LAW, ORDER AND POT POLITICS

SADLY, but with a whimsical twist, maintaining the drug theme, there is
something quite quaint about the solemn warning from SA police that people
growing the small, permitted - or legally tolerated -batch of cannabis
plants should keep quiet about it at pain of risking a violent burglary.

Chief Superintendent Trevor Johnson fretted about the threat this posed to
soft-drug agriculturalists. If the chief superintendent was concerned about
crime with the danger of assault, we wholly applaud his concern. If,
however, this was part of the muted but persistent police push against SA's
laws of tolerance we are unimpressed.

Tobacco abuse is bad, ultimately lethal. Alcohol abuse is worse, with
second and third-party victims as well. Cannabis, on the available
evidence, is no better. But better the messy compromise worked out in SA
than the criminalisation of a generation

If SA police want to be relentless against potentially violent property
crime, they have our total support; if they want to push a hardline
yesterday's agenda and make criminals of thousands of young South
Australians, they do not.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski