Greens MP deserves the boot for boasting about drugs

Politician Cate Faehrmann has spruiked the joys of drugs after the deaths of five young people at dance festivals. Law breakers shouldn’t be allowed to be law makers, writes Miranda Devine.

Shame on Greens MP Cate Faehrmann.

Boasting about her use of illegal drugs after the deaths of five young people at dance festivals this summer should disqualify her from the privilege of serving in parliament.

“Since my 20s, I’ve occasionally taken MDMA [ecstasy] at dance parties and music festivals … and that has continued into my adult life”, she declared.

She has refused to rule out continuing to use ecstasy while a parliamentarian. How can a law-maker be a law breaker?

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NSW Greens MP Cate Faehrmann has detailed her use of illegal drugs and refused to rule out taking them in the future. Picture: Craig Wilson

She even came across all mean girl by mocking Premier Gladys Berejiklian for not taking drugs.

“Hearing her say she has never taken illegal drugs has got so many people shaking their heads and asking what planet is she living on.”

But it’s 48-year-old Faehrmann who is on another planet. Just 15 per cent of Australian adults use illicit drugs, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

This puts her well in the minority but, like all moralising leftists, she thinks the world revolves around her, so makes the false claim that, “the vast majority of people choose to take illegal drugs”.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian has said she’s never taken drugs, which led to a mocking response from Cate Faehrmann. Picture: AAP/Jeremy Piper

Worse, she spruiks the joys of drugs: “Most of them will take illegal drugs safely and most of them will take them to have a good time.”

She pretends pill testing would make ecstasy safe but verifying the purity of the pills taken by summer’s five festival victims would not have saved their lives.

MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Pill testing is just a mask for the real issue

As health minister Brad Hazzard points out, autopsies show that MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, was the direct cause of death for four of the five festival goers who have died in NSW since September.

As for the cause of death of the fifth, Alexandra Ross-King, 19: “the early clinical evidence is that it was also MDMA.”

Anna Wood died after taking ecstasy in 1995. Her father Tony Wood does not support pill testing.

Tony Wood, whose 15-year-old daughter Anna died after taking an ecstasy pill for the first time in 1995, says if pill-testing had been around then, “Anna still would be dead”.

“It breaks my heart [but] testing Anna’s tablet would not have made it any safer.”

He has written a letter of appreciation to the Premier for standing firm against the Faehrmanns of the world: “You are an inspiration,” he wrote. “Your strength is to be admired”.

Amen.

@mirandadevine