GOING TOUGH ON GRASS USERS

THE best of intentions can go awry, the South Australian Government is
learning as its police force turns up the heat on its decriminalised
marijuana laws. The stand-off, driven by a Family First MP as well,
could set the pace for reforms around the country, although not
necessarily for the most appropriate reasons.

Marijuana, as researchers are learning, is linked to all manner of
health problems. It's not these, however, that have the SA police
concerned. rather, it's drug operators misusing laws that allow up to
five plants to be grown for personal use.

Police argue evidence has emerged of outlaw bikers and organised-crime
groups cobbling together networks of small-time cultivators into
larger operations, all courtesy the SA government lenience toward
backyard dope-growers. And so Family First's Dennis Hood has a Bill
before the SA parliament calling for marijuana to be re-criminalised,
after 20 years, and fines of up to $10,000 and two years' jail for
offenders.

If the Bill gets up, it might prove effective in helping police tackle
organised drug dealers but it will be a heavy-handed attack on the
humble weed-head who is actually growing marijuana for his own use _
if that's where police decide to focus their efforts.

Moreover, it threatens to overlook, as governments around the country
continue to overlook, the more important task of educating marijuana
users of the inherent dangers in their drug of choice. These are many
and varied, and arguably one of the chief contributors to the nation's
mental health crisis _ a crisis that is not going to be fixed by
belting grass-smokers with $10,000 fines or jail terms. There are
enough mentally-ill prisoners in jail as it is.

Marijuana is linked to schizophrenia, depression, paranoia, anxiety
and other mental health problems. But these aren't the only problems.
A lengthy list of disorders are suspected to be tied to marijuana use
_ immuno deficiencies, chromosomal damage, sperm mobility dysfunction,
respiratory tract cancer, short-term memory loss . . . the list goes
on.

Results of a 15-year study by Melbourne University's Centre for
Adolescent Health released last year suggest all too clearly that
marijuana is serious bad news for long-term mental health. And that it
is likely to encourage young users toward other drugs such as ecstasy,
amphetamines and cocaine. Researcher George Patton, who studied more
than 1900 people aged 14 or 15, put it bluntly: cannabis was the drug
of choice for "life's future losers".

Decriminalisation, given these findings, hardly seems such a sensible
move. But it appears rather clear that laws for trafficking need to be
toughened ahead of a wholesale assault on small-time personal users.
Jail, after all, is hardly the way to tackle mental health.