Another Avoidable and Senseless Death

We are so lucky to have a moral conscience in this country. You know, those moral crusaders who want to be tough on drugs and damn the consequesnces . Who cares why people take drugs, it’s illegal and immoral and that’s what counts. Think of the children who will be given the wrong message if we go soft on drugs. Well they have succeeded. The message has got through and the result is yet another shattered family at the death of a young family member. The message was clear and precise ... if you use drugs, the cops are going to get you and your arse is toast. You will get no sympathy for your actions and you will face the wrath of the law, the public and your peers. Melanie Boyd’s friends had probably heard this often and they reacted just like you would expect. Now Melanie Boyd is dead and this avoidable death is again, the direct result of of our loud and obnoxious moral conscience. What were the first thoughts of these young people when they discovered people convulsing? It wasn’t what we hoped, for that had been drummed out of them and replaced with the loud voices of the moral conscience crusaders. The fact they even discussed what to do showed common sense and humanity being over ridden with guilt and fear, the perfect weapons for the tough on drugs rhetoric. Now we have a family in mourning unable to forgive these kids who themselves will probably never be able to forget what happened. I just want to know if the Devines and Akermans of the media, the Baxter’s and Bressingtons of the anti-drug brigade, the Pynes and the Bishops of politics are ever going to be held accountable for their foolish, irresponsible behaviour? It’s their voices that our young hear as they are confronted with reality and if ever someone was sending the wrong message, this is it. Coincidentally, Harm Minimisation is criticised most by these moral crusaders which is the very thing that would have saved Melanie Boyd. I need to know why these kids weren’t taught to get help first then worry about the consequences. I need to know why we have allowed our young to even hesitate for a second before calling an ambulance because of a drug overdose. I need to know why education material like the “Choosing to use” booklet is shredded yet it’s message saves lives. Like WW1, the bodies are mounting yet the call is to keep going. From afar the real situation is obscured by fallacious and selfish ideology with little consideration for the victims. It’s so easy to give orders when you are not in the line of fire and you’re driven by the inexorable need to be right. Is the selfish quest for whatever bizarre ideology these people have more important than our kids lives? We know the answer to this but apparently the moral crusaders doesn’t.

Melanie Boyd Wanted to Call for Help at Townsville Pharm Party -Partygoers More Worried About Involving Police By Peter Michael news.com October 2008 TEENAGER Melanie Boyd begged her friends to call for help after taking a lethal cocktail of booze and drugs, an inquest was told. But by the time an ambulance was called, three hours after she was found "blue" and "struggling to breathe", the popular Townsville private schoolgirl, 16, was dead. In a tearful apology yesterday, Matthew Aubrey, 20, told an inquest into her June 2006 death that the first-time drug taker wanted to call for help when two fellow drug users at the "pharm party" fell into fits of convulsions. "Mel had a phone, she said if it's happened to them I don't want this to happen to me," Mr Aubrey told the Townsville Coroner's Court. But the six partygoers talked each other out of calling for an ambulance - because they did not want to involve the police. "It was not my party, not my house, not my call," said the youth, who was 18 at the time and the oldest at the party. "Knowing what I know now, I wish I was smarter." Parents Laurie and Julie Boyd angrily refused to accept his emotional plea for forgiveness as well as that of the teenage girl who supplied the drugs and hosted the beachfront house party. "We thought we were invincible," said the girl, whose identity has been suppressed by the court. She said she had not touched drugs since that fateful party. "It scared me straight. "I'm sorry it took something this catastrophic to make me realise how precious life is." "I think we thought we were better and it would not happen to us." Coroner Brian Smith presiding over the inquest heard "pharm parties", mixing alcohol, marijuana and prescription pills, had become popular among the nation's youth. In a twist, it emerged that the girls who snorted lines of a white powder, popped up to eight anti-depressants and pain killers, and slammed shots of rum had not taken speed, or crystal meth, as believed by police. "I told them (the other girls) it was speed. I wanted to be cool, I wanted to be accepted," the girl said. She said she emptied the contents of an unknown capsule into a bag which they divided up into lines, before raiding her mother's drug cabinet for blue and orange pills. "There is not a day that goes by that I don't think of Mel and wish it had all never happened," she said.

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