JUST TELL HIM HE'S DREAMING

WHEN Premier Bob Carr was hit with headaches recently, it's fair to
suggest that he did not smoke a couple of cones or squat beneath a
spinning crystal under a mouldy kangaroo skin, sniffing smouldering gum
leaves in the hope of a cure.

Nor, it is safe to assume, did he ask for leeches or hot cups to be
placed upon his person or for a New Age person to inspect either the
irises of his eyeballs, his celestial aura or the entrails of freshly
slaughtered cockerels, goats or virgins.

No, he wheeled himself into the office of an orthodox general
practitioner who recommended a conventional ear-nose-and-throat
specialist and he was booked into a private hospital for run-of-the-mill
day surgery.

With the assistance of the usual modern medical techniques, X-rays and
local anaesthetics, his minor problem was successfully dealt with and he
was soon on his way home.

No real wackiness there.

Yet it would seem that the quacks and wackos have his ear when it comes
to the approval of marijuana for so-called medicinal purposes despite
all the available scientific evidence that dope does not possess more
efficacious, if mystical, properties than currently available
pharmaceuticals.

After organising the stacked drug summit and collapsing before the
mendacious arguments of the pro-drug lobby, the Carr Government has
already approved, without a skerrick of scientific evidence, expenditure
on a legal shooting gallery designed primarily to facilitate the use of
illegal drugs.

It has not, as Mr Carr persists in saying, merely approved a ``trial''
because the Health Department has consistently said the clinic's
approach is ``quasi-experimental''.

Nor will the ``trial'' by its very nature produce reliable data to prove
whether the shooting gallery decreases the numbers of deaths, provides a
gateway into treatment for addiction or reduces public injecting and
discarded syringes.

Now Mr Carr has signalled that on compassionate grounds he may authorise
sufferers to grow perhaps five marijuana plants annually to relieve
acute pain and nausea.

His views on this topic were sought by The Sydney Morning Herald, a
major supporter of the pro-drug lobby, after the US Supreme Court
unanimously rejected such decriminalisation of marijuana use, finding
``that marijuana has no medical benefits worthy of an exception (outside
the confines of a government-approved research project)''.

THE decision leaves open however the defence of medicinal necessity and
though there is no definitive scientific research that the drug works,
or works better than legal alternatives, the Herald and Mr Carr want to
give it a shot.

It should be noted that while the flaccid Fairfax flagship devoted a
prominent column to pushing its pro-drug agenda yesterday it failed to
carry another somewhat more important report released the previous day,
which found that marijuana is rapidly replacing petrol sniffing and
alcohol as the scourge of remote Aboriginal communities.

According to consultant psychiatrist Dr Rob Parker, marijuana, or ganga,
as it is known among Northern Territory Aboriginals, is responsible for
the increase in endemic violence and theft in remote settlements and
could also be a possible link to an alarming increase in Aboriginal
suicide and a drastic rise in the number of Aborigines admitted to Royal
Darwin Hospital suffering psychosis from substance abuse, mood disorder
and unknown causes.

The number of Aborigines admitted with this diagnosis increased from 23
in 1995-96 to 104 last year.

``What appears to be happening in the territory is that we're getting
increasing rates of Aboriginal people with psychosis from other things
which is probably marijuana-induced,'' Dr Parker told AAP.

``We're getting increasing numbers of young Aborigines admitted with
depression and we're also getting increasing rates generally of suicide
in Aboriginal communities.

``Whether there's a direct causal relationship between marijuana and
suicide is not known but my argument is that they're probably branches
off the same trunk.

``If you get someone from a community who feels alienated, generally
anxious and vulnerable, he's probably self-medicating that anxiety with
marijuana and is vulnerable to suicide,'' he said.

Giving dope growers the medicinal stamp of approval seems to be the
wrong way to go, but perhaps Mr Carr should investigate the use of
cannabis in pill form to prevent any possible abuse of a self-help
home-grower scheme.

The Nimbin pro-dope lobby, whose marijuana cafes were the target of a
very successful and wholly commendable police action earlier this week,
won't like it but offering dope pills only on prescription to those who
claim to need it would go some way toward sorting out the genuine pain
sufferers who might get some benefit from grass from those dope users
who are just pains in the arse.