This town is afflicted by a great scourge. It consumes the lives of those in the grip of its compulsion, it diverts funds they could otherwise have spent productively, it damages their mental health, it leads to sickness from exposure and to violence in our bars.
I speak of course of the Brumbies who I would estimate number around 1 in 10 Canberrans as their fans.
I raise this point because the Brumby loving Bill Stefaniak has put out a media release decrying the threat to a generation posed by illegal drugs in general and “ice” in particularly and giving dire warnings should anyone listen to the soft voice of sanity coming from the Greens. Bill’s justification for this moral panic?
“At the community forum today, we learned that a staggering 500,000 people from aged 14 up have used methamphetamines in the last 12 months, 11,407 of them in Canberra.”
So that’s 1 in 30 Canberrans in the last twelve months give or take. And are we now surrounded by 11,407 violent criminals? The statistics would indicate not.
Bill thinks the grim reaper AIDS campaign should be wheeled out to lie about the dangers in the belief that somehow through lies comes trust. The point of the reaper ads is they sent a message of “this is dangerous, but you can do this other thing which is nearly as good and much less dangerous” and, while shocking they were accurate.
So what’s the safe alternative Bill is going to offer? Ritalin all round if it’s good enough for the kiddies?
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