TRICKERY AND PAIN ON A GRAND SCALE

A VISITOR can negotiate to buy illegal drugs within five minutes of
arriving on the Gold Coast. This simple fact, revealed in today's special
investigation by the Weekend Bulletin, typifies the shameful state of
affairs in a city most of us regard as paradise.

Illegal drugs have cast a pall over this sunshine capital. They have become
entrenched in a society know for its fun. In fact, they feed off the fun.

Our crime and punishment survey - also released today - indicates a
significant number of Gold Coasters have tried illegal drugs or have been
approached by a drug dealer at some point in their lives. So we are no
longer dealing with a peripheral problem. Encountering drugs, buying drugs,
or becoming addicted to drugs is no longer a matter of chance or a slim
possibility.

One might expect a law-abiding and decent society - such as is found on the
Gold Coast - to react with outrage at this seeping poison around us, but
there are signs of acceptance . . . even approval . . . of so-called
recreational drugs. Forty per cent of our crime and punishment recipients
have tried marijuana and almost 10 per cent have variously tried cocaine,
ecstacy, LSD or amphetamines. In another measure, it was found only 17 per
cent of people would report drug-dealing neighbours to police.

It can be supposed from this that many people are either stupid or
blissfully ignorant of the damage caused by drugs. They have tried
substances that any intelligent person knows are damaging to the mind and
body and they don't mind neighbours selling these chemicals to children.

Yet such widespread devil-may-care jousts with danger are not unusual. The
beautiful northern New South Wales village of Nimbin, once hailed as the
sublime resting place for 'soft' drug followers, now plays host to one of
the largest collections of hard drug users in the nation.

The lesson about the perils of drugs has come at an incredible cost.

The problem is that, incrementally, drugs have gained a highly idealised
reputation as a path of emotional release in modern times. This romantic
view, pedalled hard by the marijuana traders of Nimbin and the amphetamine
salesmen of the Gold Coast night scene, rarely includes the awful down side
of their seedy trade. What the young consumers get to hear is nowhere near
the truth.

The street dealers, the drug cooks and the interstate runners selling from
the boots of their cars tend not to talk to their young customers about
deaths, about scrambled minds, about armed robbery, about family heartbreak
or about the agony of withdrawal. They claim to sell excitement, but their
retail trade provides only misery.

This trickery and treachery takes far too many good young people out of
society's loop on the Gold Coast. Drugs rob them of their decency and their
will to pursue better things.

Dramatic instances of drug overdoses in public places are just one symptom
of the malaise caused by amphetamines, ecstacy and other 'recreational'
drugs. Most of the symptoms are hidden in the disintegration of young
minds, in the anxiety of parents and in the fear of shopkeepers facing
crazed young bandits.

This rolling tragedy must stop. Round up the dealers, the manufacturers and
the organisers and throw them in jail. Then send the message out loud and
clear to every corner of society: Drugs are a con trick. Don't fall for it.