BEFORE we had the war on terror, we had the war on drugs.  At this stage, there’s no sign of a winner in that war either, but there have been small victories along the way.

For example, the xenophobia campaign is going exceptionally well.  Don’t you love the way the Australian media has been so quick to follow the line that the two guys with Asian names in the Bali Nine are the ringleaders and the whiteys are the poor mules who were intimidated into making the heroin run after those wicked ringleaders made threats about their families?

Well, the case is going on in Indonesia, after all. If it’s good enough for the Indonesians to dispense with natural justice why shouldn’t the Australian media do the same? Hand me a white feather if you must, but I don’t support the war on drugs. I’m just not a Just Say No person.

In fact, I’ve just said yes quite a few times to an assortment of stimulating substances. And it’s generally been a happy experience for me … with a couple of notable exceptions: hydro and bikie speed. Hydro, for the benefit of clean-living Tassie Times readers, is short for hydroponic — from hydroponics, a system of growing plants under glass without soil, which started out as a boon to Tasmanian tomato growers with bad knees and is now a necessary stock in trade of cannabis cultivators.

The aerial surveillance used by police forces to find marijuana plantations has largely sent cultivation indoors, with artificial lights substituting for sunlight and, no doubt, copious quantities of fungicides and pesticides used to control mildew and mites in such close quarters. These hothouse conditions for growing marijuana plants (usually the descendants of the Dutch cultivar known as skunkweed), produces a product that is so strong it rips your ability to construct a sentence apart with a single cone (ie a couple of deep inhalations).

Hydro does not make for a mellow high — it’s either stupefying if you’re in good company or paranoia-inducing if the scene is bad. No peace, love and understanding here. Just ‘Faaaark, I’m ripped’.

The other no-no is what I call bikie speed — a low-grade methamphetamine based on pseudoephedrine — the same drug that’s in the centre of Codrals or the No-Doz you used to be able to buy at the chemist to help you stay awake and study — but all it did was give you a horrible buzzing behind the eyes and a dry mouth. 

The pseudoephedrine is processed with the very nasty solvent hydrophosphorous to produce a substance that smells like oven cleaner. No wonder the kids prefer to inject it. It’s bikie speed because motorcycle clubs have tended to own the franchises for manufacture. A bit over a decade ago, an overseas club with a highly efficient modus operandi came on the scene and succeeded in its, shall we say, hostile takeover of the trade (bang bang).

And, surprise, surprise, in the space of the decade since, Tasmania has developed a serious if under-reported problem with methamphetamine abuse. This bikie speed is similar chemically to the pharmaceutical-grade amphetamines that used to keep   truckies driving, rockers rolling,  movie stars svelte, writers writing and parties going all night.

It makes you feel irritable, if not downright stroppy

Both keep you awake too long. Both damage your teeth due to nervous tooth-grinding. Habitual use of either will alter and dull the pleasure receptors in your brain permanently. The difference is in the detail. Good-quality speed is a neutral drug experience.

It will give you a huge sense of energy and keep you awake for 24 hours but it’s not mood-altering, beyond a certain confidence in conversation as the stimulant effect drives the tongue enthusiastically. You’ll feel flat as a tack the next day and there’s a serious temptation to have some more as a pick-me-up. That way lies addiction and a whole lot of problems.

Bikie speed has none of the cheery energy. It makes you feel irritable, if not downright stroppy. You stay awake and stay awake and you fidget and your skin itches and your eyes hurt and there’s a tightness behind your forehead. Noises jar and people look ugly. You’ve had enough but you can’t sleep. It’s 3am in suburbia and there’s nothing to do …  but develop grudges, pick a fight, smash something or someone up.

Next day you may feel even worse.

Standard toolkit of the bikie speed user: fit for intravenous injection; baseball bat for exacting vengeance for late-night grievances — or payment from other users who’ve bought off you on the never-never and never paid up.

Solution: smash up their house with the baseball bat, put a knife to the woman’s throat, beat the crap out of the bloke, threaten to kill their kids or their parents.

“I’ve heard of people going through someone’s house with a chainsaw,’’ a drug counsellor said. The problem is highly visible. Take a walk through the Hobart bus mall and see the scrawny, haggard,  hollow-eyed unsmiling people … hang on, that’s just the regular commuters. OK, read the crime and court reports in the paper and see how often the people who commit vicious acts offer their amphetamine use as an explanation for the offences. 

You don’t have to be taking illegal substances to commit extreme acts of violence. A skinful of alcohol is more usually the culprit. But speed use seems to produce aggro in a class of its own. A whacked-out pot smoker I know recounted the night three of her female companions beat her up and threatened to gouge out her eye because she wouldn’t drive them to someone’s mum’s place to try and extract the son’s drug debt from her with force of violence.

“What was up with them?’’ I asked. “Drinkin’ and speed,’’ she replied. In court on October 11, a 19-year-old woman was convicted for stabbing her 39-year-old boyfriend after she flew into a rage because she thought he had kneed her in the back deliberately while she was sleeping. The pair had had a session of booze, smoko and speed, capped off by some Valium before they went to bed. 

Now, I’m not about to join a war against skunkweed and bikie speed. But I do have a couple of suggestions.  Firstly, what about legalising growing marijuana for personal use in this state? Our feckless youths could learn to cultivate their garden and to enjoy quality organic marijuana they have grown with their own hands. Double satisfaction — and they’ll no longer need to be stealing from their parents to buy their stuff. And they’ll no longer be buying off people who sell speed as well as hydro.

Regarding speed, the problem has a zero profile in the Tasmanian media, despite widespread usage.

A profile boost may be useful. For example, judges could note in summings-up and sentencings the role methamphetamine use or addiction played in the case before them. And, as the head of Victoria’s Odyssey House drug rehab service pointed out earlier this month, Tasmania desperately needs to improve the drug rehabilitation services it offers. There are no residential drug treatment facilities and there should be.

People who want to sort out their lives and get clean do it very hard out there on their own, strung-out and surrounded by pressures and temptations …