How to turn Australia’s Floral Emblem into a ‘Drug of Addiction’ (Civil Disobedience protest)

Yesterday, we told you that the Victorian Government would like to ban (certain) books.
Today I’ll tell you a little bit more about the nonsense justification that is being used to drive the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Bill 2015.

If moral entrepreneurs and interest groups manage to whip up enough fear and anxiety, they can create a full-blown moral panic, the widespread sense that the moral condition of society is deteriorating at a rapid pace, which can be conveniently used to distract from underlying, status quo-threatening social problems and exert social control over the working class or other rebellious sectors of society. – Alternet ‘Four of the Major Fear Campaigns That Helped Create America’s Insane War on Drugs‘

A common theme of the war on drugs is heavily hyperbolic mass-media reporting, resulting in intense moral panics that shift to a new drug every few years. In the book, ‘Synthetic Panics: The symbolic politics of designer drugs‘ author Philip Jenkins outlined various moral panics that have occurred since the beginning of drug prohibition. His book was published in 1999 and ten years earlier, the US had been whipped up into moral panic over ice.

As the Journal of the American Medical Association warned following the events of 1989-90, “News articles describing [ice] as like ‘ten orgasms pronto’ are working like paid ads… if the media says it’s an epidemic, drug adventurers says, everybody’s using it, so I’ve got to try it.” Ice was being “beautifully advertised by the media” to existing cocaine users, though users (fortunately) reported being disappointed with the results. The warnings accompanying the advertising copy are universally ignored, stemming as they do from law-enforcement experts who have so thoroughly discredited themselves with decades of misleading panic statements about drugs like marijuana. – p18-19 ‘Synthetic Panic’ – Philip Jenkins

The self-fulfilling epidemic is also a common theme of moral panics around drugs. In 2012, the International Journal on Drug Policy featured the abstract, ‘Kronic hysteria: Exploring the intersection between Australian synthetic cannabis legislation, the media, and drug-related harm‘ which demonstrated the market effect of a moral panic around Kronic and other such products at the time. The authors found that there was a correlation between the number of media stories about Kronic and web searches for the product, including to purchase it.

Victoria has been wrapped up in an ice panic for quite some time now. Victoria’s drug treatment and user community have advised the Victorian Government many times against the ‘tough’ law and order approach, “The continued emphasis on law enforcement and ramping up of legal penalties will further drive methamphetamine users away from essential services, rather than decreasing the use of these drugs.” Let’s Put an End to the Ice Age, HRV and AIVL

These calls have been largely ignored, which has meant a disproportionate amount of attention has been paid to this particular drug by politicians, police and the media. Whether their motivations are sincere or not, they cannot claim to be well informed and it is clear that drug moral panics are used to drive law and order agendas, despite a lack of evidence of the efficacy of these policies in reducing drug harms.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfB3iK9jQ_I[/youtube] (Also, check out this ABC article, showing two ice ads back-to-back – ‘Hard-hitting new anti-ice ad’ an identical remake of 2007 ad)

The Victorian Government wants to ban books based on the premise that ice is an unacceptable risk to the Victorian community.
From the Bill’s explanatory memorandum:

Whether imported from overseas or produced locally in clandestine drug laboratories, the supply and distribution of ice is a major concern. According to the Australian Crime Commission the market for ice in Australia is entrenched and expanding, and of all illicit drugs, ice poses the highest risk to the Australian community.

There are plenty of places on the internet that explain how to extract DMT from the bark of various wattles, including Acacia Pycnantha.