brain dead

Several months ago, in this space, I wrote a column about young Australians and drugs. It was prompted by the latest developments in the saga of our “glamour drug smuggler” Schapelle Corby in Indonesia and the arrest of a young Adelaide model, Michelle Leslie – accused of being in possession of ecstasy tablets after a rave party.

Leslie is the former body painted nude model and underwear mannequin who suddenly started wearing a burqa and shrouding her face as a “devout” Muslim. Around the same time a young male, also from Adelaide, allegedly had used heroin syringes and more than 2000 tablets in his possession.

He hasn’t got (and won’t get) the media attention of Corby and Leslie.

I raise the illegal drug issue again today because of several drug-related issues that surfaced last week. Some did not get much media exposure. But try this one on for size:

A 41-year-old Sydney man appeared in court after allegedly being caught with cocaine in a Surfers Paradise nightclub at 2.20 a.m. LAST Monday morning. Police claimed that the man had been partying with three women and when searched he had several grams of cocaine in his possession.

But there is more, as the Demtel  man used to say on the television commercials. The man is a doctor, Dr. Timothy Steel. Not only a doctor but a Sydney brain surgeon. Not only a brain surgeon but the head of the Department of Neurology at Concord Hospital. He also conducts private and public appointments at the famed St. Vincent’s hospital in Sydney.

Steel had been attending the annual scientific conference of the Neurological Society of Australasia. Here’s a respected brain surgeon allegedly frying his own brain with cocaine. We know of cases of doctors addicted to prescription drugs but for a brain surgeon to be reportedly snorting cocaine is mind-boggling.

What sort of message does that send to teenagers risking their own brains at rave parties with ecstasy tablets?

AMA president Mukesh Haikewal said that illicit drug use was “just unacceptable” under the AMA’s code of ethics. The problem is the code is voluntary.

At the same time in the drug world four young people were hospitalised and two of them died when they inhaled so-called Laughing Gas from a cylinder in the back of their car.

And then there is Kate Moss. She was sprung – and photographed—snorting line after line of cocaine in a recording studio. Then the Fleet Street papers revealed a decadent scenario of the “supermodel” snorting cocaine and having group sex with males and females.

Shades of Jeffrey Archer, Moss got a back down and a big payout from the London Daily Mirror for hinting she had once gone to hospital in a drug-induced coma. Now her major sponsors are cutting her loose. ere’s a

When I read those news stories – and I have no sympathy for the multi-million dollar model, although I do for her daughter – I thought the fashion houses must bear some blame.

I remember, when I was hosting Midday. interviewing an Australian model who had fled New York. She said the models lived on three things to keep them looking like coat hangers: popcorn, and the two cokes. Coca Cola and cocaine.

The white powder was everywhere throughout the industry. As I have said many times: the original definition of cocaine was that it was God’s way of telling people in California that they had too much money.

I am personally pretty naïve about drug use. Never taken them. Not pot, not LSD, not cocaine, not heroin, not ecstasy. Not even a smoker. Writing this, I had to stop and think if cocaine had an “e” on the end of it.

The Herald Sun claimed recently that some Melbourne nightclubs provide private cocaine snorting areas for celebrity patrons. It did not name them. Did not name the venues or the celebrity patrons.

I recall going to the opening of a new nightclub in Prahran a few years ago and was surprised when two men and a pretty young woman came out of a cubicle while I was standing up using the urinal in the men’s room.  I thought that they had been involved in some sexual activity and wondered how three people could fit in such a small space. A more worldly friend explained they had been doing lines of cocaine. Apparently they line it up on the porcelain lid of the cistern. Which sounds pretty unhygienic.  But then ingesting white powder by putting it up your nose sounds pretty unhygienic anyway

 I should say I am naïve about illegal drugs because I DO take a drug and that is alcohol. And sometimes I have ingested too much of it. And you run the risk of sounding like a hypocrite.

Coincidentally, this week I spent some time with a detective from Western Australia. He is with the drug squad. I hate to think how many times he has had to go to a mother or father and tell them that their son or daughter is dead. Dead from an overdose. His job though, on that grief call, is not to be a padre or a chaplain. His job is to watch the family’s reaction. Especially brothers and sisters. His job is to track down the dealer who sold dirty smack that killed somebody.

I know I have raised the issue in the past of legalising all drugs. Make the drugs less polluted. Get the gangsters out.  Maybe sell them through chemists and make people sign up for compulsory rehab sessions.

I mean, too much alcohol can hurt your health. Even kill you. And that’s legal. And the government takes heaps of taxes from your booze  purchases. Same with cigarettes. The Government takes billions of dollars in tax from smokers.

Drinkers and smokers – with liver disease and lung cancer – clog our public hospitals.

In the end though, to sound like a broken record yet again, we are all responsible for our own lives, our own well-being, our own behaviour.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005