Hundreds of clandestine drug labs uncovered in Western Australia have all been "addiction-based", not organised crime operations, Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan says.

The commissioner told a parliamentary estimates hearing on Monday there hadn't been "one single clan lab detection which can be classed at an organised level for the widespread distribution of drugs".

"Every clan lab found in WA has been an addiction-based clan lab, in other words it's not an organised crime lab," he said.

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"It's a lab that can generate very small amounts of meth for a user or a couple of users."

Mr O'Callaghan said organised crime operations were not easily detected and were much more sophisticated than what was being found currently.

"One of the things contributing to the increase in clan labs is that many people are now finding our how it's done and they find out what pre-cursor chemicals that are required to create meth.

"They are generally available easily over the counter at a hardware store and the pre-cursor chemicals that are required, the actual extraction chemicals that are required, they can be bought at a chemist."

Mr O'Callaghan said people were beginning to realise they could make the substances quite simply with not much equipment.

"We're seeing an upward trend but at the same time the community are also becoming more aware of it.

"I do point out not all clan labs are set-ups that are found in houses.

"Some are just cobbled together in the back of cars or in the bush, we're just finding more and more of these."

Meanwhile, the WA Police Union conference on Monday heard that 696 clandestine drug laboratories had been uncovered in WA since 1998, out of around 4000 found nationally.

Chemist Paul Newell, from the contaminated sites branch of the WA Department of Environment, told the conference that those were only the labs detected by police.

"We might be generous in saying we are catching something like five to 10 per cent," he said.

WA was on track to break last year's record number of lab busts, Mr Newell said.

Drug labs ranged from very simple "box labs" that could be taken by motorcycle into remote bush areas to large, sophisticated operations that had been found in the eastern states run by trained chemists, he said.

The hazards involved in clandestine labs included the risks of explosion, toxic fumes, poisoning and chemical burns, and things could go wrong very quickly, Mr Newell said.

Houses used as drug labs could remain contaminated for many years, posing very real health risks to occupiers, he said.

Police lobbying since 2005 had resulted in national guidelines being released in April this year to promote safe dismantling of labs and the decontamination of premises used as labs, Mr Newell said.

oldies are drinking secretly at home, cunningly hiding our addiction from the world, and quietly going gaga as a result.

Were you Russian, you might not have to worry about the problem of alcohol misuse in your retirement because you would probably already be dead. The average man born in Russia today cannot expect to live beyond 63, so much vodka is he likely to have consumed by then.

Surprisingly, we are not an especially boozy people and so live much longer than many others. The life expectancy at birth of a British man is now 78, and of a woman 82. So most of us will still have several years of retirement ahead in which to try to amuse ourselves.

And the evidence shows that we do this rather well. Experts on ageing have concluded that older people are generally happier than the young, in better mental health, and suffer fewer negative emotions.


To stop us falling over and other such things that happen as a result of alcohol, we must prepare ourselves for a bleak and puritanical old age

This, you would have thought, would be cause for great satisfaction. But, of course, the authorities never like to look on the bright side of life: they're forever seeking out flaws in our lifestyle and urging us to eliminate them.

And so the Royal College of Psychiatrists has come up with a new health scare — that of 'hidden' alcohol addiction among the over-65s.

 
The fact that not even doctors have noticed this problem does not mean it doesn't exist, says the College. We oldies are drinking secretly at home, cunningly hiding our addiction from the world, and quietly going gaga as a result.

We may not drink very much, it says, but we hold our liquor worse as we get older, and so should drink even less than what is considered safe for everyone else.

Whereas current official advice is that no man of any age should drink more than 21 units of alcohol a week, and no woman more than 14, the Royal College of Psychiatrists would like the Government to issue separate guidelines for the over-65s, demanding that they drink a great deal less even than that.

It wants us to have no more than 1.5 units of alcohol a day — the equivalent of about half a pint of beer or a small glass of wine.

Why? Because the elderly, it says, find it harder than the young to get rid of alcohol from the bloodstream. We are therefore more likely to fall over, lose our memories and generally make fools of ourselves.

So to stop such things happening — which amount, in the College's view, to 'a burgeoning public health problem' — we must prepare ourselves for a bleak and puritanical old age.

Now, no one needs being reminded that too much heavy drinking is bad for you. It is linked to some cancers and it doubles the risk of death by stroke. Plus, it makes you feel rotten.

But we are talking about heavy drinking — not, say, two glasses of wine or a pint of beer a day.


Mr Cameron must remember his promise to lead our lives, and accept that whatever we do, provided it is legal, is nobody's business but our own

Age UK defines 'heavy drinking' as five or more units a day (two or more decent glasses of wine) and says — encouragingly — that anything less than this 'can have health benefits, especially for the heart'.

Yet the College says drinking even a third of what Age UK still considers beneficial will do old people serious harm. I don't believe it for a moment, but just imagine that the College is right and Age UK wrong.

It would still be intolerable for the Government to boss us around in this way. If you can't drink what you want at the age of 65, what's the point in staying alive? You have worked hard all your life — and now you are free to relax and have fun.

One way to do this is to meet friends for a drink in the pub. You might want to stay there for an hour or two. Is it proposed that you spend that time nursing one little glass of wine or a half-pint of beer? It's hardly a festive scenario.

When Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote 'Wine is bottled poetry', or the 17th-century monk and champagne pioneer Dom Pérignon announced over a glass of vintage bubbly 'Come quickly, I am tasting the stars', do you think either of them was counting their units?

And what if you do find yourself getting a little tipsy? Why would that matter? One thing to be said for the old is that they don't go around pulling knives on people or beating them up. The worst that could happen is that you might stumble a little on the way home — which is hardly a 'burgeoning public health problem'.

When the 17th-century monk and champagne pioneer Dom Pérignon announced over a glass of vintage bubbly 'Come quickly, I am tasting the stars', do you think either of them was counting their units?

Since Mr Cameron came to power promising to do away with the culture of the nanny state, you might expect the Coalition to treat the College's advice with indifference. But no. A Department of Health spokeswoman said 'alcohol misuse is a major public health issue — no matter what age you are.

'Everyone should drink responsibly, within the recommended alcohol limits,' she went on. 'We welcome any addition to the evidence base in this area, and will consider this report carefully.'

Well, let's hope not too carefully. Old age brings trials enough without the added humiliation of being told by the Government to drink much less than what is considered perfectly all right for a teenager.

The Department for Work and Pensions, too, is concerned that 'alcohol misuse' may be increasing among the over-65s, blaming it for every kind of ailment from blood clots in the brain to dementia and depression. But, surely, one would have to consume a great deal more than one glass of wine a day for it to have any such consequences.

The phrase 'alcohol misuse' is itself seriously misused if it is applied to virtual teetotallers. And while there are many people whose lives have been ruined by heavy drinking, there are others for whom, one suspects, it has been essential to their success.

Old age brings trials enough without the added humiliation of being told by the Government to drink much less than what is considered perfectly all right for a teenager

Queen Victoria famously enjoyed a lethal mix of claret and malt whisky in the same glass — and in some quantity. Below stairs, her servants averaged eight pints of beer every day. Yet Victoria lived until she was 81 and her household was the cornerstone of the world's greatest empire.

Those nannying government departments must have reached for the smelling salts after the beans were spilled this month on the Queen Mother's daily consumption even as a centenarian: a gin and Dubonnet before lunch, wine during lunch and, in the evening, a dry Martini followed by champagne.

Mr Cameron should not forget his promise. He must resist every attempt by his ministers and civil servants to tell us how to lead our lives, and accept that whatever we do, provided it is legal, is nobody's business but our own.

And while this freedom is everybody's right, it is especially important to the old. For they have not much time left in which to enjoy it.

Plan B’s heroin hell

PLAN B is a bloke who doesn't mince his words.
He has admitted smoking heroin when he was a teenager during a weekend at the Glastonbury Festival.

The rapper, now 27, revealed: "I was 16 and didn't have any money.

"The first night we were there me and my mate popped a couple of pills.

"The next night this northerner asked us if he could use our fire and we were too young and too scared to say no.

"He got this foil out and started smoking heroin. We started asking him about it and then he told us that he did heroin because he was abused as a child.

"Then he asked if we wanted some. So, like idiots we took some of his heroin and on the last night we smoked it.

"It was the first and last time I ever did it. I'm never going near it again.

"My head was spinning like I was drunk.

"I was hot then I was cold, I was itching all over - it was horrible."

You've got to admire his honesty...

 

Taxpayers foot £3.6billion bill for drug addicts

Doctors and health workers should be paid by results in ­helping drug users beat their addiction, according to a shock report out today.

The Centre for Policy Studies claims the present approach has proved to be nothing but a costly f­ailure.

In its report called ­Breaking The Habit, the right-wing think-tank points out there are as many addicts today as there were six years ago.

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And author Kathy Gyngell says the Government should urge medics to move away from simply prescribing methadone to addicts and instead refer them to rehab units.

She says the policy of prescribing methadone – a heroin substitute used to treat addicts – has been extremely expensive and has failed to cut the rising number of drug-related deaths.

Her report recommends a system of paying ­organisations, doctors, pharmacists and drug workers for their success rate in getting addicts off drugs.

She adds: “This approach would also be consistent with the Prime Minister’s vision for a Big Society.

“It would involve a real ­transfer of power from large distant organisations to small innovative ­providers.”

The report says looking after the ­country’s drug addicts costs ­taxpayers £3.6billion every year. ­Almost half of that is made up of state benefits paid to drug users.

It costs £730million to prescribe methadone to recovering addicts and a further £1.2billion is spent looking after their ­children.

Yet less than four per cent of England’s estimated 320,000 drug addicts ­manage to stay clean after treatment, says the CPS.

Government sources said ministers would be studying the report.

But a source close to Health ­Secretary Andrew Lansley warned ­that providing a host of new drug treatment centres would be ­“extremely costly” at a time when ­Whitehall ­departments were making cuts.

 

Cardiff scheme to cut alcohol-related violence injuries has provided such dramatic results that cities around the world are being encouraged to adopt a similar mode

l.


Research suggests the Welsh capital has seen a 42% drop in hospital admissions from violent incidents.
The project involves information sharing between the police and casualty departments and uses details given anonymously by injured patients on where, when and how violence occurs.
This allows police and other agencies to predict the nature and time of potential violence and then target resources at 'hotspots' highlighted by the data.
Cardiff University's Professor Jonathan Shepherd, who led the research, said he wanted to do something about the endless stream of facial injury victims who end up on NHS operating tables after a night's drinking.
If subsequent studies also find the significant reductions found in Cardiff, it would increase confidence in the value of this new tool to prevent violence.
Alexander Butchart, WHO prevention of violence co-ordinator
He found that only 23% of accident and emergency cases where people were treated after attacks in Cardiff, Swansea and Bristol were recorded by the police.
Hospital data going back a number of years also suggested that seven out of eight incidents on licensed premises did not appear on police records.
"It came as a real surprise to me to find that I was treating cases week in, week out, where the cause of the injury was simply not being investigated, let alone brought to book," Prof Shepherd said.
"These attacks were just not being reported. My reaction was one of shock. It seemed like such an injustice.
"I felt there was scope here for prevention by working in an integrated way with the police, the hospitals and the local authorities to identify and target the violence hotspots.
"I felt it was essential to integrate the police and A and E data, particularly on locations and weapons."
In Kent, the data collected has helped identify high levels of domestic violence, leading to a new advisory service on the issue.
In Portsmouth, details fed into the Licensed Premises Management system have enabled police and the local authority to restrict the opening times of certain clubs and bars.
The data-sharing model is being implemented across the UK because of its success, a report in the British Medical Journal said.
And the World Health Organisation has suggested the Cardiff model should be emulated across the world.
Alexander Butchart, the WHO's prevention of violence co-ordinator, said: "If subsequent studies also find the significant reductions found in Cardiff, it would increase confidence in the value of this new tool to prevent violence."

Children who see their parents drunk are twice as likely to regularly get drunk themselves, a survey of young teenagers has suggested.

Poor parental supervision also raises the likelihood of teenage drinking, said the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The Ipsos MORI survey found the behaviour of friends is also a powerful factor in predicting drinking habits.

The more time teenagers spend with friends, the more likely they are to drink alcohol, it suggested.

In a survey of 5,700 children aged 13 to 16, carried out for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, researchers found one in five claimed to have been drunk by the time they were 14.

By the age of 16, half of those questioned said they had been drunk.

Influences
But the study also looked at what influences excessive teen drinking - and the habits of parents seem to be particularly powerful.

The odds of a teenager getting drunk repeatedly is twice as great if they have seen their parents under the influence, even if only a few times.

And the authors say that parental supervision is also important - if parents don't know where their children are on a Saturday night, or let them watch 18 certificate films unsupervised, they are more likely to have had an alcoholic drink.

Continue reading the main story
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Both what parents say, and how they behave, have a strong impact on their teenagers' drinking, drinking regularly, and drinking to excess”

Claire Turner
Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Teenagers' friends also have a significant impact on drinking behaviour.

The odds of a teenager drinking to excess more than double if they spend more than two evenings a week with friends.

Spending every evening with friends multiplies the odds of excessive drinking more than four times.

Pamela Bremner from Ipsos MORI, the lead author of the report, said: "For the first time in the UK, this study ranks what most influences young people's drinking behaviour.

"It found that the behaviour of friends and family is the most common influential factor in determining how likely and how often a young person will drink alcohol."

Conflicting evidence


Click to play

A mother and daughter from Bury on the impact alcohol has had on their family
But there is conflicting evidence on how to introduce young people to alcohol - leaving parents with some difficult questions unanswered.

Researchers found mixed messages about the ideal age and ways of introducing teenagers to alcohol.

Generally, those introduced to alcohol at a very young age had greater odds of being a regular drinker and of having been drunk multiple times.

But there were differences in the pattern for young people of different ages.

"This research shows that parents can have more influence on their teenagers' behaviour than perhaps many assumed," said Claire Turner, Programme Manager for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

"Both what parents say, and how they behave, have a strong impact on their teenagers' drinking, drinking regularly, and drinking to excess.

"Being introduced to alcohol at a very young age - for example, under 10 years old - makes it more likely that they will drink and drink to excess as teenagers.

"But there are differences in patterns across the group. So for the older teenagers, if they are introduced to alcohol later in life via friends, away from adult supervision, they are also more likely to drink to excess."

Don Shenker, Chief Executive of Alcohol Concern, said the report confirms that from the beginning of a child's life parents have a strong influence on their children's future drinking patterns.

"Parents have to realise and accept that whether intended or not, their own attitudes towards drinking, their own rate of drinking and any drunkenness are clear signals to children that this is acceptable and standard behaviour.

"In addition parents must accept that allowing children to drink unsupervised can increase the risk of their children being drunk and this can have harmful consequences.

"Government ministers must also look at some of the causes of why it is so easy for children to obtain alcohol, usually from the home.

"Government should look to see if they've done everything they can to stop the large supermarkets from continuing to heavily promote cheap alcohol which incentivises more alcohol purchases and therefore results in more alcohol being stored in the home."

The Royal College of Physicians also said it was not surprised that being able to access alcohol easily was an important influencing factor on current drinking patterns and drunken-ness of teenagers.

A statement said: "This shows that the government needs to concentrate on increasing the price per unit of alcohol and reducing its availability as their main priorities, and in addition to increase education and national campaigns for both young people and their families on the dangers of alcohol."

A HOST of celebrities and three ex-chief constables have signed an open letter urging the PM to decriminalise drug possession.

Dame Judi Dench, Julie Christie, Kathy Burke, Sting and Sir Richard Branson are joined by ex-drugs minister Bob Ainsworth in asking David Cameron to look again at the current legislation to mark this week’s 40th anniversary of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act.

With the three former chief constables Paul Whitehouse, Francis Wilkinson and Tom Lloyd, they claim all the legislation has done is lead to a growth in the illegal drug trade. “This policy is costly for taxpayers and damaging for communities,” they said.

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“Criminalising people who use drugs leads to greater social exclusion and stigmatisation making it much more difficult for them to gain employment and to play a productive role in society.

But the Home Office insists it has “no intention” of liberalising drug laws. A spokesman said: “Drugs are illegal because they are harmful – they destroy lives and cause untold misery.”

Today we look at both sides of the drugs debate..

Ann Widdecombe is against decriminalisation

There are two ways of ­decriminalising drugs. One is to decriminalise just soft drugs, the other is all drugs.

If you decriminalise soft drugs but not hard drugs, all the profits for the drug barons will be in the hard drugs and those drugs will therefore be pushed to an even greater extent.

Secondly, for a percentage of people who start off on soft drugs, it is a gateway into hard drugs.

If you decriminalised cannabis, more people would try it because it would be lawful and there would be no reason why they would not.

Therefore, on the basis of the same percentage, far more people would then go on to hard drugs.

In other words, 10% of 1,000 is greater than 10% of 100, so more people would go through the gateway on to hard drugs.

If these drugs were lawful, it would be very difficult for teachers and parents to say: “This is a bad idea, don’t start it, don’t try it,” because the retort would be: “Well, it wouldn’t be legal if it was that harmful.”

So you would get far greater usage. Indeed, there was a study by the University of Amsterdam following the relaxing of the drug laws there, which ­actually showed that as soft drug use went up so did hard drug use.

Then, of course, there is the effect of cannabis use on mental health and there is now a great deal of evidence of cannabis psychosis.

Cannabis can actually adversely affect mental health, it can cause psychosis, and it can accentuate conditions that already exist. That is now pretty well documented, so there would be that impact as well.

All that is if you decriminalise just the soft drugs. If the state should make legal the use of heroin, people would be able to have their first experience of what is a killer drug simply by walking into a shop and buying it off the shelf.

Is that really what you want? I don’t think it is. So no, don’t do it.

Look at the problems we have with the legal drugs, with alcohol and cigarettes, for example. I think there’s no doubt at all that if we knew at the time what we know now, there would have been a lot more ­argument against making either of those legal. Now, the fact that they are legal doesn’t mean that they haven’t caused a huge amount of suffering.

Alcohol causes crime, it causes mental illness, and it causes family break-ups if abused. Yes, I (like many others) drink, but ­nevertheless alcohol is now a huge social evil and we know it.

Cigarettes are not a social evil but they are an enormous medical evil and we know it.

Why introduce a third?

You have no criminals in alcohol and you’ve got a little bit of ­bootlegging with cigarettes, but it’s not the biggest problem on earth.

The problem is in the actual substances themselves.

If you make drugs legal, you may not have the criminals but you have still got the big social and health problems.

And the criminals will find some other shocking substance to sell.Former chief constable Tom Lloyd says drugs should be decriminalised

I JOINED the police to help people and catch criminals.

Yet I found myself dealing with people for drug possession who needed help, not locking up.

So many of those caught up in drugs have been ­physically, mentally or sexually abused as children.

Prosecuting them does more harm than good.

The Misuse of Drugs Act was a well-intentioned but flawed attempt to control drug use.

We couldn’t be more out of control now – drugs are probably available in every secondary school.

The disaster predicted by those so resistant to change is already with us and the current system has to take a lot of the responsibility.

Drug abuse is a health not ­criminal justice issue.

And police need to focus on ­criminals, the people who do real damage to society.

As Tim Hollis, from the ­Association of Chief Police Officers, said this week, police resources are not best focused on drug possession.

With police budgets being heavily cut, the money we waste arresting users could be much better used.

It is not fair that so many of those caught up in the criminal justice system for drug possession are young, black or poor.

This unfairness gets in the way of policing in some of our most ­troubled communities.

It makes the police’s job harder, wasting even more resources. The step of decriminalising drug use would undo so much of this harm.

It would allow the police to focus on serious criminals who we really need them to catch. It is not true that drug use will necessarily go up at all. When cannabis was ­downgraded to class C, its use continued to fall.

In Portugal, where they ­decriminalised drug possession 10 years ago, fewer young people take drugs and more people are seeking treatment.

Drug deaths and HIV transmission have fallen.

This is what really matters – reducing harm.

Remember that decriminalising possession isn’t legalising drug dealing.

This change would give the police a much better chance of pursuing those who prey on others.

Drug use is so much better tackled by education and access to treatment and support.

When I was chief constable, we tried to tackle prolific offending by heroin users with health and social services using treatment and support.

Crime dropped. It was tough love that convinced an initially sceptical, seasoned older detective that it was “the best way to prevent crime he had ever come across”.

Ultimately this is what matters. Improving the quality of life by cutting crime and the harm ­associated with drugs.

We can only do this through ­practical, pragmatic, evidence-based steps like the decriminalisation of drug possession.

We all want to reduce addiction, death, disease and crime.

The clear lesson from 40 years of failure is that we must change and change now.

An autopsy has determined that a Florida man died after ingesting "bath salts,"

An autopsy has determined that a Florida man died after ingesting "bath salts," just two days after Gov. Rick Scott signed a state law banning the synthetic drugs, which had been sold legally in stores and on the internet.

A toxicologist with the medical examiner's office of Hillsborough County, Florida said that Jairious McGhee, 23, died from an overdose of methylone, one of the chemicals sold as bath salts and used as a form of imitation cocaine. Julia Pearson said methylone was found in McGhee's blood after tests for other better known drugs were negative.

An ABC News investigation to air on "20/20" Friday found that "legal drugs" like bath salts, "K2" and "spice" that mimic the effects of cocaine and marijuana were widely available on the internet and in suburban malls and convenience stores. Bath salts. which have nothing in common with the products long used in bathing, are legally sold in more than 30 states, and there is no federal ban on them. The Florida law banning six different chemicals sold as bath salts was signed Tuesday, but an emergency rule issued in January by the state's attorney general had already made it a felony to possess or distribute them.



McGhee died in Tampa on April 3 after an April 2 altercation with police. Officers described him as behaving erratically, walking in traffic, and beating on cars. He was initially diagnosed with viral meningitis, and when he died his body temperature had risen to more than 105 degrees. Though McGhee, who had been fighting with officers, had been tased, the medical examiner's office said the prongs never touched his skin and the tasing did not contribute to his death.

Bath salts have been linked to 2,500 calls to poison control centers nationwide, and can produce paranoia, hallucinations and rapid increase in heart rate and body. Washington state authorities are investigating whether a soldier who shot and killed his wife and then himself during a high-speed car chase in April was using bath salts. In May, when 19-year-old Mark Thompson of West Virginia was found wearing women's underwear and standing over a goat's dead body, he told police he had been using bath salts.





"I hesitate to even hold some of this stuff in my hands for fear that it could cause a problem," said Dr. Mark Ryan, director of the Louisiana Poison Control Center. Louisiana has been an epicenter of bath salt abuse, with 221 calls to the state's Poison Control Center since Dr. Ryan saw his first case last September. "We've had some people show up who are complaining of chest pains so severe that they think they're having a heart attack. They think they're dying."

Congress is currently weighing a federal ban on bath salts, which are still sold legally in most states and via the web. "Our teens and young adults need to understand that just because something's legal doesn't mean it's safe," said Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Gary Boggs. "Our parents need to -- to pay attention to what our kids are -- are ordering over the internet."