In total, 990 people were arrested on 2,052 drug-related charges.
Jesus. That’s a lot of people. I wish the police would nationally collaborate on something useful though, like money laundering or paedophile priests. Or both! There are other worthwhile options too.
Drugs are just the self-medication for a disease, it’s better to prevent the trauma and suffering that encourages the unhealthy coping mechanisms. If they want to bust syndicates, they can look into companies offering NDIS services who are exploiting their clients. But I guess they wouldn’t be able to play with their guns as much.
MDMA isn’t even a drug. Drugs take you away from yourself. Alcohol is the drug the West was most familiar with so they put everything else ‘dangerous to society’ in that box.
MDMA has low abuse potential and can heal trauma. It can also help you forge deeper bonds with the people important to you.
Finally, because MDMA is illegal, it’s often cut heavily with a much cheaper and more dangerous chemical. One I do classify as a drug. Meth.
In other words, this happened because the world wanted to make illegal the very medicine that helps cure some things you mentioned.
The Australian State is as much the villain here as the syndicates.
While I believe all drugs would be safer if they were legalized and regulated, I think your criteria for what constitutes a drug are arbitrary. MDMA has the potential to heal trauma, but it also has the potential to make people do or say things they regret later. Likewise, meth and heroin have a high potential for personal harm, but some people are able to use them safely for long periods of time. I don’t think it’s useful to debate what is and isn’t a drug.
Then you include sugar and caffeine as drugs or only things that are illegal?
Point being, drug is a word we use rather arbitrarily and it doesn’t match up with how we actually use different chemicals. By drug we generally mean a chemical with the potential to heal or harm dependant on dose. But we also use it, as we do here, to primarily mean something society has made illegal.
If they had seized knock off antibiotics. Illegal antibiotics. The headline would read that specifically. Instead it basically says, a medicine that the State outlawed was seized.
And that’s a rather arbitrary distinction, imo. So I use my own terms To be drugged is to be taken away from yourself and your core values. I’ve taken both meth and MDMA. One affirmed my values. One jeopardized them.
To be drugged is to be taken away from yourself and your core values. I’ve taken both meth and MDMA
And the same drug that harms one person can be used to heal another. For example, I take a small dose of amphetamines for ADHD, it helps me be human. For other people with different chemistry, it is bad times.
For me a drug is just a chemical you use with the intent of altering your current state. Meth, nicotine, caffeine, paracetamol, insulin, MDMA, all are drugs. Sometimes sugar too, if I’m eating it to try to get a burst of energy instead of just eating to not be hungry.
To me, drugs aren’t inherently harmful or helpful. They all have different upsides and downsides for different people in different circumstances. I would not recommend amphetamines to non-ADHD people, even though it is medically helpful to me.
It is stupid how much time and money is invested in drug busts though when I can get maggot for $10 on a bottle of cheap grog within 15mins. The societal cognitive dissonance between drug types is why I’d love for the police to do something more useful.
I agree with most everything you’re saying.
But what’s meant by drugs is a big umbrella and depends on context and nuance.
The way the media is using drugs here is along these lines.
drugs - something and often an illegal substance that causes addiction, habituation (see habituation sense 2b), or a marked change in consciousness
to be drugged - to affect (a person or animal) with a drug (see drug entry 1) especially : to stupefy (someone) by an intoxicating drug
They don’t mean Australia seized medicine or something that could be medicine. They mean the State seized drugs that drug people. Of those two drugs they seized, only one I ever watched first hand destroy lives and the other I mostly saw help people. One, in my opinion and within the context of the article is a ‘drug’. As in, something that drugs people or makes them stupid.
This imprecise language I believe to be intentional on the part of the State. Because the purpose of the drug war, at least in the U.S., is mostly about control and political violence and not based on the medical definition.
a substance used as a medication or in the preparation of medication
What I’m trying to turn you onto isn’t a semantic debate, but the propaganda I am seeing around this word. And how that propaganda shapes our narratives and the world around us.
I hope we as a species never have to answer for the drug wars.
Legalize it, tax it, regulate it, and remove the incentive to use it.
Legalize: if there is a non-risky way to get people will use it and break criminal control
Tax it: might as well make some money off of it.
Regulate it: make the product safer and less will die from it
Remove the incentive: happy successful people don’t generally feel the need to consume fucking meth.
If the cops are bored they can go arrest some priest or banker.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
More than 400 raids were carried out across the country involving police from all jurisdictions as part of the week-long Operation Vitreus, which targeted criminal drug syndicates.
In Victoria, the operation – led by the major drug squad – resulted in 149 arrests, 361 drug-related charges, 87 search warrants executed, and the seizure of 19 firearms, 13 vehicles and about $475,000 in cash.
Victoria police seized methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, ketamine, MDMA, ecstasy, cannabis (both dried and plants) and 1,4-Butanediol, with a total combined value of more than $5.76m.
The hydroponic drug crop comprising more than 2,200 cannabis plants was found in six huge greenhouses on a rural property at Gunalda, north of Gympie.
In Western Australia, police discovered almost 30kg of methamphetamine buried in bushland outside Perth, believed to be linked to outlaw motorcycle gangs.
Detectives seized about 2kg of cocaine, about $168,470 in cash, 20 litres of suspected GBL, a revolver, eight vehicles, stolen registration plates and items consistent with the manufacture of drugs.
The original article contains 403 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 59%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Each greenhouse was 80 metres long and 10 metres wide and contained 2,284 cannabis plants and about 7kg of dried cannabis.
7kg? That’s like two days worth of smoking. That can’t be right.
1kg = 1000g
Fucking hell, yeah you’re right. 6am work start got my brain fried there for a minute, haha damn smoking a kg would be brutal.
I just thought you must be the koala form of Snoop Dogg or something.
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