Posts Tagged ‘Drugs’
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
15/5/10
What are these? The NSW government is moving to grant itself sweeping powers to control alcohol consumption. Under changes introduced to state parliament yesterday, the government has moved to seize control of the opening hours of pubs, bars and clubs and give itself the power to impose measures such as lock-outs and service restrictions on any licensed premises, The Sydney Morning Herald says. The new laws also empower council officers and police to confiscate alcohol in parks and other areas that have been designated alcohol-free zones. Under changes to the Liquor Act, the government will no longer have to be responding to a complaint from the community or police to impose licensing restrictions on violent premises. In December, 66 of the state’s most violent venues had severe trading restrictions imposed on them by the government.
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, Trade
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Saturday, May 15th, 2010
Mark Metherell; 13/5/10
In contrast to the crackdown on cigarettes, the Rudd government has rejected its own experts’ recommendations to take on the powerful food and alcohol industries. Obesity was recently found to trigger more diseases in Australia than tobacco, but the government has given the thumbs-down to the call from its preventative health taskforce for a ban on junk-food advertising before 9pm. It has also refused the taskforce recommendation to phase-out alcohol advertising during live sport broadcasts, in a detailed response to the taskforce recommendations released with Tuesday’s budget.
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Tags: Asutralia, Drugs, health
Posted in Australia, Drugs, Health & Children | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
Maray, Anastasia O’Grady; 11/5/10
The organised-crime epidemic in Latin America, spawned by a US drug policy more than four decades in the making, seems to be leeching into US cities. Powerful underworld networks supplying gringo drug users are becoming increasingly bold about expanding their businesses. In 2008, US officials said Mexican drug cartels were serving customers in 195 US cities. The violence is only a fraction of what Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia live with every day, yet it is notable. Kidnapping rates in Phoenix, Arizona, for example, are through the roof and some spectacular murders targeting law enforcement have also grabbed headlines. While this has been happening, would-be busboys, roofers and lawn mowers from Mexico and Central America have been using the Arizona desert to get to the US because legal paths are closed and they want work.
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Tags: Drugs, Mexico, Migrants & Refugees, USA
Posted in Drugs, Refugee & Migrant, USA | No Comments »
Friday, May 7th, 2010
Stay in Touch; 7/5/10, SMH
Tiny worms which took “hair of the dog” to treat their hangovers exposed themselves to increased alcohol dependency. Just like people. Neuroscientists from Britain’s University of Southampton found that the nerve cells of one-millimetre worms exhibited the same symptoms of alcohol withdrawal and dependency as humans. Video footage showed the worms became overactive in alcohol withdrawal and showed spontaneous and deep body bends – a behaviour rarely seen in “teetotal” worms. The behaviour eased when they were given small doses of alcohol, which in turn increased their dependency.”This research … enables us to define how alcohol affects signalling in nerve circuits which leads to changes in behaviour,” Professor Lindy Holden- Dye said.
Tags: Drugs, UK
Posted in Drugs, Health & Children | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
Mark Davison; 4/5/10
Legal threats over plain cigarette packaging have no basis in law. My late father, a Presbyterian minister, joked that on occasions he would write sermons with the following note to himself: ”Shout here, the argument is weak.” The tobacco industry is shouting very loudly about the Australian government’s proposals for plain packaging of cigarettes. The industry claims the proposed legislation would be illegal and it would be entitled to massive financial compensation if such laws were passed. In line with my father’s approach, it needs to shout much, much louder because its legal arguments are anaemically weak.
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, health, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Drugs | No Comments »
Friday, April 30th, 2010
Natasha Bita; 30/4/10
Former human rights commissioner Tom Calma has won a $694,000 federal contract to supervise an indigenous anti-smoking campaign. Mr Calma – whose five-year term as Race Discrimination and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commissioner ended in January – now has a three-year contract as “national co-ordinator for tackling indigenous smoking”. “Part of my job is to help roll out the program and offer leadership and support to the agency,” he said yesterday. Mr Calma said the contract payment included his salary, travel allowances and accommodation. He said the $100 million, three-year campaign involved placing indigenous “tobacco action workers” – health workers assigned to Aboriginal medical services – in 57 regions, to help smokers quit and educate others not to take up the habit.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs
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Friday, April 30th, 2010
30/4/10
”Drunken troops in ‘schoolies’ binge” (April 29) highlights an entrenched issue of problem drinking that leads to antisocial behaviour, including sexual misconduct. Why don’t we have an intervention and send the army in? More than two years ago troops entered Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory on the premise of reducing drug and alcohol abuse and sexual misconduct. These communities are now ”prescribed areas” that prohibit the use of alcohol and pornography, yet the rest of Australia obviously has problems with the misuse of alcohol, and Federal Parliament is situated just 10 minutes from the porn centre of the nation. Does anyone else see a double standard? Beth Harris Millner (NT)
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Tags: Arms, Australia, Drugs
Posted in Arms, Australia, Drugs | No Comments »
Friday, April 30th, 2010
30/4/10
Yesterday’s front-page headlines ”Cigarettes up, and plain packaging compulsory to help stub out smoking” and ”Drunken troops in ‘schoolies’ binge” illustrate our inconsistent approach to these two social and health issues. Cigarettes, which rarely cause assaults, car accidents, family breakdowns or offensive behaviour, will soon cost more and may be marketed in plain packaging. On the same page is yet another story of ridiculous behaviour fuelled by alcohol abuse. Notably missing are any suggestions as to how to curb such behaviour. Perhaps we should increase the price of alcohol (you can buy a bottle of wine for $4, a cask for $10), or market it in plain wrapping, accompanied by health warnings and graphic pictures of car accidents, drunken brawls, drunks lying in their own vomit and excrement, and abandoned families. Imagine the reaction of the alcohol industry if a bottle of Moet had to be sold in such a way. I like neither smoking nor alcohol abuse but I would be interested to know the revenue from tobacco and alcohol and the social cost to society of both these legal products. I am not defending smoking, I am just appalled at the double standard. Jenny Wang Glebe.
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, Human Rights, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Drugs, Human Rights | No Comments »
Friday, April 30th, 2010
Beckey Freeman & Simon Chapman; 30/4/10
From January 2012, all cigarettes will be sold in plain packages. No logos, no shiny finishes, no bright colours, no pretty pictures. Instead of reassuring and persuasive brand imagery, graphic health warnings will dominate the pack. The tobacco industry has long acknowledged the huge importance that packaging has within the marketing mix. In 1995, a tobacco industry executive summed it up perfectly, “… if you smoke, a cigarette pack is one of the few things you use regularly that makes a statement about you. A cigarette pack is the only thing you take out of your pocket 20 times a day and lay out for everyone to see. That’s a lot different than buying your soap powder in generic packaging.”… Investment firm Citigroup has already issued a response on Australia’s move to implement plain packaging, viewing it as the “biggest regulatory threat to the industry, as packaging is the most important way tobacco companies have to communicate with the consumer and differentiate their products”. This is a ringing endorsement that plain packaging is a public health winner.
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Drugs | No Comments »
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Sid Maher; 29/4/10
Cigarettes will be sold in plain packages from January 2012 as Kevin Rudd introduces the world’s most draconian anti-smoking laws, in a move likely to spark a legal challenge from multinational tobacco companies. The move, said to be a world first, is expected to be accompanied by a hike in the tobacco tax in the budget, as the Rudd government moves to drive down smoking rates to 10 per cent of the population within the next eight years. Part of the increased excise could be used to offset some of the $5.4 billion in incentives the Prime Minister handed to premiers as part of the health reform package agreed to this month by every state except Western Australia. The new laws will prohibit the use of tobacco industry logos, colours, brand imagery or promotional text on all packaging of tobacco products.
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, health, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Drugs, Health & Children | No Comments »
Saturday, April 24th, 2010
Nick O’Malley; 24/4/10
The parliamentary interrogation began badly for the tobacco executive. After the briefest of greetings, the first question was asked: ”I’d just like to read you something,” he said. ”It’s a quote. ‘We don’t smoke this shit, we just sell it. We reserve the right to smoke for the young, the poor, the black and the stupid.’ That’s a quote attributed to a tobacco company executive. Was that a quote from one of your company executives?” The question was put last month. The executive in the hot seat was Graeme Amey, the head of the New Zealand arm of British American Tobacco Australia. Of course, he had never said any such thing. The line is commonly attributed to an actor in a commercial for Winston cigarettes, recounting what he was told by an R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company executive on set in the 1980s. Still, the question set the tone for the whole bruising parliamentary hearing in New Zealand, one which may soon be replayed in Canberra.
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, health, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Drugs, Health & Children | No Comments »
Friday, April 23rd, 2010
Lex Hall; 23/4/10
Alice Springs is on high alert this morning as five young white men aged 19 to 25 face sentencing over the bashing death of an Aboriginal trainee ranger, in a case that has set racial tensions seething in the troubled central Australian town. Timothy Hird, Joshua Benjamin Spears, Anton Kloeden, Glen Anthony Swain and Scott John Doody –all members of respectable Central Australian families – have pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of 33-year-old Donny Kwementyaye Ryder beside the Todd River last July. According to evidence given in court, the five men had been on a 12-hour drinking binge and attacked Ryder after he threw a bottle at their white Hilux utility. Dubbed the “Ute Five”, the men have been in protective custody at the Alice Springs jail for the past eight months. The jail population is 80 per cent Abriginal.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs, Human Rights
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs, Human Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, April 17th, 2010
Lynnette Hoffman; 17/4/10
Five nights a week, from 7pm to the wee hours of the morning, an all local, all-indigenous team employed by the Tangentyere Council patrols the town camps and remote communities around Alice Springs. They’re on the lookout for potentially stressful situations where they can be of assistance. For instance, they may defuse a brewing argument or transport an intoxicated person to a safe house or a sobering shelter.Team members are trained in a variety of skills including early intervention for drug and alcohol, suicide prevention, first aid and security, with an emphasis on dealing with difficult people and situations, says Marg Reilly, manager of Tangentyere Council’s social services department.It’s a simple concept and it works well; the Tangentyere Council Night Patrol is in its 20th year of operation. In fact, it has been credited by the federal government with improving safety and reducing reliance on police patrols, and cited by experts as an effective means of reducing problems associated with alcohol and substance abuse.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs, health
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs, Health & Children, Human Rights | 1 Comment »
Monday, April 12th, 2010
Debbie Guest; 12/4/10
boriginal people are behind a surge in support for alcohol bans in their communities, according to the West Australian government, which is crediting restrictions with helping curb domestic violence and increasing school attendance. Complete bans will be implemented soon at two Kimberley communities at their own request, bringing the number of communities with a ban on alcohol to six. Only one of those communities, Oombulgurri, had the ban imposed by the government without the backing of the community.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs
Posted in Aboriginal, Aid / Trade, Australia, Drugs | 1 Comment »
Saturday, April 10th, 2010
Hugh Mackay; 10/4/10
When we’re casting around for a slick phrase to capture the essence of Australian culture, we go for things like ”the land of the fair go” or ”punching above our weight”. We prefer not to mention a couple of other things we’re famous for: alcohol abuse and street violence. ”Land of problem drinkers” doesn’t have such a nice ring to it and, in any case, we’d have to share that epithet with too many other countries. Still, with binge drinking on the rise and about 15 per cent of Australians now classed as “risky drinkers” (a proportion that has doubled in the past 10 years) we are certainly in the big league when it comes to alcohol abuse. Talk to anyone working in the drugs and alcohol field – researchers, doctors, counsellors, rehab workers – and the story is the same: while the rest of us wring our hands about the illicit drugs trade, the No.1 drug-abuse problem for Australia is alcohol.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs, Trade
Posted in Aboriginal, Aid / Trade, Australia, Health & Children, Racism | 1 Comment »
Friday, April 9th, 2010
Ari Sharp; 9/4/10
Indigenous people are up to 20 times more likely than the rest of the population to commit violent crime, according to a new study that finds alcohol is the biggest risk factor. Drawing on previous research, the Australian Institute of Criminology report released yesterday paints a bleak picture of endemic crime in indigenous communities, though it does not provide enough detail to judge whether the 2007 federal intervention in remote communities had an impact on crime levels. The criminologist Joy Wundersitz found that indigenous arrests were far more likely to be for minor physical assaults than sexual assault, and that indigenous offenders are more likely to reoffend than their non-indigenous counterparts.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs, health, Trade, Violence
Posted in Aboriginal, Aid / Trade, Australia, Drugs, Health & Children | 1 Comment »
