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Australia: Daring Days Over For SA's Marijuana Experiment Penelope Debelle Age, The (Australia) Saturday 19 Jan 2002 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."
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