Comment: We need to take the shine off chroming
Chroming is a complex problem that won’t be easy to stop. But as parents and adults we owe it to our kids to do whatever we can, writes Steven Wardill.
Opinion
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I PACKED my son off for that time-honoured ritual of high school camp this week.
As he fussed over what to wear, I quizzed him repeatedly about whether he’d packed everything he needed, like underwear.
Before leaving, he doused himself heavily in that sickly-sweet deodorant teen boys like to use these days.
However, the checklist made it clear he wasn’t to take it with him which I initially thought was a crazy brave rule for a two-day camping trip where there aren’t any showers.
But it got me thinking of a story I read recently about a boy who died horribly after trying chroming once.
And it dawned on me how right the school was to ban aerosols given the heady mix of peer pressure and temptation that camps can be.
That poor boy wasn’t much older than mine and his brother recently told ABC talkback about the ordeal.
“When we were in school my brother had tried it and the first time he tried it, like at school, it was a group of them and it killed him,” he said.
“When he did it he was 15. But he was actually in hospital for a very long time. For two-and-a-half weeks until he died.”
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Chroming scares the hell out of me.
At school I had easy access to alcohol courtesy of my parents’ pub so I never pondered it.
But there were kids who tried it because they thought it was cool.
My story is nothing new.
In Queensland, authorities have been grappling for decades about what to do to cut chroming.
Often, it’s just been dumped in the too-hard basket as the substances being abused are garden variety consumables found in every households.
But I was pleased to see Health Minister Steven Miles, a dad of small kids himself, announce this week that he was eager to take on the scourge of chroming.
The roundtable Miles announced between industry, retailers and community-based services at the coalface of chroming might end up being just another gabfest.
But given around 100 people a year are being admitted to hospital because of chroming, some as young as just 10, the help that’s needed has to start somewhere.
Miles reckons legislative reforms aren’t the answer and instead he wants manufacturers to reformulate products that have high amounts of butane.
He’ll cop flak for this because some people will object to the cost implications caused by a minority ignoring the warnings and doing the wrong thing.
But such wrongheaded responses ignore the fact that what is sold in our supermarkets has always evolved to ensure it is safe.
Miles trumpeted correspondence he received from Unilever, the multinational whose deodorant products are commonly used by kids, as some kind of breakthrough.
But given the company is already talking about how retailers in communities most affected by chroming need to stock its aerosol deodorants in theft-proof shelving, I suspect duck shoving might become common on Miles’ committee.
As always, there have been recent calls to criminalise chroming.
But as the experienced Siyavash Doostkhah from the Youth Affairs Network of Queensland has rightly pointed out, locking up kids does nothing to resolve the underlying social issues.
“For these young people, it is a cry for help,” Doostkhah said recently.
“This is just the way they’re expressing themselves and we just have to reply to this cry for help with genuine help for them.”
That said, there’s still a role for authorities to crack down on chroming.
Since the early 2000s, police have had the power to search people suspected of chroming and seize whatever product that they are using to get high.
Officers can also detain kids high from chroming and take them to a safe place.
The laws were introduced by the Beattie Government, the last administration in Queensland that was serious about cutting chroming, which also banned the sale of spray paint cans for kids.
Given the all-too-common sight in some communities of kids chroming in public parks as well as buses and train stations, it would be interesting to know how often the powers are being used, if at all.
They’re certainly no cure-all.
Some kids will simply restock what they chrome with and far too many don’t have a safe place to go.
But they are a weapon, albeit a blunt one, that can and should be used much more to disrupt kids who are chroming.
If it stops just one inducing a fatal dose it would be worthwhile.
Chroming is a complex problem that won’t be easy to stop.
But as parents and adults we owe it to our kids to do whatever we can.
LET VOTERS BE THE JUDGE
AFTER reading about the exploits of Noosa councillor Jess Glasgow on low-rent reality TV show The Bachelorette, I realised I’d been overusing the term jerk for some time.
Glasgow’s crude commentary about “wandering fingers” and misogynistic behaviour towards a female contestant cannot simplybe explained away as hamming it up for the cameras.
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In recent days Glasgow staunchly resisted calls to quit, saying “I’m in my own right to make my decision if I’m resigning or not and I’m not resigning”.
He went on to laud himself as a “very capable local councillor”.
Glasgow is right about one thing, whether he resigns or not is his decision.
But whether he remains after the March local government elections should be a decision of the residents of his area.
The so-called Office of the Independent Assessor says it’s looking into whether Glasgow’s actions on TV amount to misconduct as he has a “statutory responsibility to provide high quality leadership”.
However, why are we allowing this body, set up in the wake of local government scandals, to arbitrarily decide what behaviour is appropriate from a publicly-elected official?
Such a process fundamentally usurps the role of ratepayers to decide whether Glasgow is a fit and proper person to representtheir area.
He’s not accused of any crime. This is about standards and morals.
So the question as to whether he remains should be answered by voters not some unknown, unelected and awkwardly-titled office.
For those offended by Glasgow’s behaviour and want him out, it’s frustrating to have to wait and watch him earn a publicly-fundedwage in the interim.
But that’s how it should work in a democracy.
If we left it to bureaucrats to decide whether elected officials should remain every time there’s a controversy of note, after a while there might not be many left.
GOOD WEEK
Tiger in the Long Grass Jo-Ann Miller who got the chance to tell her Labor colleagues again how wrong they were about corruption in Ipswich.
BAD WEEK
Toohey MP Peter Russo who has added to the Government’s integrity woes after it was revealed his legal firm received significant work from Legal Aid.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We’ve had more knock backs than I did as a teenager.”
– Natural Resources Minister Anthony Lynham complains about being unable to consummate a deal with the Morrison Government.
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