DARING DAYS OVER FOR SA'S MARIJUANA EXPERIMENT

South Australia's cult status as a lifestyle mecca with relaxed marijuana
laws has been destroyed. Late last year its 14-year experiment with
decriminalising cannabis was almost abandoned and a complete ban on
hydroponic growing is on the way.

The problem, according to Rob Kerin's Liberal Government, is that under the
laws crime has risen, and drug networks, aided by technological advances
producing more potent varieties, have flourished.

The socially daring policy that decriminalised personal marijuana use was a
reform introduced by John Bannon's Labor Government in 1987. Instead of
being busted by the drug squad and thrown into jail, personal users were
fined for growing up to 10 marijuana plants.

Adelaide flourished as the nation's marijuana capital until 18 months ago,
when the conservative government began to wind back the laws, cutting the
plant limit from 10 to three.

In November, in the dying days of State Parliament, and with the current
election campaign looming, it was cut to one. Legislation is in the wings
stipulating that this single plant must be grown outside; if the Liberals
are re-elected, hydroponic cannabis in SA - far and away the preferred
growing mode of all small private growers - will be outlawed.

"The 1987 model failed and we were seeing drug networks set up," says
Police Minister Robert Brokenshire. "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 through the Riverland and into Victoria via Mildura, had
unintended consequences. Police seized cannabis and other drugs worth
$100,000 from cars stopped at random between Gawler, just out of Adelaide,
and the Victorian border.

Another 191 kilograms of cannabis was seized from couriers using commercial
aircraft and just before Christmas two Sydney-bound buses were intercepted,
each carrying 10 kilograms of market-ready cannabis.

Police are 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 says. "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 nasty consequence of
private crops grown at home. A man was nearly murdered recently when less
than 10 plants were at stake. Senior police say victims of home invasions
are likely to be growers of illicit drugs. Armed home invasions had doubled
in SA by the end of the decade and were, of course, under-reported.

The nature of cannabis growing has also changed. Instead of the
hit-and-miss days of outdoor growing, cultivation methods have improved so
much that more potent varieties have emerged.

"The new varieties of cannabis with very potent THC component cause serious
health issues," Mr Brokenshire says. "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."

Hydroponic cultivation is being targeted by the government and it wants
shops to be licensed.

There are almost 80 hydroponic shops in SA 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 private cannabis market.

"South Australia is definitely the biggest market in Australian 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 top-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 cannabis activist James Dannenberg. "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,
males, fence hoppers, fruit fly inspectors, nosy neighbours or police
looking over your fence on horseback as they do in some suburbs," says Mr
Dannenberg who is running as a HEMP (Help End Marijuana Prohibition)
candidate in the SA election, "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."

He says police claims of towering plants 16 feet high (the industry remains
defiantly non-metric) are the exception. "The government has demonised
hydroponics and suggested that somehow our laws caused this explosion in
hydroponic use," he says. "It is a global trend partly in response to the
pressures of law enforcement on outdoor cultivation."

There is no argument that some do it for profit. Police say one hydroponic
plant can produce 500 grams of cannabis worth $4000. Ten of these, three or
four times a year, can bring in up to $160,000.

"We don't dispute that there are of course people doing it for profit but
we believe the fines system flattened out the supply pyramid away from the
Mr Bigs," Mr Dannenberg says.

He says the relaxed laws allowed users to seize the means of production and
grow for themselves and a circle of mates.

"It is far better off 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," he says.

Criminologist Adam Sutton, a Melbourne University lecturer who has tracked
SA's experiment and contributed to reports on its effects, 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 antibiotic effect - if you try to wipe
out all the suppliers, all you end up doing is leaving the most virulent
ones on the supply side," he says.

He is particularly disappointed because governments in other states, most
recently Western Australia, where two plants and up to 25 grams of cannabis
was decriminalised in November, have been persuaded to move the other way.

Besides, Dr Sutton says, prohibition does not work.

"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," he
says.

Labor Opposition Leader Mike Rann has not campaigned against the changes,
supporting the one-plant law but otherwise remaining silent. The Australian
Democrats say outlawing marijuana is the local version of the Tampa issue,
one the government has run with because it has wide conservative support.

"The Labor Party has taken the same approach they took on the Tampa," says
Democrats SA leader Mike Elliott. "They didn't want to enter the debate and
ran away."

Police have begun enforcing the one-plant rule but the response of SA's
legions of marijuana growers seems cautiously defiant. Hydroponic sales in
SA slumped badly last year after a series of police raids but has begun to
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 it's 10 plants or one or
three and others are saying 'in for a penny, in for a pound', so to speak.
They think if they are going to be a criminal, they may as well go the
whole hog."