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.Advertisement: Story continues below"It's a lab that can generate very small...

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...

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...

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.Advertisement >>And...

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...

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...

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...

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...