The marijuana capital of Australia

The festival state, City of Churches, or the Crows? What one thing defines South Australia? "South Australia is the marijuana capital of Australia", the hydroponics shop owner deadpanned. "It's probably worth $7 billion a year." He can't be certain of that, of course. He assures us that the hydroponics gear he sells is used for hothouse tomatoes.

Tomatoes? "Well, people grow a lot of tomatoes," he smiles.

Two weeks ago police raided a property in the mid-north and found plants not even vaguely disguised as tomatoes. The plants looked and smelt like cannabis looks and smells. "It was one of the most sophisticated hydroponic set-ups I have seen due to the absence of pots and the way the plants were espaliered onto netting," Inspector Martin Kennedy said.

Five years ago the then Police Minister was sceptical about the tomato alibi. "We obviously have no problem with the legitimate use of hydroponic equipment for growing backyard vegetables such as lettuce of tomatoes," Hansard records Robert Brokenshire saying. "However, we now have 96 hydroponic shops in SA - the highest number per head of population in the country." "I don't believe that is because we grow more hydroponic lettuce than any other state."

Mike Rann supported him. "The number of hydroponic shops seems way out of kilter with the level of community interest in hydroponically grown vegetables and flowers," Rann said.

Tim Wells, publisher and editor of the newly launched Adelaide-based cannabis magazine Stickypoint says of the situation "Adelaide has more hydroponic shops per person than any city in the world.  Even Vancouver in Canada, where growing marijuana is legal, there's fewer shops."

So to value SA's marijuana crop we relied on not just those in the trade, but academics. Queensland University of Technology's Dr John Jiggens made a study of the industry. He valued it at a conservative $3 billion annually. "South Australia's internal consumption alone is maybe half a billion," he told The Independent Weekly. ˜The rest is sold interstate."

Nearly 3,000 kms away at the University of Western Australia's Business School other academics have also been studying SA's dope industry. "South Australia's lenient attitude to marijuana cultivation for personal use established Adelaide as the marijuana capital of the nation," Professor Kenneth Clements confirms. "Most marijuana sold in Australia is locally grown and the move to hydroponics has ensured a plentiful supply." Professor Clements told The Independent Weekly: "Marijuana is a crop, an agricultural crop, like wheat. It suffers from supply and demand so our research paper treated it that way."

This is indeed a new way of looking. Instead of examining marijuana as a drug like medical scientists, psychologists or criminologists do, he and co-author Xueyan Zaho at Monash University looked at price variations around the country, quantity discount (which means bulk buying), and what would happen if governments could tax the weed. What their research shows about the dollar value of the crop will astound most people. "We estimate that nationally the marijuana market is three-quarters as large as the beer market and if you think the wine industry is booming, consider the fact that Australians are currently spending twice as much of marijuana as they do on wine," it found.

So how much is that in dollars? Well, the ABS says beer and malt manufacturing was worth $4,085 million dollars in 03/04, and that's production alone. As average annual household spending on wine was $329, that's $758 on marijuana per household a year.

"The 1990's may well be remembered as the decade in which marijuana established itself in the Australian market. During the decade, production of the illicit drug graduated from the uncertainties of bush cultivation to the efficiency of the home-based hydroponics, supplies multiplied, prices fell and consumption spiralled," Professor Clements said.

So how many people smoke dope in Adelaide? Almost one in three, says the National Drug Strategy survey. And that's just the number who "fessed up' to the government pollster. That means an absolute minimum of 300,000.

SA decriminalised the "personal" use of marijuana in 1987. It was a happy hippy period. People grew up to 10 plants in the backyard and no criminal conviction was recorded. They gave each of their plants some TLC to gain their THC.

"A plant can be worth up to $5,000," Wells (of Stickypoint) said. "Ten plants is $50,000. "Dope growing puts food on the table, petrol in the car, school uniforms on kids' backs, and Christmas presents under the tree."

But when police surveillance helicopters took to the air and discovered large plantations, the crops moved indoors. "Hydroponics systems are being used to grow cannabis on a relatively large scale", the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence finds.

"Unlike external plantations, hydroponic cultivation can be used in any region and in not regulated by growing seasons. Both residential and industrial areas are used to establish these indoor sites. Cellars and concealed rooms in existing residential and commercial properties are also used." Wells puts it simply. "Outdoors you get one crop a year. Indoors, hydroponically, three or four. It fits into people's quarterly bill-paying cycle."

But an indoor set-up is more expensive to set up, as it were, than its outdoor equivalent. "It used to be moms and pops." Says one long-time Adelaide marijuana wholesaler. "Pushing it indoors allowed the criminal element in. "It was a backyard garden. Now because it's bloody dangerous it's a big-time earner. Laws were sensible. Now they're crazy. Stickypoint's Wells says he's never seen bikies come into his hydroponics shop. He says 95 per cent of the crop is still mums-and-dads, and 5 per cent in seriously criminal.

Mike Rann has told Parliament: "Many of the large-scale hydroponic crops are part of highly organised operations and we must crack down on criminal gangs"

Penalties have increased the risk and therefore the rewards. Ten backyard plants can now put you in jail for two years. Just one plant is a $300 fine. It means people buy their smoke not grow their own," says the dealer a little smugly.

So here's the big question about the biggest agricultural crop. Who runs the industry?

"Let me explain it like this," says the dealer. "In the old days marijuana was a bit like home brewing. Now it's like illegal distilling. "Just five or six really big boys do most of the commercial crop. They outsource to satellite growers called gardeners. Each of these growers then feed into the distribution network. It's sold in bulk interstate."

Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP) is a pro-cannabis lobby which stood for Parliament. "Police have failed to collect the evidence and act on it, preferring instead to pick on Mr and Ms Smith rather than go after the Mr Big's of the trade," HEMP spokesman Russell Haynes said when the new penalties came in. "The Government's actions fly in the face of the widely supported recommendations of the recently convened Community Drug Summit and will only make matters worse by playing into the hands of the serious hard-core element of the drug trade."

So if people in the business say there's a dangerous criminal element in a crop worth more than SA's $2.7 billion export wine industry, what are SA police doing?

Alcohol prohibition in the US in the 1920s and 1930s gave us gangsters like Al Capone, who survived with the protection of corrupt police and politicians. As the 1989 commonwealth inquiry into drugs, crime and society put it: "There have been a number of notable instances in recent years of law enforcement officers who have been seduced by the super-profits offered by the drug-trade."

These days Australia's most famous policeman is Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty. Twenty years ago he was an anonymous rookie cop seconded to the National Crime Authority. Concurrently, Adelaide's best-known cop was drug chief Barry Moyes.

Keelty believed that South Australia had a problem. You heard about police corruption in NSW and Victoria but no one had heard of it existing in South Australia," Keelty recently reflected. Keelty put Moyes under surveillance. Armed with a search warrant and with the drug squad head looking on, Keelty opened Moyes' personal safe. Hidden inside were drugs seized in past police raids which Moyes should have destroyed. Moyes claimed he was innocent. He said he has been consorting with "well known mafia figures" because he was covertly infiltrating organised crime. And then he said he couldn't tell his own drug squad because there were too many corrupt colleagues. Moyes' explanation was disproved by Keelty's Sydney police informant. Moyes confessed and was jailed. "He was involved in a crop at the time and distributing drugs from the drug safe," Keelty said.

Is it possible that police corruption exists in SA today? There is no proof, but there have been allegations. Two weeks ago in Sydney an anonymous witness gave astonishing evidence during an inquest into the death of Brisbane woman Dianne Brimble on a P&O cruise ship called the Pacific Star. Brimble had died of an overdose of the drug gammahydroxy butyrate, commonly known as fantasy. Just before her death she'd been seen socialising with eight Adelaide men. She was sexually photographed with one of them. Her body was found on the floor of a cabin belonging to four of the men. With his voice electrically modified so it couldn't be recognised, and form a separate room, an anonymous informant code-named Charles White testified that one of the Adelaide men was a drug dealer operating with the protection of South Australian police.

Mr White went on the claim the police owned an Adelaide nightclub where drugs were dealt. South Australian police commissioner Mal Hyde argued before the coronial inquiry that Mr White's evidence was sensational hearsay and not relevant. At an Adelaide media conference later, Mr Hyde denied SA police owned the nightclub. "But inquiries show that none of the licensees of the club are police", the commissioner said. But he could not rule out police having an indirect involvement in nightclubs, and this would be investigated, presumably by other police. This week, a spokesman for police minister Paul Holloway said the minister played no role at all in any aspect of the Brimble inquest. The spokesman said Commissioner Hyde had weekly sessions with the minister, and could have informed Mr Holloway of what had been the commissioner's own decision. While Mr White's testimony has not been substantiated, he did tell the inquest he now feared the South Australian police. "I'm just scared that when I get back to South Australia the police will come," he said.

All of which has again raised the question of an independent commission against organised crime and official corruption in SA.

Other states have them. In Queensland it's called the Criminal Justice Commission, set up in the wake of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, and it's already claimed ministerial scalps. In Perth, the Corruption and Crime Commission has dispatched one minister and named three others. In Sydney, Premier Nick Greiner established an Independent Commission Against Corruption, only to be its first big victim when tis investigation forced his resignation in 1992. But according to SA Attorney-General Mick Atkinson and Police Commissioner Mal Hyde, SA has no need of one.

Mr Atkinson says police bodies themselves and the Auditor-General are adequate.

"Firstly there is the Anti-Corruption Branch ... then there is the Police Complaints Authority ... thirdly the Auditor-General has powers to investigate impropriety in public office and finally, individuals have the protection of the Whistleblowers legislation if they wish to raise allegations of corruption," his spokesman said.

Mr Hyde similarly says police can investigate corruption against police.

The president of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, Terry O'Gorman, takes another view. "The tired old system of police investigating police simply doesn't work," Mr O'Gorman told The Independent Weekly. Mr O'Gorman has been awarded an Order of Australia for services to the legal profession. He's a nationally respected voice on the issue.

"There's a very, very strong case to be made that states which argue against an independent body to investigate police corruption have their heads buried in the sand," he said. "In the aftermath of the gangland killings in Victoria, where three or four people in the drug squad have been tried and jailed, the experience in WA and in Queensland proves the case for such a body is clear. In fact, these are now just two jurisdictions - SA and the Northern Territory -  which don't have one".

Shadow Attorney-General Isobel Redmond said this week: "In the past the Liberal Party has not been convinced of the need for such a body in SA. However the performance of the Rann Labor Government has convinced us that this proposal should be revisited."

Meanwhile, South Australia's multi-billion dollar marijuana crop is a national leader not just in price and quantity, but in quality. "The potency's gone up," says Stickypoint's Tim Wells. "In the old days you'd get a bad of sticks, stems and leaves. You'd end up with more headaches than highs. Science and technology's now come up with different variants." Some people say comparing yesterday's hooch with today's head is like comparing beer with vodka. "The spindly old plants aren't around any more," says one of Adelaide's estimated 98,000 home growers. "The yields have increased enormously, and so have the THC levels."

"I don't agree," says associate professor Dr Robert Ali, director of clinical services and research at Drug and Alcohol SA. "People now smoke only heads. And they smoke more intensely."
Whether or no the strength of South Australian-grown plants has increased there is evidence to suggest that some people should stay well clear of the drug, such as people with a pre-existing heart condition. Royal Adelaide Hospital's Dr David Caldicott told the story of a young man brought in with a suspected heart attack.

"All of the tests that we do to see if there is a predisposition came back negative and the only factor that we could associate with it was the recent ingestion of marijuana," he told the ABC's Stateline program.

Dr Ali warms that people suffering from or likely to suffer from schizophrenia may also be adversely affected. "For people with schizophrenia, cannabis use is likely to aggravate their symptoms, and should be avoided. People with a family history of schizophrenia should also avoid using cannabis," says the Alcohol & Drug Information Service. Dr Ali's greatest concern, though, is for teenagers.

"Young people's brains are particularly malleable," he says. "After the age of 25 years or so brains are pretty much hard-wired. But young brains are particularly sensitive."

Tim Wells says: "Dope is not for everybody. Some people shouldn't have it, just like alcohol isn't for everybody."

Wells has travelled widely through North America and Europe. He says marijuana is widely recognised as Canada's largest export, beating hydro energy and wheat. And he puts Adelaide production in the same league. "You could get rid of the criminal elements," he said, "if everyone grows plants for home consumption. There'd be no illicit market, no crime and no dealing."

In some ways marijuana is perfect for South Australia. It suits our Mediterranean climate. It needs less irrigation than grapes or oranges, it's hardier and more insect-resistant than most crops, and its stems can be made into hemp to replace cotton.

But, says HEMP, if it was grown like tomatoes, it would be worth about the same as tomatoes - $5.99 a kilo.

And curiously enough, if that were the case our largest cash crop industry would suddenly have, well, gone up in smoke.