World record hauls of ecstasy have occurred in Australia since 2004 but nothing approaches the 4.4 tonnes detected in tomato cans in June in Melbourne with a street value of $440 million. It seems that despite extensive education and interdiction, Australia's youth have embraced this drug like no other. The market remains buoyant.
As a GP in Kings Cross, I have seen hundreds of ecstasy users over the past decade, and despite horror stories in the press most take this drug with impunity. The phenomenon of "Eckie Monday" (the weekend "come-down" from a binge requiring a medical certificate for work absence) is common. So, too, is the weight loss and lack of vitality in habitual users who dance themselves into exhaustion and grind their teeth in clubs all over Sydney.
Early mornings in the Cross provide a cavalcade of burnt-out E users heading home after an all-nighter. But for the most part they do not suffer serious medical problems. A few may develop overheating or hyperthermia and require a short admission for hydration with a litre of fluid or two intravenously in an emergency department. Seizures and drug-induced psychosis do happen, but at a very low rate. Even this outcome does little to dissuade users to quit their drug of choice.
Sure there are horror stories of PMA (para methoxy amphetamine), a cheaper, dangerous substitute for ecstasy causing sudden death, but this is so rare as to not affect demand. Ecstasy testing kits are now available over the internet. These testing kits are common in Europe outside clubs and should be encouraged here.
Young people are educated on the risks and dangers of all illicit drugs. Most schools now have excellent drug education programs covering all illicit drugs in Australia. Children use the internet to plug holes in their knowledge and successive government programs portraying ecstasy as a danger have done little to reduce ecstasy use in Australia.
Most young users have observed their friends taking the drug without adverse effects. Combine this with the boundless optimism of youth and an unshakeable belief that they are bulletproof and you have a recipe for an explosion in demand.
Drug use follows fashion cycles, and in many ways governments' demonisation, with their horrific video footage, entrenches the inevitable generational warfare between the young and their parent's generation. It is unusual in my experience for a young person to request treatment for ecstasy abuse unless they are dragged kicking and screaming by a concerned parent. They do not want treatment if their recreational use is limited to weekend recreation, and will show a therapist bored disinterest.
Price is a keen indicator of availability and none of my patients ever complain of difficulty obtaining ecstasy. So we can conclude that despite these huge hauls by federal police and the national crime authority, significant stockpiling must occur around the country.
Drug trafficking will go on as long as there is demand. Australia has always been at the forefront of illicit drug use worldwide. In 1936 we had the highest use per capita in the Western world of cocaine and heroin. And now we appear to have won a gold medal for ecstasy. Very little has changed.
Raymond Seidler.
http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2008/08/10/1218306656378.html
There were the hysterical claims of the coming apocalypse, there were the grimy distortions of a political caste, the mounting anger of a world which no longer belonged to him, or his generation, and sadness at departed ways. Growing old is for the birds, he said, often, as he smiled his crooked smile and the rivulets of thoughts beaded their way through the plastic images that filled his brain. There was no way back to the organic. Our brains had been entirely filled with media. He was sadly dipping his toe in the water, shivering at the icy shock, and he knew now this world was lost.
They had spilled out of the clubs in Amsterdam and the world had seemed so wonderfully exciting, as if they were part of a grander whole. Their whole generation was off its tree, partying. Every joint was a revolution, a defiant act to change the uber-consciousness. The loneliness and despair where addiction led, none of this had happened. The wonderful biting taste of scotch at 1am, the warmth, yes desire, he felt towards total strangers began to peak along with the chaotic messages of the drugs, and once again he heard that fatal click. He drowned in the crowd. He had no memory after that, not till he woke with a thumping hangover.
Oh Richard, Richard, come back. I didn't mean to lead you astray. I didn't mean to leave your head full of Burroughs images, of the gusty smells of rotting oranges, fishboys ejaculating on silver streams, networks of gallows where young men hung and died. The sweat of changing rooms. The flashes of lust, of abstract and not so abstract beauty. Forever young, that was what you wanted. Holding court behind the bar in the most fashionable club in London, mixing drinks with great aplomb, always spotting your friends in the ten deep crowd and whisking them a drink without them having to say anything.
They would depart, grateful, back into the throngs, that searing image of your beauty left forever; you looked so astonishingly handsome in those black suits and white formal shirts. The flare you showed at your job, even if it was just dishing drinks, was truly masterful. We all fell in to admire. Even that upmarket restaurant you worked at in Soho for a while, that one where their silver filled the cutlery drawers in our squat, even that brief but passing glory, before you got the sack, was a valued memory.
We were left to grow old, as the soldier's lament goes, and indeed in a sense we were all warriors, the ones who had had the nouse and the initiative to escape the stifling comformity of Australia, the dullness of its suburbs, the blandness of its politics, the dreariness of its bars. We had gone to Europe, following what was perhaps a well worn path of expat Australians, and we were so happy as we lived our great adventures. Richard and Steven would get astonishingly, grandly pissed at the London University bar and sometimes he would wander over from their squat just opposite, that squat which fronted on to Tottenham Court Road and whose garden was filled with hollihocks each spring.
They would remember what had happened in Australia, their antecedents, as the mountain of glasses grew ever larger on the table in front of them, testament to their achievements. Their bodies were young, Richard and Steven, but even then his own ailments and the fragile burnt out state of his organs meant there was no way on earth he could match them drink for drink. They raised their glasses and they laughed and laughed, and they loved each other more than any physical lovers ever could, and they could feel the dance of time outside the building, the huge sprawl of London turning in the planetary winds, the sun sneaking overhead, behind the wintery clouds, and they plotted new escapades and embraced each other with drunken affection. And they never thought, not for one moment, this is just an interlude, this could be the happiest days of our lives. From here on in the decay sets in.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=435177&no=383426&rel_no=1
PESHAWAR -- Hundreds of thousands of hapless tribesmen have left their areas and struggling to find shelter for their families in settled areas of Pakistan's NWFP since the launch of military operations against the Taliban in the troubled tribal region of that country.
The fresh military operation in Bajaur Agency, one of the seven tribal agencies of Pakistan bordering the neighbouring Afghanistan, was launched by Pakistani security forces last week following threats from militant leaders to target the cities and government installations with their well-trained squads of suicide bombers.
According to official figures, more than 462 militants have been killed so far while about 20 security personnel have lost their lives since the breaking out of hostilities in the tiny, but strategic Bajaur Agency.
Rehmand A. Malik, advisor to Pakistan's prime minister on interiors, told a news conference that around 3,000 armed militants -- including Afghans, Arabs, Chechens and Uzbeks -- were present in Bajaur and the operation would continue till their surrender or complete elimination.
A similar operation is also underway in the tourist resort of Swat, which is part of Pakistan's NWFP province. Swat-based militants, led by a firebrand cleric Mullah Fazlullah, had signed a peace agreement with the NWFP government in May this year. However, it was suspended following differences between the two sides and the government launched a fierce operation in the area earlier this month.
As the Pakistani government continued with the military operation, hundreds of thousands of men, women, children and elderly are leaving their homes in Bajaur Agency and arriving in Peshawar to get shelter here.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24196995-25837,00.html
ISLAMABAD: A human tide of more than 300,000 civilians has fled the al-Qa'ida badlands, amid indications that the fighting there has reached unprecedented levels, with the Pakistani army using massive firepower to attack jihadi militant strongholds.
Helicopter gunships, fixed-wing strike aircraft, tanks and heavy artillery have been used in the onslaught that followed the visit last month by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to Washington, where he was berated for Pakistan's failure to wipe out the militants.
The offensive runs counter to perceptions that Pakistan's new civilian Government is "soft" on Islamic extremism.
This will reassure Washington, whose ally in the war in terror for the past nine years, President Pervez Musharraf, was given by the Coalition Government until midnight last night (4am today AEST) to resign or face impeachment proceedings beginning tonight in the National Assembly.
Pakistani television showed thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire streaming out of the Bajaur, Mohmand and Kurrum agencies during the fighting estimated to have killed more than 500 militants. Tens of thousands of people are camping on the perimeter of Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, and some have reached Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjoining Islamabad.
New security tsar Rehman Malik, the architect of the get-tough policy against the militants who have over-run the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, said at least 220,000 civilians had been displaced. But welfare agencies said the figure was probably well in excess of 300,000.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=130390
MUNDA, Dir Lower: Half of the Bajaur population has migrated to safer places and hundreds of families, including children and women, continue exodus amid the ongoing military operation against Taliban militants while the government's help to the victims is barely discernible.
"Out of 0.6 million population, over 300,000 people have migrated from the area," volunteers and locals said.
A pamphlet dropped from helicopters asked the people of the Taliban-infested areas to immediately leave, saying the government action was only against the terrorists.
The pamphlet said the roads would remain open so the people could shift but asked the migrating people to stop their vehicles and raise their hands when they see helicopters in the air and avoid sitting under trees or else they would be hit.
The Al-Khidmat Foundation's Fazl Mehmood, looking after all relief activities in the district, said they had properly registered and accommodated 60,000-plus affected people in their camps in Munda alone and provided temporary stay to over 100,000 migrants.
"We have set up relief camps at Balambat, bus terminal in Timergara, Talash, Munda and Chakdara," he said.
In addition, hundreds of families are staying with their relatives in Lower Dir and other districts and thousands of victims have moved to down districts.
From Batkhela, the headquarters of the Malakand Agency, to Munda, volunteers were raising funds for displaced people at numerous places. The affected families -- could be seen sitting in the open, under-construction markets, bazaars, bus stands, at roadsides and in camps in a miserable condition -- from Khazana, situated six kilometres off the district headquarters, to Timergara and to Munda town bordering Bajaur Agency, waiting for shifting to plain areas.
Women, children and elderly people with their luggage walked for hours to leave the troubled agency, believed to be the hotbed of hardcore militants.
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