RELAXED MARIJUANA LAWS EXPLOITED

While our Parliamentarians continue to debate whether to decriminalise the
personal use of cannabis, South Australia's 14-year experiment with
decriminalisation appears to have fostered a bigger drug trade. Penelope
Debelle, of the Sydney Morning Herald, examines what went wrong.

They were meant to bring the law into line with community values on soft
drug use, but changes to South Australia's legislation on personal
cultivation of cannabis led to new links with hard drug syndicates in
Sydney and Melbourne.

Now South Australia's status as a lifestyle mecca for potheads is being
wound back.

Late last year, its 14-year experiment with cannabis decriminalisation was
almost abandoned, and a complete ban on hydroponic growing is on the way.

In 1987, the Labor government of John Bannon introduced a daring policy
that decriminalised personal marijuana use. Instead of being jailed,
personal users were fined for growing up to 10 plants.

Adelaide flourished as the nation's marijuana capital until 18 months ago,
when the Liberal Government began to wind back the laws, cutting the plant
limit from 10 to three. In November it was cut to one.

Legislation is in the wings stipulating that this single plant must be
grown outside. If the Kerin Government is re-elected, hydroponic cannabis -
the preferred growing mode of small private growers in South Australia -
will be outlawed.

"The 1987 model failed and we were seeing drug networks set up," the
Australian police minister, Robert Brokenshire, says. "When the Labor Party
brought this in they waved the flag for small syndicates to set up drug
networks and that is what has happened."

The minimal tolerance is a sign of the government's belief that, under the
relaxed regime, cultivation became so lucrative that drug syndicates
proliferated and trafficking routes were set up into Sydney and Melbourne.

A pre-Christmas road safety blitz along the Sturt Highway, which runs from
Adelaide into Victoria via Mildura, had unintended consequences. Police
seized cannabis and other drugs worth $100,000 from cars stopped at random.
Another 191kg of cannabis was seized from couriers using commercial
aircraft and, just before Christmas, two buses on their way to Sydney were
intercepted each carrying 10kg of market-ready cannabis.

Police have begun compiling a list of frequent users of the Sturt Highway
in the hope of identifying drug couriers.

"We are not prepared to tolerate the trafficking of cannabis into other
states," Mr Brokenshire said. "They were also using cash from cannabis
sales to bring back harder drugs because the eastern states have heroin and
ecstasy supplies and amphetamines."

Home invasions, many of them violent, have been a particularly nasty
consequence of private crops grown at home. But the nature of cannabis has
also changed. Instead of the hit-and-miss days of outdoor growing,
cultivation methods have improved so much that more potent varieties emerged.

"The new varieties of cannabis with the very potent THC component cause
serious health issues," Mr Brokenshire said. "It builds up in your brain.
At one of our schools I was told a doctor did a skull or brain x-ray on a
young person who had been smoking quite a few cones for a couple of years
and you could see the chemical deposit in his brain."

The government wants to license the shops selling the hydroponic
cultivation equipment. There is a police warehouse in Adelaide filled with
equipment used to grow drug crops. There are almost 80 hydroponic shops in
South Australia, compared with a handful in Sydney or Melbourne, and there
is little argument that those with names like Dr Hydro ("specialising in
all hydroponic needs plus all your tobacco accessories, bongs, pipes and
lighters") cater to the cannabis market.

"South Australia is definitely the biggest market in Australia and has been
for the past five or six years," a national hydroponic wholesaler said.

The move indoors is a global phenomenon but its success in Adelaide is
partly responsible for the tough new laws. Technological advances have made
"cloning" - growing marijuana plants from cuttings - under lights vastly
more efficient, safer and more lucrative than the old outdoor method.
Instead of one crop a year, the indoor grower can generate four peak
quality plants, all of them female.

"You don't get masses of males that you've waited for nine months for then
discover they're rubbish," says James Dannenberg, who is standing as HEMP
(Help End Marijuana Prohibition) candidate in the state election. "This was
particularly a problem when they cut the limit from 10 to three. When it
was 10 plants, if you got five males and five females it was still enough
to see you through."

Mr Dannenberg says the change from 10 plants to three forced almost every
grower indoors. "the choice was three plants outdoors once a year with the
risk of snails, fence-hoppers, fruit fly inspectors, nosy neighbours or
police looking over your fence on horseback as they do in some suburbs. Or
three plants indoors, three or five times a year in the increased safety
and security of your own home or back shed. You be the judge."

Mr Dannenberg said police claims of towering pot plants about 5m high were
the exception. "The government has demonised hydroponics and suggested that
somehow our laws caused this explosion in hydroponic use," he said. "It is
a global trend partly in response to the pressures of law enforcement on
outdoor cultivation."

Police figures say a hydroponic plant can produce 500g of cannabis worth
$A4000. Ten of these, three or four times a year, can bring in between
$A120,000 and $A160,000.

Mr Dannenberg said the relaxed laws allowed users who had previously bought
from dealers to seize the means of production and grow for themselves and a
circle of friends.

"It is far better from society's point of view, from the police corruption
point of view, from a criminological point of view to have lots and lots of
Mr and Ms Smalls, each making a little bit of money, rather than Mr Big
making squillions."

Dr Adam Sutton, a lecturer in criminology at Melbourne University, who has
tracked the South Australian experiment since the late 1980s, says
prohibition does not work and users will be forced back into the drug
market in the worst possible way.

"My argument is you get a kind of anti-biotic effect - if you try and wipe
out all the suppliers, all you end up doing is leaving the most virulent
ones on the supply side," he said.

He was particularly disappointed because governments in other States, most
recently Western Australia where two plants and up to 25g of cannabis was
decriminalised in November, have been persuaded to move the other way.
Besides, he says: "No-one has ever been able to reduce the supplies of
cannabis, so surely you should move towards making people more responsible
in how they use it."

Police have begun enforcing the one-plant rule but the response of South
Australia's legions of marijuana growers seems defiant. Hydroponic sales in
the state slumped badly in the latter half of the year after a series of
police busts, but have begun to cautiously pick up again.

"I don't know of anyone who has pulled crops out," Mr Dannenberg says.
"Some people don't know what the story is, whether its 10 plants or one or
three, and others are saying if they are going to be a criminal, they may
as well go the whole hog."