Just about every lousy sin in the book has been excused by one Christian or another, by one church or another. It is time for this to stop. I am more convinced than ever that there will be plenty of surprises come judgment day. Plenty of folk who were certain they were making it into heaven’s gate will find a rude awakening and a quite nasty surprise when they meet their maker and judge.

And I believe there will be many who did not think they would make it in who will be pleasantly surprised. Jesus was quite clear about this: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21).

I cannot agree more with A.W. Tozer on this: “This is the day of excusing sin instead of purging sin. An entire school of thought has developed justifying sin within the church and trying to prove that sin is perfectly normal, and therefore acceptable.”

Let me give you a recent example of this. I had a guy come to my site with a comment saying he is a “pot-smoking Christian”. He went on and on trying to justify his lifestyle, and he asked me what was wrong with all this. I prayed and thought for a while, then felt led to respond as follows:

“Let me cut to the quick, because I am not interested in playing any games here. I am sick to death of carnality in the churches, and you are not alone in this regard my friend.

“The issue here is this: it is not about your stupid marijuana. You can substitute anything else here for that, and we still have the same core problem. The way I read it is this: right now Jesus Christ is not Lord of your life – you are. You are so interested in defending your selfish lifestyle choices that you have effectively have put marijuana as your god right now.

“You are more intent on justifying a selfish lifestyle of getting high than giving Jesus Christ 100 per cent of your life. Until you do my friend, stop kidding yourself. Jesus is either Lord of all or he is not Lord at all.

“And don’t tell me what other ‘Christians’ are doing. I don’t care if they too are living a life of sin and seeking to justify a me-centred life. You have only one person you are responsible for, and that is yourself. So stop looking to others, stop making cheap excuses, and start repenting of your selfishness and sin.

“Jesus did not come and die a horrible death on the cross so you can justify getting high all the time. He did not live a life of suffering, rejection and opposition so that people could go around flaunting cheap grace, thinking they are believers when they are still living lives straight out of the pit of hell.

“Jesus is worth all, since he gave us all. So forget this selfish nonsense about your right to get high, and get on your knees and get right with God. That is what you need right now.

“You asked for my advice, and I gave it. And this applies to everyone else who is pretending to be a Christian, when instead all we have is self still on the throne, with Jesus so very far away on the sidelines.”

One of the most common forms of excusing, justifying and promoting sin in the churches today concerns the issue of homosexuality. Deception abounds here, as so-called believers seek to tell us that this sin is just fine, that God makes us this way, and that we can fully bless it in our churches.

This is abhorrent. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to someone who has been there and done that. Michael Glatze was a leading homosexual activist in the US who had a life-changing encounter with the risen Christ. He is now shocked at how some Christians want to wed a holy God to a sin-soaked lifestyle.

Parts of his story are worth recounting here: “I was once a gay activist, and the editor of a national gay magazine. I lived a life with a same-sex partner, with a dog, a house, and many friends. Then, I got saved, and realized that I couldn’t be gay and Christian – because, that would be living a lie. Soon, I found help to heal from homosexuality, and found myself living a new life, as a heterosexual man – complete with memories and a certain perspective of what it’s like to be under the grips of a life lived in the excuse of a sin.

“Jesus provides a way out of all temptations that are common to man. Homosexuality is one of those temptations that some people face. There will always be the temptation to dive in, completely, becoming identified with a sinful behavior; in fact, this temptation has become a political movement – supported by many politicians and courts in our land, as well as other countries in this world. But Christians aren’t to be afraid of the pressure of an increasingly prevalent world system; we are not to be yoked together and conformed to the ways of this world.”

He says that “it is frustrating when Christians lose their principles and compromise on the brilliant truth and the power of the gospel to save people from all sins. It is frustrating when Christians take the side of the enemy, against fellow believers. And it is frustrating when Christians re-crucify Christ, through their obsession with never-ending transgression. But, all these things – and, so much more – needn’t make us afraid; they should make us more ready to love.”

He acknowledges how tempting compromise is these days: “For Christians, today, this is a period of testing. As the devil increases in strength, forcing apostasy within the Church, taking over our Christian country – unless we stand strong – the only way to success in Christ is to let Him love others through us. This means we do not re-write the Word of God. We do not re-write the Holy Scriptures. We do not say, as some so-called Christians have said in recent times, that somehow the apostle Paul just ‘didn’t understand’ modern times. We trust Jesus, not our own understanding. We give up any notion we have of our own understanding, humble ourselves to the power of the gospel to save, and love through our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We have the Holy Spirit within us; we do not want to grieve Him.

“For me, it is remarkably frustrating to see some people within the so-called ‘Christian’ sphere compromising the Word of God on the issue of homosexuality. It terrifies me to think of what might happen to these people’s souls. I know that homosexuality is a powerful force in today’s world – but don’t forget that it was a powerful force in ancient times as well. Remember in the book of Judges, how homosexuality pops up at the end of a long, progressive apostasy? Remember how homosexuality is described as one of the lusts that enflames people, after they have turned away from God, causing in them the results of their transgression? Have we gotten so far from God that we are willing to attempt a revision of reality, simply because we’re too afraid to see how bad things have gotten?”

He concludes as follows: “Christians, we don’t walk the easy, wide road; we walk the more difficult, narrow road. But, when we have the grace to do so, we know that we are doing the right thing, because Jesus is leading the way. And what a blessing it is to stop resisting Him, to stop making excuses for Him, to stop justifying ourselves in the light of His more superior truth, and give in to Him – and let Him lead and let His love flow through us.

“It is in this love that we must continue to shine as lights in this world, helping people heal from their infirmities and helping people heal from homosexuality.”

Whether the issue is homosexuality, illicit drugs, or whatever, it is high time that believers stopped making excuses for sin, and stopped pretending they are followers of Jesus when in fact they are slavishly following the world, the flesh and the devil.

I can do no better than to allow Leonard Ravenhill the last word here: “All we have is a sinning-repenting cycle. That is not what Jesus died for! We need to shout from the housetops and tell people everywhere today—in the church and out of it— that Christianity is N.O.T., NOT a sinning religion.”

www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=1013086

[1508 words]

Both articles spoke of the huge increase in youth crime, and the concern of police and authorities. The first article said this: “The number of Children’s Court cases has soared alarmingly amid concern about child safety and worsening juvenile crime”. It said the “number of young defendants found guilty of an offence almost doubled from 5784 to 10,836 in the year to June 2007”. It also said that “Court president Judge Paul Grant is worried the court can’t keep up with demand caused by a spike in child protection applications, criminal cases and intervention orders.”

The other article also examined this worrying trend, and offered as a reason the Internet: “About 10,000 Victorian children aged 10 to 14 have been cautioned by police, arrested or ordered to appear in court in the past year, as a surge in youth crime continues. Victoria Police say the escalation in juvenile crimes – ranging from break and enters to drug offences and assaults – is being fuelled by children’s growing exposure to sexual and violent images on the internet.”

That youth crime is getting out of hand is undeniable. And it seems that the issue of Internet exposure is surely a contributing factor. I would not limit things just to the Internet, since prime time television is coming close to dishing up the same amount of trash.

Surely constant exposure to sexually explicit and violent and graphic content on the Net and in the rest of the media will have a negative impact. Young impressionable kids soaking up this stuff on a regular basis are of course going to be adversely affected by it.

But none of the newspaper accounts mentioned the real factor that is behind all this. I refer to family breakdown. The truth is, as more and more marriages and families break down, and more and more kids are not raised by their biological mother and father, such criminal activity will arise and worsen.

Now I can already hear my critics hyperventilating, so let me say what I am not saying here. I am not saying family breakdown is the only variable in the equation. There are many factors at work when kids go off the rails. And I am not saying that if a kid grows up in a broken, blended or single-parent family, he or she will automatically become involved in crime. And I am not saying that two-parent families produce perfect children.

Nor am I saying that families where one of the biological parents is missing do not need help and support. Single parents need all the help they can get. But what I am saying is what common sense, along with a wealth of social science data, already suggests: kids are much less likely to become involved in criminal behaviour if raised by a mother and father, preferably cemented by marriage.

That is the overwhelming conclusion of some forty years of research into this issue. Not only are kids who are raised by their biological mother and father much less likely to get involved in crime, but they are also much less likely to use drugs, commit suicide, do poorly in school, or engage in other anti-social behaviours.

Here is a small sampling of the evidence. One study of 522 teenage girls found that girls in divorced families committed more delinquent acts (e.g., drug use, larceny, skipping school) than their counterparts in intact families.

A study of street-gangs reveals this linkage as well. In a recent book on the subject, Francis Ianni found that most gang members in America come from female-headed households. And a study of British communities found a direct statistical link between single parenthood and virtually every major type of crime, including mugging, violence against strangers, car theft and burglary.

A study reported in Psychology Today found that “90 per cent of repeat adolescent firestarters live in a mother-only constellation”. A Michigan State University study of 72 adolescent murderers discovered that 75 per cent of them had divorced or never-married parents. And a study of 108 violent rapists, all repeat offenders, found that 60 per cent came from single-parent homes.

One study tracked every child born on the Hawaiian island of Kauai in 1955 for 30 years. It found that five out of six delinquents with an adult criminal record came from families where a parent – almost always the father – was absent.

An American author, reviewing the evidence, reports the following: “Poverty alone does not explain all of these effects. Indeed, poverty may not explain any of them”. He cites a 1988 study by Douglas Smith and G. R. Jarjoura which analysed victimisation data on over 11,000 individuals from three urban areas in New York, Florida and Missouri. They arrived at this startling conclusion: the proportion of single-parent households in a community predicts its rates of violent crime and burglary, but the community’s poverty level does not. Neither poverty nor race seem to account very much for the crime rate, compared to the proportion of single parent families, Smith and Jarjoura found.

In Australia, a book by Alan Tapper highlights this connection between broken families and crime. In a study of rising crime rates in Western Australia, Tapper suggests that “family breakdown in the form of divorce and separation is the main cause of the crime wave”.

A longitudinal study of 512 Australian children found that there are more offenders coming from families of cohabiting than married couples, and there are proportionally more offenders who become recidivists coming from families of cohabiting than married couples. The study concludes, “The relationship between cohabitation and delinquency is beyond contention: children of cohabiting couples are more likely to be found among offenders than children of married couples”.

Those who work with juvenile offenders in Australia confirm these findings. One youth worker in Melbourne has spent nearly two decades working with homeless youth and young offenders. He says that “almost 100 per cent” of these kids are from “single parent families or blended families”. And a recent New Zealand study found that 64.6 per cent of juvenile offenders had no birth father present.

The connections between crime and family breakdown have been made by the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, which compared crime rates with out-of-wedlock birth rates from 1903 to 1993. It found that the “percentage of ex-nuptial births correlates significantly with both serious and violent crime at both one and two decades time lapse”.

Drug usage is also higher among those who come from broken homes. An American study of over 1700 youths found that adolescents growing up in a single-parent or stepparent family often feel estranged and consequently drift into drug use and abuse. And a New Zealand study of nearly 1000 children observed over a period of 15 years found that children who have watched their parents separate are more likely to use illegal drugs than those whose parents stay together.

The truth is, until we get serious about family breakdown and the erosion of marriage, the trends in youth crime will not disappear, but only get worse. By all means, deal with other factors, such as the steady stream of toxic entertainment found in our media. But until the real cause of family disintegration is dealt with, we will simply see more criminal activity amongst our young people.

www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24109878-661,00.html www.theage.com.au/national/net-blamed-as-10000-kids-turn-to-crime-20080802-3p00.html

[1283 words]

Because so much lunacy had been occurring in the past week or so, perhaps the best way to cover it all is to simply provide several vignettes of some of the more notable cases. Let me start with Holland. If there is one nation to get a regular mention on this site, it is the Netherlands. Leave it to the Dutch to come up with one outrageous bit of madness after another,

The latest episode is this: as of today smoking tobacco in Dutch restaurants is illegal. Hey, sounds good, you say. Well, it would be, except for one minor detail. You see, major Dutch cities like Amsterdam are notorious for their marijuana cafes. You see, people can still toke away on reefers in their cafes, but they dare not puff on that evil weed, tobacco.

As one coffee shop owner remarked, “It’s absurd. In other countries they look to see whether you have marijuana in your cigarette, here they’ll look to see if you’ve got cigarette in your marijuana.” The Dutch disease is obviously spreading, and getting worse.

Just what were these guys thinking? Never mind that the marijuana smoked today is many times stronger – and therefore much more risky and dangerous – than that smoked by us hippies back in the 60s. The scientific research on the harm of cannabis is rock solid, and potheads are doing themselves tremendous harm.

And never mind that “passive smoking” is every bit as risky, if not more, with marijuana than it is with tobacco. You can get high even if you don’t want to simply by sitting in one of these cannabis cafes.

But leave it to the Dutch to allow marijuana use, while cracking down on tobacco. One can only conclude that the lawmakers in Holland are all potheads, or old stoned-out hippies. There is obviously no one left with intact brain cells amongst the ruling elites of Holland.

But things are not much better in nearby Sweden. Consider an absolutely whacko discrimination case there. A school has complained to the Swedish Parliament about a gross case of human rights abuse. The school says an 8-year-old school boy has violated two fellow students’ rights by not inviting them to his birthday party.

I kid you not! Let me repeat this, in case you do not get it. An 8-year-old did not invite everyone in his class to his birthday party, so his school is screaming discrimination. How horrible. So now it is heading to the big boys in politics to settle.

Now I know I might be the odd man out here, but it seems that I was fairly selective in whom I invited to my birthday parties when I was but a tyke. Indeed, I discriminated in favour of some, and against some others. Back then it was not seen as a crime to make such choices.

But things are different now. The burgeoning rights industry has gone ballistic, and Political Correctness has a stranglehold on the West. So our intellectualoids in Sweden have decided this nasty abuse of human rights must be dealt with harshly and forthrightly. Remind me not to go to Sweden for my next holidays.

The third item concerns the US and Australia, two other leaders in the great liberal death wish. It seems that a number of Australian homosexuals are heading to the US to buy babies. You heard me right. They are paying up to $80,000 to create a baby using surrogate arrangement in the US.

These rent-a-womb women are being paid big bikkies to sell their babies to homosexual couples. Known as “one-stop baby shopping,” the scheme allows childless homosexual couples (and what else could they be?) to shop around for their baby of choice.

According to press reports, the couples “pick a donor from a list of 400 university students and her eggs are then implanted in a different woman who bears the child.” Kind of like going to McDonalds and ordering your own personalised burger. Except a bit more expensive.

Never mind how the child is going to fare in such a situation. Not only will the child be denied the right to his or her own biological mother and father, but the child will grow up to one day discover that he or she came into existence not unlike a fancy new red sports car: made to order to please adults’ whims and cravings.

A doctor at one of California’s fertility clinics offering this “service” said that these homosexuals “are almost all professional, working men who obviously have a bit of money and desperately want a child.” I suppose it will be a waste of time to inform these desperate househusbands that there is a much easier way of getting a child: nature’s way. Find a girl, settle down, and the children bit comes pretty easy.

But these folk want to live their disordered lifestyles, and think they can just chuck a baby into the mix like they might the latest Kylie Minogue CD. This is about one thing, and one thing only: selfish, immature adults buying babies as fashion accessories. And who gives a rip how the children will turn out in such bizarre arrangements?

These three cases (and many more could be produced) demonstrate a West in a downward spiral, with moral blindness matched only by a deficiency in common sense. The only question worth asking at this point is how much further down can the West go before it becomes  a mere memory.

I for one will keep chronicling these steps to the asylum until our elites determine that this site is one big hate crime, and they imprison me for my crimes. But until that happens, I will continue to act as a watchman. But my days may well be numbered.

[1006 words]

I refer to an item in an online newspaper today about Alex Wodak, the director of the alcohol and drug service at St Vincent’s Hospital. He has said that cannabis should be sold legally in post offices. He made the announcement – of all places – at the Mardi Grass festival in Nimbin yesterday.

One can be forgiven for thinking that the good doctor has obviously been smoking way too much of the stuff he wants made available in our post offices. Maybe he was munching on too many marijuana brownies while at the counterculture centre of Australia.

Does he really propose to legalise marijuana and have it sent through our postal system? Evidently so. He offered this rather weak rationale for the proposal: “The general principal is that it’s not sustainable that we continue to give criminals and corrupt police a monopoly to sell a drug that is soon going to be consumed by more people than tobacco”.

There are a few problems with such a remark. Tobacco users far outweigh marijuana users at the moment, even though the latter camp may be slowly catching up. But apply a bit of logic to this bizarre idea. Right now criminals and corrupt police have a monopoly on selling illegal firearms, heroin, and a whole range of proscribed items.

But by the logic of Dr Wodak, it would be the sensible thing to legalise the sale of submachine guns, and have them sold through the post offices. Or allow heroin to be freely sold, allowing addicts to pick up a batch at the nearest PO. While we are at it, maybe some child pornography and some African elephant tusks could also be conveniently made available this way.

After all, we want to take these things out of hands of the crims, don’t we? Just which planet is this guy living on? And he heads up a leading drug service? No wonder why our drug policies are so messed up, with guys like this calling the shots and advising our politicians. Puh-leeese.

But assuming for just a moment that this guy is half serious; what is he in fact proposing? Marijuana is very potent and very dangerous stuff. It is a far cry from the mild stuff us hippies in the 60s used to toke on. It is many times more powerful, and extremely dangerous. It is much stronger because of higher THC levels (the “high” producing element of cannabis). With increased potency comes increased health risks.

Because today’s marijuana may be as much as 15 times stronger than that smoked in the 1960s, it is much more dangerous. A recent report by the British Lung Foundation stated that marijuana was four times more likely to cause cancer than tobacco.

A multitude of studies have identified the dangers associated with cannabis use. Indeed, there are well over 10,000 scientific studies about marijuana and its effects. The findings reveal some alarming facts. Acute effects of cannabis use include: anxiety, panic, paranoia, cognitive impairment, psychomotor impairment, and increased risk of low birth rate babies. Chronic effects include: respiratory diseases, attention and memory loss or impairment, and cannabis dependence.

The Australian Medical Association has issued warnings on the health risks associated with smoking marijuana. Risks of cannabis use include memory loss, psychosis, impaired driving, hallucinations, asthma, and even lung cancer. Moreover, warned the AMA, one third to one half of detained patients admitted to psychiatric units in Australia are there because marijuana use has precipitated a relapse.

In the article Wodak is reported to have said that the legalised product would come in packets that “warn against its effects”. Hey, thanks for that. And when we sell the Uzis and other firearms, we will also have the appropriate warnings attached as well. How thoughtful. And when the child porn mags are freely available in the POs, we will fulfill our civic responsibilities by including a suitable warning.

There are plenty of good reasons why we should not legalise grass, in addition to the many severe health risks. Opening the door to legalised marijuana usage will simply act as the thin edge of the wedge.  Demands will soon be made for the legalisation of other drugs and for the cultivation of other drug crops in the home. Soon calls for the recreational use of various “hard” drugs will be heard as well.  This in fact is the ultimate aim of the pro-legalisation lobby, as is clearly set forth in their writings.

Wodak also brings up the issue of Prohibition in America to justify this lunacy. Please allow me a few inconvenient truths here: During this period, consumption of alcohol declined substantially, as did the cirrhosis death rate for men (cut by two-thirds between 1911 and 1929), and arrests for public drunkenness dropped 50 per cent between 1919 and 1922.

But drug legalisers like Wodak will argue that prohibition and/or get-tough approaches are not working. For all the laws and penalties, we still have drug users, they say. But this reasoning is seriously flawed.  To say that we should legalise drug use because so many are violating the law is like saying since so many people are killing and raping, perhaps we should legalise these crimes as well.  Such arguments from utility are facile. When America sought to racially integrate public schools in 1954, should it not have tried because so many people believed in school segregation? Morality, more than mere utilitarian considerations, should guide our legal system. Law, with its concern for the common good, should shape behaviour and compliance, not just reflect them.

At bottom, the drug problem is not so much a legal problem as a moral and cultural problem. To throw up our hands and give up our young people to the scourge of drugs is a sign of moral irresponsibility. As retired NSW District Court judge Kenneth Gee QC has said, “Legalisation is really a counsel of despair, almost irreversible once embarked upon. It should not be tried. It will not work.”

Perhaps Wodak was just having a great time with his dope-smoking friends yesterday. And he may be well intentioned. He probably thinks he is even being quite open-minded about all this. But the sad truth is, a lot of open minds around the country need to be closed for repairs. Our intelligentsia need to come back down to planet earth, and stop proposing inanities like this that will simply further decimate our already fragile society.

Legalising marijuana is simply a stupid idea, whether the idea comes from a Nimbin pot head or some medical “expert”. And bad ideas always lead to bad consequences.

www.theage.com.au/news/national/sell-dope-in-post-offices/2008/05/05/1209839545864.html

[1152 words]

Now this is all very commendable. But with all due respect, one has to ask just how helpful all this will be in the light of remarks made by Cousins at the launch. His comments seemed to effectively nullify any strong anti-drug message the launch was seeking to present. Consider these remarks:

“I knew all along that I don’t condone what I was doing but I could justify it. I think there is a lack of public awareness from a majority of people for people who are in my situation. Deep down I don’t think I really had a choice. The very things that make me a great footballer are some of the things that lead me to fall into those sorts of traps. From a medical point of view, drug addiction is an illness. It is a very hard thing for people who have not experienced it to get their head around.”

Now let me say at the outset that I have been there and done that. In my rebellious youth I was addicted to some hard core drugs. So hopefully Ben cannot so easily dismiss my concerns. And yes, he does seem to be seeking to justify his drug problem. That is not going to be much of a deterrent for young people considering illicit drug use.

Sadly, it seems that he has fully bought into the rhetoric of the pro-drug crowd by saying this is all just a health issue. The pro-drug crowd has long argued that this is not – and should not be – a criminal problem, but only seen as a health problem. That is, many want to legalise or decriminalise all drug use. They want to take it out of the criminal justice system altogether, and just pretend it is a health issue only.

Now drug use and abuse is certainly a health issue. These drugs can do real harm to your health and your lifespan. But it is exactly because drugs are so harmful that sensible societies have made them illegal. And they should stay that way. Prevention is always better than cure, and keeping people off illicit drugs is always going to be easier than setting people free from drug addiction. That is as true of Ben as of anyone else.

Keeping drugs illegal – with appropriate penalties for violations of the law – is a proven means to deter many people from getting involved with drugs in the first place. Unfortunately it appears that Ben has just become a parrot for the pro-drug crowd, and if his way of thinking prevails, many more young people will be harmed by such drug use.

And then he goes on to claim that he really did not have a choice in the matter. Indeed, he made this point a second time in response to a question: “For a lot of people they don’t choose to do it, in a lot of ways it chooses them.”

Sorry Ben, but I am not buying this. What are you trying to tell us? That someone forced you to have your first joint? That someone held a shotgun to your head, demanding you take your first hit of speed? That you had no choice when heroin or other drugs were offered to you? That some drug dealer said, “Take these drugs or we will shoot your dog”?

Sure, once addiction sets in, then it seems like choices become limited. But even there, we are not robots or choice-less pawns. We all can make choices about the addictions we have gotten into. Many people – including myself – have broken free of drug addictions.

And no apologies were forthcoming from Cousins. No shame either. “I am not ashamed or embarrassed to say I have had a drugs problem”.  But why then help launch a “KO to Drugs” program? Does not such a program imply that taking drugs is somehow wrong or at least dangerous? In which case, why not feel shame?

Shame is a great protector. Along with guilt, it can help us avoid harmful activities and behaviours. But by saying he has no shame, he effectively is saying that he does not think that his drug use was really wrong. Sure, he may feel sorry that he lost his footy career, and messed up friends and families, but the core problem remains, and he still seems to be in denial about the real harm of drug abuse.

Until Cousins can admit to the wrongdoing involved in drug use, he is simply kidding himself, and is not really on the road to recovery. Just as an alcoholic has to first admit that he has a problem before real change can take place, so too here with drug abuse. Admitting our mistakes and wrong choices is the first step to recovery.

In sum, it was good of Ben to take a first step in confronting his past. But based on his comments, it seems that he has a long way to go before he will see real breakthrough in his life. And he has a long way to go before he can become an effective anti-drugs campaigner, or a helpful role model for young people.

[904 words]

Bronwyn Bishop and the majority of the Committee have produced a new government report entitled, “The Winnable War on Drugs”. While no report is perfect, this one is pretty darned good. It makes the case for harm prevention, not harm minimisation, and urges us as a nation to have a zero tolerance for illicit drugs.

Also it takes head on what it calls the “drug industry elites”. This is a great term for a bunch of bureaucrats and political activists who not only push the harm minimisation line, but often are calling for the legalisation of illicit drugs as well.

For too long these folk have been getting away with murder, using heaps of taxpayer dollars to call for all the wrong things: needle exchange programs, heroin injecting rooms, more methadone programs, and so on. They have had a near monopoly on drug policy, a sympathetic media, and a gullible public. And we have all suffered as a result.

But some might be asking, what is wrong with harm minimisation? For the layman, the term harm minimisation has tended to mainly mean one thing: kids are going to take drugs anyway, there is not much we can do to prevent it, so let’s try to make it all a bit safer when they do take illicit drugs. As such, it is a counsel of despair which traps many in a dead-end drug-affected lifestyle.

The awful reality of drug abuse

Consider an example that is unfolding at this very moment. There has been yet another casualty in the drug wars in the Australian Football League. A recently retired West Coast player has just been found dead, after taking an ecstasy tablet. Another West Coast player, recently in rehab, was with this man just an hour before his death.

Yet incredibly, the “drug industry elites” wrote an open letter to various newspapers recently, arguing that the AFL drug policy is just fine, and that those concerned about rampant drug use, such as the Prime Minister, should just butt out. The September 11 letter, signed by all the usual suspects (around 20 names altogether) defended the current AFL drug policy, saying moves to get tough on drug use were counterproductive.

The question is, how many more people have to die before we reject the foolishness of these harm minimisation advocates, and their mistaken belief that illicit drug use is just a health issue, and not also a criminal justice issue?

Instead of seeking harm prevention – the only proven drug policy – and a zero tolerance approach to drug use, they recklessly continue pushing the line that people will always take drugs, so we must try to make it “safer” when they do. This is not only a counsel of surrender, but it is costing people their lives.

It is time the dangerous and failed ideology of the harm minimisation crowd is replaced with some realism which is genuinely compassionate and responsible. That is what this new government report seeks to do. It provides first hand testimony not only from some experts in the field, but ordinary Australians who have been harmed by the harm minimisation policies.

The “drug industry elites”

Perhaps one of the most important aspects to this report is the willingness – and bravery – to take on the vested interest groups and bureaucrats which currently determine so much of Australian drug policy. Indeed, it speaks of drug policy in this country being “captured by influential drug industry elites”.

This report rightly targets the failed policies of these drug “experts”. They overwhelmingly support harm minimisation, and many advocate “drug policy reform” which is often a euphemism for full legalisation, or decriminalisation, of drug use. Such policies of course directly work against a zero tolerance approach.

The report notes that some of these so-called experts “do not believe that all illicit drug use is harmful, despite the accumulating scientific evidence on how drug use affects the brain and physical development”.

Consider one infamous drug “expert” Alex Wodak, who said in 1991 that heroin “has relatively few side-effects” and that it can “be safely injected for decades”. He also made this amazing claim, as recorded in the report, “Most of the present morbidity and mortality related to heroin use is consequent to its illegality”.

There you have it. If we would only legalise all these drugs, disease and death rates would greatly fall! Thank you Alex. And he is one of our “experts” pushing his radical agenda with our tax dollars.

Or take the words of surrender coming from Professor Margaret Hamilton, who argues that “psychoactive substances are and will be part of our society; their eradication is impossible; and the continuation of attempts to eradicate them may result in maximising net harms for society”.

Incredible! To see how irresponsible and inane such comments are, just substitute the word rape or murder for the phrase psychoactive substances. People will always rape (or run red lights, or avoid paying taxes, etc.). It is foolish to think we can fully eradicate the problem. So let’s try to minimise the whole problem. This is putting up the white flag of surrender, and condemning many to an early grave.

Indeed, as the report rightly notes, some of these elites in fact “benefit directly from the continuation of current approaches and expanding numbers of people in drug ‘treatment’ as well as research funding that is applied to finding the ‘benefits’ of harm minimisation approaches.”

The report quotes other elites in the drug industry who seem intent on pushing the PC line on drugs, regardless of just how harmful such a position is. It demonstrates how this policy is fundamentally flawed because it does not “have the aim of enabling users to become drug free”. For example, former drug addicts told the committee how the harm minimisation mentality sent mixed messages to them and worked to encourage them to stay in their drug-affected state.

And families gave stories about how a son or daughter was effectively urged to take risks with drugs by the weak messages given in drug education and/or counselling services, with the emphasis on using drugs “safely”. Some horrified parents actually reported how their children were encouraged to continue using illicit drugs

Talking sense about drugs

In contrast to our current failed policies, the report urges a realistic and genuinely compassionate approach which seeks to get people off harmful drugs. As the report says in the very opening paragraphs, “What is required is policy to prevent harm to individuals from illicit drugs, not policy to merely reduce or minimise it.” It strongly supports the zero tolerance approach which has worked so successfully in Sweden, taking it from being a country with one of the biggest problems of illicit drug use to one with among the lowest use.

Indeed, the restrictive drug policy in Sweden, which emphasises early intervention and treatment, has been a remarkable success story. “As a result of this approach, drug use in Swedish society has been dramatically reduced over recent decades and is now very low relative to the rest of the European Union and other industrialised countries, both on measures of lifetime prevalence and regular use.”

Based on this realistic and responsible approach, the report makes a number of recommendations. For example, it calls for a “television-focused campaign of the same magnitude as the anti-tobacco campaign against illicit drug taking”. It also recommends that “the Minister for Health disallow the provision of takeaway methadone,’ while making naltrexone implants available on “the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme for the treatment of opioid dependence”.

Above all, it calls for the replacement of the current harm minimisation focus “with a focus on harm prevention and treatment that has the aim of achieving the permanent drug-free status for individuals with the goal of enabling drug users to be drug free; and only provide funding to treatment and support organisations which have a clearly stated aim to achieve permanent drug-free status for their clients or participants.”

Absolutely! Finally some common sense and genuine compassion in the drug debate. Of course – predictably – the report has been widely attacked by the drug industry elites. All their frenzied responses were fully to be expected. But for the sake of our young people, it is time we got serious about the dangers of illicit drugs, and started acting responsibly. This report deserves a wide-reading, especially by our political leaders and policy makers.

For those interested, the 400 page report is available in hard copy or on the Internet.

www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/fhs/illicitdrugs/report.htm

[1455 words]

He has spent many years working with drug addicts, and knows first hand the problems associated with drug dependency. His newly released book, Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy, has caused a heated debate.

The controversy surrounding the book has led to a recent symposium in which he takes on his critics. Found in the October 13, 2006, frontpagemag.com, it is a lengthy but worthwhile read.

Dalrymple first lays out his main premise: “My general thesis is simple: that addiction is not an illness and treatment is therefore metaphorical rather than real. Mao Tse Tung threatened addicts with dire consequences if they did not stop, and they did stop. This suggests that there is a category difference between addiction and, say, cancer of the bowel.”
 
He continues, “Addiction is one answer to perennial existential problems – in my view not a very good answer, but I don’t claim to have a perfect one – and so-called medical treatment is beside the point. It often does tangible harm, and in my view does harm in an intangible way as well by persuading addicts that they ‘need’ the help of professionals to stop. This, of course, is all to the advantage of a group of professionals.”

He argues that breaking free of addiction is not so difficult as many would have us believe. “I do not agree that conditioning makes people automata. If it were true that addicts really cannot help themselves, that they lose all volition in the matter, it would justify the most illiberal measures to help them, to prevent them from destroying themselves and so forth. But the fact that millions of addicts, not just of opiates, have given up, merely by taking thought, suggests that conditioning is not very important.”

Opiate substitutes of course often become just as addictive: “In the Lancet just two weeks previously, it was reported that buprenorphine has become the drug of abuse favoured by tens of thousands in the Republic of Georgia – all in the last 3 years, since addicts in France started selling their treatment to dealers to export it to Georgia (the drug was already the favourite opiate of abuse in Finland, thanks to the same source). At the very least, this suggests how deeply addicts value their treatment. At the same time, in the New England Journal of Medicine, a trial was reported with a clever drug which combined buprenorphine with naloxone, so that, if injected, it precipitated withdrawal symptoms. A very clever drug combination, if I may say so.”

Indeed, he argues that “the whole rationale of treatment is flawed. It is true that, if you take the case of methadone, you can show that a certain small percentage do well on it. That is true; but it would also be true that if you gave money to burglars – and there would be a dose-response curve – some, not all, would stop burgling. That does not make burglary a disease. In any case, treatment is not the answer to the social problem and never will be: in England, for example, stopping one person from taking heroin is not like interrupting the transmission of TB; it is just transferring the problem to someone else, as the drug-dealer finds another willing client/dupe. This fits what has happened, at least in Britain.”

But what about a genetic basis of addiction? “I accept that, within a population, there may be some genetic predisposition to abuse drugs of various kinds (or, in the case of East Asians, not to take alcohol). But I do not think that you can explain the very large variation between populations by means of genetics. When I started work in the city in which I spent the last part of my career, heroin addiction was very rare. By the end of my career, it was very common. (I don’t think my presence was causally related to the increase). This huge increase cannot be explained genetically: in the 1950s there were at most a few score addicts, and by 2000, between 150 and 300,000.”

Concludes Dalrymple: “I would say that the idea of treatment is the one that belittles addicts, since it suggests that, unlike other people, they cannot behave other than as they do. The same has been said of criminals. They are then less than fully human. I am not so pessimistic about them. It is, besides, empirically mistaken. However, so long as addicts tell lies to themselves and doctors, and doctors tell lies to addicts (and the whole idea of ‘treatment’ is a lie), the absurd pas de deux will continue.”

The entire debate is well worth a read. As a person lacking the relevant expertise, I cannot claim that Dalrymple’s position is rock solid here, but given the scourge of drug addiction, anything that offers hope to the addict must be a step in the right direction.

frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24917  

[859 words]

Fortunately I am not suggesting that we do this. Quite the opposite. It is a stupid idea and no one should be proposing it. Yet incredibly that is just what the Victorian government is in effect doing, and with our tax dollars to boot. No, they are not arguing that we should drive while drunk, but they are arguing an identical sort of case: that if our young people must take illegal drugs, let’s show them how to do it safely.

A state government website offers advice to school leavers on how to use illicit drugs in its “safe partying” link. It includes such tips as: “take a small amount first to see how it effects you,” and kids should sip water to avoid dehydration and wear light clothing to avoid over-heating and dehydration.

About the only thing it doesn’t tell our kids is where to score the cheapest dope, and how to avoid police detection.

The website is of course totally irresponsible and foolish. Why teach kids how to take drugs that are illegal? That is tantamount to telling kids to break the law.

And why teach kids how to take drugs that are dangerous? We surely do not do that with other dangerous behaviours. For example, we do not tell kids, “Well, if you are going to drive while drunk, here are some safety tips. Tip one: drive only a little bit at first to see how your drunkenness affects your ability to drive. Tip two: while driving, drink lots of coffee to help you sober up. Tip three: try to drive slow so you are less likely to get in an accident.

Of course such advice is outrageous, idiotic, and dangerous in the extreme. But can any government official explain to me why this is irresponsible, while telling kids how to take illicit and mind-altering drugs is not?

Vic Health chief Rob Moodie tried to justify the web site by asking this question: “Do you just bury your head in the sand and assume that no information is good information? Or do you say, ‘This is dangerous but if you are going to do it this is the safest way to do it?’”

Let me help Mr Moodie. He is obviously having some difficulty here. Does the Victorian government offer the same rationale about another social concern, tobacco use? Let me just slightly paraphrase Mr Moodie: “Cigarette smoking is dangerous but if you are going to do it this is the safest way.”

Do the folk at Vic Health offer advice to our young people about the best filters for cigarettes, the lowest tar content, how to smoke and not be too endangered? The answer is no. And why not?

Because they know that cigarette smoking is harmful and it should never be countenanced. It is simply sending kids a contradictory message to say “do not smoke” on the one hand, while teaching them how to do it safely on the other.

So if our officials can get it right on smoking and drink driving, why do they get it so wrong on illicit drug use? Why the double standards here? Why the hypocrisy? Why not take a consistent line on all of these issues?

Why take a “just say no” approach to two of these activities, but put up the white flag of surrender on the third? Why argue that the get-tough approach works well with smoking and drink driving, but refuse to acknowledge it is the right approach to drug use as well?

I eagerly await our government officials explaining the logic of their schizophrenic approach. To me and most parents, it makes no sense whatsoever.

But making sense is not always a feature of government policy. Yet in an area like this where the lives of our children are at risk, it is time the government gets some sense, and gets it quickly.

[687 words]

So instead we are getting various election sweeteners, eg. more money on this, more money on that. But voters can rest assured that if Labor is returned to office, the same harm minimisation policy will be promoted.

Harm minimisation policy says that people will always take drugs, so all we can do is try to minimise the harm, to lessen the dangers. It is the opposite of a much more sensible policy: harm elimination. This policy says mind-altering drugs are illegal because they are dangerous, and they should stay that way.

The principle is that prevention is better than cure. Keeping people off destructive drugs in the first place is a much wiser and a much more cost-effective policy than picking up the pieces of drug addiction. But Labor has long ago given in to a soft approach to drugs. Thus we can be sure, for example, that the plan to introduce heroin injection rooms will be back on the agenda if they return to office.

As an example of how the government has gone to pot on this issue (pun intended), consider a recent government initiative, funded of course by our tax dollars. The Victorian Government each year produces a booklet for young people, meant to give them advice and help on a number of issues. Past issues of the book have given pro-homosexual advice, among other things.

The annual booklet for young people is called Stuff and has been distributed to Victorian schools. In the current issue, kids are advised on how to take ecstasy and other drugs. It also tells kids how to avoid answering police queries about drugs.

All together, 80,000 copies of the tax-payer funded booklet were distributed. The Consumer Affairs minister Christine Campbell says she is “very proud” of the book. One has to ask how a government minister can be proud to offer such advice. Not only is she crossing swords with her own police department, but she is giving young people very bad advice indeed. Many studies have shown just how dangerous drugs like ecstasy are.

Illicit drugs are illegal because they are dangerous. Public health and safety demands that we keep them illegal, and not cave in to the pro-drug crowd, and the Politically Correct brigade.

[422 words]

It is a good thing we do not take such a defeatist approach to other social issues. Imagine saying we have lost the war on rape, so let’s legalise it. Imagine saying we cannot win against drink driving, so let’s set up controlled drink driving trials. Imagine saying the battle to end pollution is over, so let’s scrap our environmental legislation.

Interestingly, when we debated a proposal to set up 5 heroin injecting rooms in Melbourne recently, there were voices saying if we did not get these rooms, overdose deaths would skyrocket. Just the opposite has happened. Thanks to strict policing and drug seizures, heroin deaths are way down from previous years.

Consider the figures. In the first seven months of last year there were 214 heroin deaths in Victoria. During the first seven months of this year there were just 29. While even one death due to heroin overdose is too many, 29 is far better than 214.

Another figure shows that we are far from on the losing side in the drug battle. In 1997-1998 there were 25 heroin seizures by the Federal Police, netting 192 kilograms. In 1999-2000 there were 75 seizures, netting over 500 kilograms.

Not only is heroin becoming more scarce, but cocaine is becoming even harder to find. Furthermore, the price of a cap of heroin has more than doubled, while purity has radically plummeted. All this means fewer heroin deaths. These facts mean, as Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty has said, that we are winning the war, not losing it.

Now is not the time to surrender in the drug war. We are clearly making progress. John Howard, Peter Costello and Michael Wooldridge are all right to reject the foolish and reckless remarks of the NCA.

[382 words]