learned anything from C & C albums and movies, it's do your drugs before you go out.

A grumbly, but also excellent, four word review of the Cheech & Chong show from The Australian :

Their material is appalling....

That's why the audience made so much noise, and laughed so loud. Cheech & Chong should add that line on their tour poster.

More from The Australian :

Sure, I remember when a poster of a larger-than-life spliff was revolutionary and fun. But now a new young audience hoots and sings along, and takes pictures of each other in front of the tour logo, and queues at the end to buy the merchandise. What is going on here?

They think Cheech & Chong are funny? They understand it's a joke? They know the difference between bitterly dreamed-out, rapidly aging ex-hippie boomers and two very successful stoners who sold millions of albums and crafted some of the most successful comedy movies in history?

Should these young Cheech & Chong fans be out binge-drinking instead of sitting in a theatre watching two brilliant satirists?

The people issued with caution notices for carrying small amounts of cannabis should keep them as mementos. They might be worth something one day, on eBay at least, when cannabis prohibitions joins all the rest of the stupid, wasteful, tragic and ultimately rejected ideas of the 20th century.

Inhale The New Reality

Just about every point that Mark Morford makes here here for how cannabis can revitalise the Californian economy also applies in Australia. Something like 300,000 Australians allegedly consume cannabis on a daily basis, while another million or two will light a joint or three this weekend, or the next. All are committing a crime, and all those many millions of dollars they pay out to break the law to feel a little better will go to suspected criminals. If California could theoritically raise $5 or $7 billion a year by legaliziing and taxing cannabis, there's probably, at least, $2 to $4 billion in extra tax revenue just waiting to be scooped up and put to good use in Australia.

....could there be a better time to decriminalize/fully legalize pot? Or, more fully, to decriminalize pot, and then spread respectable pot shops and vending machines and dispensaries far and wide, instill quality control and decent oversight and then tax the living hell out of the glorious, stress-reducing goodness, as we stop wasting billions fighting its grand ubiquity and instead sink into profitable pools of warm, hazy progress? Don't you already know the answer?

Are the discussions ongoing? Are they passing the bong of possibility around the state Senate chambers? You're damn right they are. What's holding them back? Probably the usual: the negative PR, looking "soft" on crime, encouraging permissiveness, pressure from prison lobbies, and so on. Don't worry, Sacramento. Everyone's already plenty drunk/high on prescription meds trying to alleviate fears of losing their job to care about that nonsense right now. Get to it.

Is there really anyone left who doesn't already know the "War on Drugs" is a pathetic joke, an abject failure and a taxpayer nightmare, and the only reason it survives at all is to fund the CIA and fellate the prison guard unions and support a shameful prison system, and to let politicians say they're "tough on crime" so they can to deflect all those uninformed parents who relentlessly whine about pot in public schools just before dashing off a wine-tasting party to snort a nice line of Bolivian coke?

Anyone left, furthermore, who doesn't know that pot is far safer than booze, less addictive, nonviolent, more transportable, easier to light, and generally won't interfere with your ability to crawl across the carpet and lick cookie crumbs from your lover's thighs? And sure, while heavy, daily usage can make you slow and stupid and rather useless to the world, well, so can a six-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper and six hours of TV every day.

Let's phrase this grand scenario in another way: Why the hell not try it? What have we got to lose? What, we could go more broke? We could get more desperate and anxious? Fact is, economic nightmares need not breed only miserable stories of lost homes and lost jobs and shuttered businesses. They can also spawn creative solutions, innovative thinking, widespread munchies. Now is the time.

Those clips popping up on the evening news of air police carrying great armloads of very wild looking cannabis plants out of isolated rainforests are fantastic. Is there a better distributor of cannabis seeds across a large potential growing area than helicopter blades? Probably not. But it ensures that in six months or a year they can go in again and haul out another likely wild crop as the 'War On Drugs' continues along its expensive, destructive, immature and ultimately absurd path.

Seriously, What Are They Smoking?

By Darryl Mason

Who knows, maybe soon there will be a new pharmaceutical to treat this fresh, mostly unexplained and extremely dodgy sounding "syndrome" :

There is mounting evidence to support the existence of a new syndrome afflicting heavy cannabis users, after the world's first cases were found in South Australia.

Of course.

The condition "cannabinoid hyperemesis" was first identified in a group of about 20 heavy drug users in the Adelaide hills in 2004, and a new case has emerged this time in the US.

The syndrome is characterised by nausea, stomach pain and bouts of vomiting - ill effects which, oddly, sufferers say they get some relief from by having a hot shower or bath.

"Cannabinoid hyperemesis" is a terribly shit name for anything. If they want this new "syndrome" to seize the public imagination, and make those who use cannabis for medicinal purposes shift back to pharmaceuticals from paranoid fear that the next long slow sweet numbing inhale, or next crunchy bite of a delicious cannabis-rich Anzac biscuit, might turn them into people from the hills outside Adelaide, then they've got to come up with a truly catchy name.

ShowerHolic Screaming Dope Disease (SHSDD)

Toxic Pot Shower Shock Syndrome (TPSS)

Adelaide Hills Mindfuck Freakout Disorder (AHMF)

Something like that. But better.

In the US case, the sufferer had been smoking marijuana daily and in heavy doses for six years. This eventually led to bouts of vomiting lasting two to three hours daily, and this was worse after meals.

As with South Australian cases, the young man initially turned to "compulsive hot bathing behaviour" to relieve the symptoms but he was not cured until he gave up smoking cannabis altogether.

The cure is a simple one. Stop smoking so much fucking pot if it's fucking with your head and driving you to act like an insane vomiting death-wish crazed lobster.

Adelaide-based drug expert and emergency ward doctor, Dr David Caldicott, said he had seen three cases of the illness and it was possibly also under-reported by sufferers.

Possibly under-reported? There's only four known cases of it mentioned in medical literature, after widespread cannabis usage across the Middle East, China, Mexico, North America, for thousands of years. For twice the length of Christianity, cannabis has been used, and abused, and yet nobody has ever written, or reported, the symptoms of this new "syndrome" before. Unless the consumption of bong or bucket water is involved.

"We're probably seeing the tip of the iceberg in the emergency departments, it's probably far more common but far milder (in the broader community)," he said.

Little was known about how cumulative cannabis use could lead to vomiting...

Cannabis poisoned by toxic chemicals in grow rooms pushed to maximum output? Too much tobacco in the mix? Unchanged bong water that resembles watery peat moss?

Cannabis is used by hundreds of thousands of Australians, and hundreds of millions of people around the world. Daily. Where are the deaths? AIDS and cancer patients use cannabis to stop nausea, to fight the urge to vomit and to calm stomach complaints. These three benefits from absorbing cannabis are amongst the most frequently cited reasons why so many American medicinal cannabis users moved away from gut-burning pharmaceuticals to one of the world's most common weeds. It stops you feeling like you're going to vomit everything inside not nailed down.

That this new excitedly, hopefully, promoted cannabis-related "syndrome" is manifesting in heavy users the exact opposite of the well known, medically recognised, very real benefits of cannabis is utterly bizarre. And likely not true. At least in the 'syndrome" being linked to cannabis. Toxic doses of THC are all but impossible to ingest, short of drinking a wine barrel of hash oil without stopping for a nine cheeses pizza.

Whatever is going on, "cannabinoid hyperemesis" sounds downright nasty :

"Grown men, screaming in pain, sweating profusely, vomiting every 30 seconds and demanding to be allowed to use the shower. It's a very dramatic presentation."

Unfortunately it's not on YouTube.

The Daily Telegraph, and the evening tabloid TV shows, must be greatly anticipating an explosion in Crazy Sweating Screaming Projectile Vomiting Toxic Pot Syndrome (CSSPVTPS). None of them have been hooking hard into Australia's most popular natural, curiously illegal, drug recently, probably because so many of their reporters, writers and producers are themselves infrequent users of cannabis, and other drugs, and are secretly wanting to do positive, non-attack stories on pot smoking in nursing homes and terminal illness wards, and know the drug is the least dangerous, and least domestically destructive, of all those consumed recreationally by Australians.

Then again, perhaps this new, mega-cannabis consuming "syndrome" is real, dangerous and spreading.

If so, the cannabis consumed by those suffering twice a minute vomiting might turn out to be spiked with something toxic, and hallucinatory. Cannabis dosed with enough DMT would make anybody (particularly someone who didn't know they were about to get higher than God) vomit like a gushing tap, sweat profusely and demand immediate communion with healing, calming water.

If these alleged syndrome sufferers are also having mind-electrifying religious visions, then DMT spiking is likely the cause.

But still....

Smoking vast quantities of Adelaide hydro every day for endless years, probably punched from festy buckets, would turn even Tommy Chong into a gibbering freak convinced that only by immediate immersion in hot water can he stop from involuntarily puking out his lower intestine.

News.com.au : Cannabis Users 'Suffering New Syndrome'

Teenagers All Fked Up On Drugs & Booze....Well, A Few Are

Turnbull : Buckets Or Spliffs?

Malcolm Turnbull has joined a long list of once blaze-crazed state and federal politicians who have openly admitted to guffing the gungun.

"Yes, I have smoked have pot," he said...

"I think most well not most, many people have, it was a mistake to do so."

He says it was a long time ago and he would not have done it if he knew the risks at the time.

He didn't explain what the risks were. His experiences with the Assassin Of Youth certainly didn't seem to have harmed his career. It's a shame that we still live in a hypocritical tabloid media land where Turnbull would be unable to explain what he believes some of the benefits of using cannabis were, along with the risks.

So we know Turnbull once danced with rainy day women. But for a deeper insight into his personality, we need to know whether he was a purist or a hashnflash man. Did he bang down buckets or suck on fatties? Did he punch billy, or spark up a few Phillies Blunts? Was his usage confined to single schlooks or did he go chronic for weekend wastelands?

(above slang definitions here, if needed)

It'd be interesting to know Turnbull's opinion on medical marijuana, an issue of growing popularity in his Sydney electorate, in particular. Baby Boomers with arthritis, and there will be hundreds of thousands of them, will want their weed, without the risks of prosecution.

Patients Smoke 'Medical Marijuana' On Grounds Of Sydney Hospital

Will Millions Of Baby Boomers Choose To Fade Away In A Cloud Of Dope Smoke?



In the next two decades there will be more Australians over the age of 60 than under the age of 25. The Baby Boomers are hitting voluntary or forced retirement age, and health resources are likely to be extremely, perhaps dangerously, stretched as millions enter their last years and their physical and mental needs will hammer state and federal health budgets.

Hospitals will only become more overcrowded, publicly-funded pharmaceutical programs will cost billions a year, with most boomers are expected to survive well into their late 80s or early 90s, soaking up more health care resources the longer they live.

There will need to be a much greater revolution in health care in Australia to cope with the demand from Boomers, for prescription medications alone, but what if hundreds of thousands of Baby Boomers start demanding access to alternative medicines now deemed illegal?

I've been a regular patient at St Vincent's in recent years and have watched widely varying reactions from doctors when confronted with the reality of patient marijuana use.

There seems to be a "don't ask, don't tell" mentality. But I use marijuana and always want the doctors taking care of me, in and out of hospital, to be aware of it. I wait for the smoking question to tell them.

...younger doctors will much more comfortably share views on cannabis and its uses and are far more inclined to acknowledge its positive effects.

They are becoming aware, too, that baby boomers who first inhaled some 30 years ago are now demanding medical marijuana - and these doctors will have to deal with it. Few boomers want today's hydroponic horrors, the toxic response to prohibition, but rather the milder garden-grown weed of our youth.

It eased period pain back then, will it ease my arthritis pain now?

It works as well as a sleeping pill - which will I choose? And in emotionally traumatic times - valium or a cannabis cookie? And when the cancer pain comes and the surgery pain comes and you're allergic to morphine? Who will stand and refuse us?

Marijuana took the pain away, while morphine made me sick. Other hospital offerings either made me sick or didn't work.

The patients who used cannabis (I was aware of four smokers on the ward) had their own favourite spots in the hospital's garden. I was far from the only criminal in-patient. But I was the oldest. And that's the point. I'm a baby-boomer. And most of us did inhale.

There is no possibility of governments controlling marijuana use among ageing baby boomers. Many of us will choose marijuana over morphine, marijuana over valium, marijuana over blood pressure meds, marijuana for appetite. And, of course, some shameful old boomers will partake for simple pleasure.

We don't need to rake over the efficacy of cannabis yet again - the pros and cons have been articulated ad nauseum. It is a totally unsuitable drug for some people. However, almost unbelievably, few on either side of the marijuana debate are differentiating between the indoor and outdoor grown varieties of the drug. Equating today's hydro to yesterday's home grown is ludicrous. An apples with oranges comparison.

Last week Dr Wodak predicted marijuana use would exceed tobacco use in the next decade. Well, yes. That will be us baby boomers coming home to roost.

Retired Baby Boomers will become one of the most powerful political forces in Australian history, if they unite in the majority behind key issues. The pressure of their voting numbers alone will force politicians to give them just about everything they want, short of far more generous pensions and tax breaks.

If hundreds of thousands of Baby Boomers begin demanding the right to use cannabis for medicinal or even recreational purposes, politicians will eventually cave in. It may not be full legalisation, but busting hundreds of old people for anything is always a bad look. They've already proven that their public acts of dissent can shock the hell out of evening news viewers. How many half-naked elderly protests in city centres over anything could younger Australians take?

So in 2018, when your teenage son shows a curious interest in repeatedly visiting grandpa at the Happiest Nursing Home In The World, to "help him out in the garden", you will understand why.

Psychiatrist : "Australians Excel In Smoking Cannabis"

300,000 Consume Pot Daily

If you smoke dope, apparently you have a "40 per cent increased risk of developing schizophrenia", which would seem to confirm the old adage that, as Kurt Cobain put it, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you. Or perhaps it means that if a lot of people were asked to describe what being stoned is like, many psychiatrists would define their
wasted state of mind as being like that of a schizophrenic.

If some dope smokers weren't paranoid enough already, now they're being told that if they consume cannabis regularly, they double the risk of becoming schizophrenic :

A new study by psychiatrists has reviewed the latest evidence of links between cannabis use and mental illness, concluding the association is "stronger and clearer than ever".

A pot smoker is 40 per cent more likely to suffer a psychotic episode than a non-smoker, according to the review of major published international research.

And for people who smoke daily over long periods their risk is 200 per cent higher.

"On the world stage, Australians excel in smoking cannabis, so there are very many people who fit into this category," said lead researcher Dr Martin Cohen, a psychiatrist at the Hunter New England Mental Health Service.

"In fact we're number one in the world. We know now more than ever that this bodes badly for our mental health."

But presumably bodes lots of new business for the psychiatric health industry. Will we be getting a new and official branch of mental illness specifically defined as cannabis-induced schizophrenia?

A third of all Australians have smoked at least once in their life, with about 300,000 using daily.

And while all had increased their risk to some degree, there was growing evidence that genetics predisposed some people even more.

Scientists have found a gene called COMT that, when faulty, is unable to break down the brain chemical dopamine.

An overload of dopamine triggers psychosis and, as cannabis produces an excess of the chemical, people with this "fault" are vulnerable.

Between 10 and 25 per cent of the population are believed to have the faulty gene, but as yet there is no way to test for it.

Not yet. But soon. When you're entire genetic ID is databased, you'll be tagged as a potential mental health casualty if you have a faulty COMT gene, and if drug tests show you use cannabis then you'll be marked up as a more likely candidate for schizophrenia. When insurance companies are allowed to demand regular drug testing of clients, through mandatory, say, twice yearly health checks, cannabis users will be seen as far more risky to insure. If, that is, the claims made by the psychiatrists are correct.

A 2007 national drug survey of 14 to 19 year olds showed 20 per cent had ever smoked marijuana and 13.1 per cent had smoked in the last 12 months.

Professor Jan Copeland, director of the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre, said the levels of cannabis use had declined significantly since 1998, especially among school-aged Australians.

The good news about cannabis-using youth is buried in the last paragraphs. Cannabis use in general is down by a significant margin, with the highest drop in usage amongst school students.

That's great news. School students are far less interested in smoking cannabis than they were in 1998. Better video games?

It'd be interesting to see how those statistics of schizophrenic pot users break down. How many smoke joints, how many are punching breakfast cones? How many are diffusing it into cookies or cakes? How many are consuming hydroponic super-strong gear, and how many are imbibing the far more mild strains usually grown in backyards, or an isolated patch of bushland?

While the figures of schizophrenia as a result of dope abuse are frightening, the statistics overall, including the claimed 300,000 daily users, are vague and many questions remain unanswered.

Is the faulty gene more likely to be affected by hydroponic skunk, or a less brain-fuzzing 1970s-strength strain?

Do those who smoke dope regularly suffer more or less general health problems than, say, heavy drinkers?

Do heavy dope smokers drink as much alcohol, or abuse as many pharmaceuticals, as non-cannabis users?

How many consume cannabis because they believe it relieves their arthritis, their glaucoma, their AIDS symptoms, their Parkinson's tremblings, their cancer pain and lack of appetite?

Of course, one of the biggest questions that has never been answered about Australians and their mega-consumption of pot is simply : Why do so many people take it?

Do they smoke a few joints a day because it makes their lives, and minds, more stimulating, or because they're addicted to the tobacco they mix it with?

Do 300,000 Australians smoke pot every day because they are trying to block out reality, or enhance it?

Perhaps most importantly of all, how many of these 300,000 daily smokers experience side effects that make them less satisfied with their existence, reduce their ability to work, to function normally in society, to maintain close relationships with friends and family?

Pharmaceutical 'Cannabis' Trials To Begin In Australia

So it's okay to use cannabis to deal with the pain and nausea of cancer and AIDS, but only now that the drug is being supplied by a pharmaceutical company :

Doctors will prescribe cannabis-based drugs to cancer, multiple sclerosis and AIDS patients in a planned NSW Government trial.

NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher will write to Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon in the next few weeks for permission to import and trial a drug expected to be Sativex, which delivers cannabis compounds through an oral spray.

"While the Iemma Government is opposed to the legalisation of marijuana, we do support a therapeutic trial of a cannabis-based drug," a spokeswoman for Ms Meagher said.

The Australian Medical Association welcomed the trial.

"We believe medicinal cannabis may be of benefit in HIV-related wasting and cancer-related wasting," said chairman of the association's public health committee Dr John Gullotta, adding that it might also relieve nausea and vomiting in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

The Cancer Council NSW welcomed the move.

UK company GW Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of Sativex, grows cannabis then extracts cannabinoids CBD and THC. "The formulation is believed to enhance the pain relief of THC while modulating the unwanted psychotropic and other THC-related side effects, such as tachycardia [rapid heartbeat]," the company says.

It's hardly different at all from natural cannabis, with the exception that the Sativex formulation has been patented, which is something no pharmaecutical company has been able to deal with the real thing.

The support from the AMA and the Cancer Council is extremely positive for the case for medicinal cannabis, and will go a long way to tamping down the conservative hysteria that erupts every time someone dares to suggest that cannabis might actually be the wonder drug it has been claimed to be for thousands of years.

Drug Expert : Sell Cannabis At Australia Post Offices

Predicts Spliffs Will Replace Cigarettes

Hundreds of thousands of Australians will light up joints, or punch cones, this or next weekend. All of them will be breaking the law. A country originally settled for the purposes of growing industrial cannabis (hemp) two centuries ago, continues to criminalise adults who think that cannabis is a better way to unwind on Friday night than binge-drinking, and that it provides better mild pain relief than gut-burning pharmaceuticals.

But Alex Wodak, the director of alcohol and drug services at St Vincent's Hospital posits that 'cannabis use will replace cigarette consumption' in the next ten years, and it's time now for the government to get in first and make sure that criminal profiteering and police, corporate and political corruption doesn't run rampant in this new marketplace :

Cannabis would be sold legally in post offices in packets that warn against its effects under a proposal outlined by the head of a Sydney drug and alcohol clinic.

...Wodak said Australia needed to learn from the tobacco industry and the US Prohibition era in coming to terms with his belief that cannabis use would replace cigarette consumption 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."

Dr Wodak believed his idea could reduce cannabis consumption, based on comparisons between consumption in Amsterdam and San Francisco. He said regulated availability would also reduce people's exposure to other illicit drugs when buying the product. His model would make cannabis advertising illegal, ban political donations from the cannabis industry, and demand proof of age on purchase.

He chose Australia Post for distribution as it could be regulated and had branches across the country. "What I'm talking about is not pro-cannabis … it's about reducing cannabis harm."

A spokesman for the Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, said the proposal would not be considered.

Instead the federal government will back criminal records and jail sentences for Australians repeatedly caught smoking, eating or growing a weed.

Youth Drops Pot Habit In Australia

3 Out Of 4 Australians View Smoking Cannabis As "Dangerous"

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Australia was amongst the highest ranked nations in the world for cannabis use amongst its teenagers. Remarkably, in one period during the late 1990s, Australian youth smoked cannabis more regularly than similar age groups in Amsterdam, where cannabis was legally allowed to be grown and consumed in coffee shops

During that period, there was a brazen and open dope culture in Australian cities like Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney, with an entire community in the far north of New South Wales that regarded cannabis farming and sales as its primary industry.

T-shirts bearing pot icons like Cheech & Chong and Bob Marley were extremely popular in the suburbs and inner cities, as were images of the Pope John Paul II smoking a huge scud (clearly altered imagery) and in Sydney's outer west, at least, it was considered by some that the epitome of true wit was to wear a t-shirt showing Hitler giving the fascist salute with the tag line "My Plants Are This High!"

Back then, the marijuana leaf was an icon, to be found hand-drawn on school bags, tattooed onto upper arms, emblazoned across caps, jeans, t-shirts and jackets. Whole suburbs were blighted with marijuana leaf graffiti and bongs, stash boxes and joint rollers jostled for space in tobacco store display cases in shopping malls.

But a new report claims that a widely stoned Australian youth populace is a fading reality in the mid-2000s. In short, smoking a joint just ain't considered "cool" any more.

According to this study by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre one third of youth regard cannabis use as "socially unfashionable", in much the same way that cigarette smoking no longer holds the social cache it clearly once did.

"Clearly, it's not as acceptable as it once was to be stoned," said Paul Dillon, a spokesman for the centre at the University of NSW.

But the study survey also revealed that half of all Australians under 30 knew friends who smoked cannabis. The disparity between the public image of cannabis use and the numbers still using it are obviously great.

What the study seems to reveal, primarily, is that a few years worth of media stories and federal government fear campaigns about the mental health related problems associated with regular, or heavy, cannabis use has transformed the way Australians now view the drug previously, and widely, regarded as "mostly harmless".

Of the 1500 adult Australians surveyed, three in four felt smoking dope was dangerous or very dangerous, and half thought it could trigger schizophrenia or anxiety disorders.

About 40 per cent believed marijuana was always addictive, and one in five believed it was always a gateway to harder drugs. Sixty-eight per cent thought cannabis use could lead to other crimes.

"In the 1970s the people who got stoned were cool but now younger people just see a gang of guys who sit around smoking a bong, eating a pizza and watching television," Mr Dillon said.

"There's a general perception they're just 'stoners' and that's a real change."

Dillon also credits school education programs for the raised awareness amongst youth of cannabis' more troubling side effects, while federal government spokesmen prefer to credit their murky, troubled-youth advertising blitzes for the vast cultural shift.

From abc.net.au :

"We're not focusing on the long-term health effects or even necessarily the psychological effects, we're looking more at the social impacts, the way that it will affect your relationship, how will it affect your financial situation - these are the things young people really relate to," (Mr Dillon) said.

"I think we've done a pretty good job of educating, particularly young people, that getting stoned is not a particularly fun thing to do," he said.

While the public at large believes cannabis to be far more dangerous, and less socially acceptable, than they once did, there is little support for those busted with cannabis to face courts. 60% of those surveyed said people busted for cannabis use or possession "should be referred to treatment programs" instead.

The report's only bad news, said Mr Dillon, was that many beliefs people had about cannabis - like the fact it leads to harder drug use - were actually incorrect.

"Cannabis seems to polarise people which gives off a black and white impression of the drug," he said.

"It's spoken of as either God's sweet nectar or the devil's own weed but in reality it's something in between.

It should also be noted that the cannabis in wide use around Australia at the moment is extraordinarily strong compared to that of the early 1990s. And compared to the strains of the 1970s, it may as well be another drug altogether.

The increased strength of today's cannabis is due to high-volume, maximum-yield production methods associated with the mostly hydroponic crops, and the cross-breeding of extremely powerful European strains of the plant.

The strength of this generation of hydroponic cannabis has all but forced the much weaker, more naturally grown New Guinea and Indonesian strains out of the marketplace.

For a teenager smoking his or her first joint, and expecting a mellow, relaxed effect, with lots of giggling, hooking into a joint packed with THC-drenched hydroponic pot is like the difference between drinking a beer and a tall glass of vodka.

The overpowering, sometimes frightening effects of very strong hydroponic cannabis in itself must add to the current negativity surrounding the drug.

For, it seems, as cannabis in Australia has grown stronger and stronger, since the 1970s, its acceptance as a social drug of no great impact or consequence has, correspondingly, changed as well.