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shannrussell-blog1 · 6 years ago

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Australia has some world class camping destinations, and the Gibb River Road in the northern part of Western Australia is a prime example of this. Located in the Kimberley, the Gibb River Road is a spectacular 4WD track that attracts visitors from all over the globe.

The track covers an ancient, largely untouched landscape full of beautiful water holes, huge canyons and incredible walking trails. Camping is exquisite across a variety of places including stations, national parks and wilderness sanctuaries. Home to some of the most diverse and prolific animals and plants known to man, it’s an experience you are sure to remember for years to come.

Location

You’ll find the Gibb River Road in the north-eastern part of Western Australia, starting just out of Derby and ending at the junction between Wyndham and Kununurra. It’s several hundred kilometres inland from the coast, in a roughly parallel arrangement.

Located in the northeastern part of WA, the Gibb River Road is ready for adventure. Photo: Aaron Schubert

Length

The base track length is 660km from start to finish, but you won’t see much by just doing that. The locations to visit, explore and camp are all off the Gibb River Road, and an average trip would be 1000 – 1800km total, depending on what you want to see. Most attractions are 20 – 50km one way off the main track, with some like Mornington Wilderness Park and Mitchell Falls even further.

Start and finish points

You can drive the Gibb River Road in either direction (north to south or south to north), and when combined with the Great Northern Highway, can do a loop around and back to your start point. This would be starting at Derby and heading up the Gibb River Road to Wyndham or Kununurra, then down the highway to the Bungle Bungles and back to Derby (or Broome). Obviously, you can do this in reverse, depending on whether you are coming from the north or the south.

The view over the river at Mornington. Photo: Aaron Schubert

About the area

The Gibb River Road almost cuts the Kimberley in half and is well known for breathtaking natural beauty, big stations that run cattle and incredible wildlife. A large majority of the land is privately owned by stations, with the rest dedicated to national parks, conservation areas and tourist attractions.

How long do you need?

The beauty of this track is you can easily adjust your itinerary based on how much of it you’ll want to see. As a minimum, you should allow at least a week. Two weeks is better and with anything around 16 – 20 days being the ultimate length. You can spend much longer exploring the less common parts of the Gibb River Road – it’s entirely up to you!

Overrun with natural beauty, the Gibb River Road is also great for spotting some native wildlife. Photo: Aaron Schubert

What is there to see?

In terms of natural beauty, prepare to be awestruck by massive gorges, thundering waterfalls, crystal clear pools, hot springs, beautiful plants and animals and plenty of river crossings. The Kimberley is massively shaped by water, and in the dry season expect to see everything lush and green, with plenty of activity going on.

Is a 4WD a must?

I’m going to say yes! It has been done in 2WD vehicles, but it’s not worth the risk. In terms of 4WDing, there’s nothing too extreme, with the exception of a couple of water crossings. A bit of clearance and some decent tyres are about all you need, but it’s the durability of the vehicle that really matters.

The corrugations can be terrible, and this is where a 4WD comes into its own. Every year, the track causes plenty of mechanical and electrical damage to vehicles. A 4WD is substantially better built and less likely to have issues! You must have light truck tyres that are reputable, or you can expect to be going through several tyres.

You’ll probably want to take the 4WD to be on the safe side. Photo: Aaron Schubert

Can you take a camper trailer or caravan?

In recent years, camper trailers and caravans have become hugely popular, and you’ll see them being towed all over the place. For the majority of the track, you will be fine towing a well-built camper trailer or caravan. However, taking massive caravans on the track is not a good idea.

The road out to Mitchell Falls and Kalumbaru is one of the roughest, and I would not take anything but a top quality camper trailer out there. Caravans are completely out of the question. The Bungle Bungles also only allows single axle trailers, so bigger caravans are not an option either.

Where should you visit?

There is a massive list of places to visit and camp at along the Gibb River Road, but these would be the most common, and popular:

Windjana Gorge

Windjana is the first gorge coming from Derby end and is located relatively close to Tunnel Creek. It’s home to one of the biggest populations of freshwater crocodiles that are easily seen by tourists and is truly a beautiful place to begin your adventure.

The walk to the gorge is short and easy, with good camping facilities (flushing toilets, running water and solar showers) – they’re a fantastic backdrop as the sun goes down!

The walk to Windjana Gorge. Photo: Aaron Schubert

Tunnel Creek

If you are keen on caves, this one is fantastic. It needs a bit of care and effort to enter and exit the tunnel, but it’s sure worth it. Bring old shoes as you’ll have to walk through water… and a quality head torch too!

Bell Gorge

Bell Gorge is the next gorge along the Gibb River Road and is accessed by camping at Silent Grove. The first part of the walk down is relatively straight forward, with the last climb down to the bottom of the gorge a bit more challenging. Swimming is fantastic here, and the gorge is magnificent!

The walk to the magnificent Bell Gorge. Photo: Aaron Schubert

Mornington Wilderness Park

Mornington is a conservation park that is absolutely worth a stop. Home to some of the most scarcely seen flora and fauna, it’s a must do for anyone who is keen on nature. Their gorges are fantastic, and the 90km drive off the Gibb River Road is absolutely worth the trek – it’s stunning! Camping facilities are good, with flushing toilets, running water and solar showers.

Mornington Wilderness Park is worth checking out, especially for nature lovers. Photo: Aaron Schubert

Manning Gorge

Pay your access fees at Mount Barnett, and head down to Manning Gorge. Pull yourself across the river in a little tinny and then walk to the gorge – you’ll have an absolute ball! Camping at Manning is great, with the river nearby and a caretaker on site at all times. Flushing toilets and showers are set up for your convenience.

A trip to Manning Gorge is worth it, just to get out on the water! Photo: Aaron Schubert

Mount Elizabeth

As a working cattle station, Mount Elizabeth is home to two fantastic gorges, and has a massive array of local wildlife like wallabies and birds that walk around your tents! Again, hot showers and flushing toilets are available, and camping under the trees is breathtaking.

A good camping spot, Mt. Elizabeth cattle station is worth a stop. Photo: Aaron Schubert

El Questro

El Questro has been marketed as the heart of the Kimberley, and in reality, it does a great job of reflecting what the Gibb River Road has to offer. There are hot springs, several gorges to explore and a miniature community complete with bar, restaurant and convenience store. It is busy though so don’t get shocked when you drive in and see 50 + 4WD’s!

Camping options vary from semi-permanent tents to powered sites on grass and bush camps further away from the main settlement.

A very popular destination for 4WD’s, El Questro shows what the Kimberly has to offer. Photo: Aaron Schubert

Things to consider before going

You’ll be travelling some decent distances on the Gibb River Road, and petrol/diesel is only available at Derby, Imintji (diesel only), Mount Barnett, Drysdale, El Questro and Wyndham/Kununurra. Fresh water is available at many of the stops, but make sure you have plenty with you just in case.

Some campsites need to be pre-booked so don’t expect to arrive and get a site as you might be unpleasantly surprised. The weather is usually warm and comfortable during the day and ranges from 25 to 35 degrees. However, it can also get cold at night – we saw temperatures of 1 and 2 degrees on a couple of nights!

Food is available (at a cost) at the same places you can buy fuel, but you’ll want to take most of it with you! Take spare parts for your 4WD, tools and two spare tyres if possible.

Tours

If you don’t have a 4WD or the camping gear, a tour is a perfect solution. A number of companies offer these with everything supplied. Check out Kimberley Adventures and Adventure Wild for a start.

Make sure you prepare by booking your campsite in advance. Photo: Aaron Schubert

The best camping

Our favourite campsite was probably at El Questro, where we booked a private, riverside camp at $22 (at the time of writing) per person per night. We had plenty of shade, the river a few metres from our tent, no-one in sight, a toilet nearby and only a few minutes’ drive into the settlement for showers. It was quiet, peaceful and relaxing.

Add the Gibb River Road to your bucket list

In terms of adventure and camping, the Gibb River Road certainly tops the list of places we’ve been to. The natural beauty is nothing short of mind-boggling, and the camping is comfortable and spectacular. If you haven’t been to the Gibb River Road, add it to the bucket list!

Have you travelled along the Gibb River Road? Let us know in the comments below.

The post The Gibb River Road: The Ultimate Camping Adventure appeared first on Snowys Blog.

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savetopnow · 7 years ago

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artyowlindia · 7 years ago

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alanafsmith · 8 years ago

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Why an ex-cop who posed as an undercover heroin addict wants drugs decriminalized

For 14 years, Neil Woods risked his life as a drug squad police officer posing undercover as a heroin and crack addict.

As among the first of his kind in the UK, he helped to establish tactics and training to infiltrate the most notorious and violent drug gangs across the country. In over a decade, he had completed operations in areas including Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Leeds and Brighton.

But despite his efforts, he gradually realised his work was only making the situation worse. Criminals were becoming more brutal as they wised up to police strategies. Drug-related deaths were climbing and drugs were becoming stronger and more readily available.

To Woods, the war on drugs had failed. Determined to undo the damage he'd done as an officer - which caused him to suffer from PTSD - he launched Law Enforcement Against Prohibitions (Leap) in the UK. Founded in the US, the organisation brings together former members of the criminal justice system, including ex-members of MI5 and the authorities in Afghanistan who have seen how the black market funds terrorism.

The Independent spoke to Woods about his most extreme experiences as a drug squad cop, and why he believes politicians need to decriminalise drugs.

How did you end up being an undercover cop? Was it something you always wanted to do?

The type of work I did didn't really exist when I started doing it in 1993 and there was a lot of pressure from Home Office for forces to deal with the latest moral outrage of crack cocaine. I was working with the drug squad in Derbyshire and I was asked to have a go at crack cocaine. It was successful and dictated the next 13 years of my life. This was before there was formal training and rules for undercover work. I helped to develop the training and the tactics that were rolled out three years later. I was just throw in at the deep end.

Was it tough starting out? Do you remember your first operation?

The first place I was posted was in Derby and it wasn't actually that difficult. There were some proper gangsters selling crack and heroin but they weren't used to the tactic so although it was a bit scary it wasn’t tremendously difficult because they weren't expecting it. But thing the about undercover work is that it doesn't take long for criminalise to learn the tactics.

So around two years later I was doing an operation in Fenton, Staffordshire, on a dealer I’d been buying heroin from for a few weeks. One day, he answered the door and held samurai sword to my throat and accused me of being part of the DS (drug squad). Spit was flying out of his mouth as he was growling and I could feel the cold steel on my throat and I thought that was it. I thought he would murder me. And I heard some female laughing from behind him and a woman stuck her head out from behind the door and said ‘I thought he was actually going to say he was DS for a second!’ I realised he was winding me up then. Maybe he wanted to try out his new sword. But as every year went on without fail the people were more violent. The ultimate defence against the development of police tactics is an increased use of violence to intimidate the community in which undercover police move. Also it’s the ultimate defence against police informants because the most successful gangsters are the ones who make people too scared to grass them up.

How did you pretend to be an heroin addict? Did you go to acting classes? Or cut down your diet to look scrawny?

Well the idea that addicts are thin is just part of the stigma of drug use. Problematic users come in all shapes and sizes. As for behaviour you have to know your commodity. You have to be a real geek with knowing how people behave and you have to know it even more than the people on the ground. Then it’s just the art of deception and staying attuned to the body language of other people and detecting the moment someone is lying. That can be the thing that saves your life.

When has the art of deception saved your life?

In 2001 - by that point I’d been doing it for about seven or eight years - I was in a six month operation and I got to know one gangster really well. But I had no footage of him corroborate the other evidence. He had been hiding out so I tempted him to a car park with a load of counterfeit clothing and he came with this massive block of crack cocaine the size of a videotape and two mates that I didn’t know. One of them was instantly suspicions of me and I was sort of fending off his suspicions with subtle verbal jousting to steer the questions away from me.

Eventually he started picking at my clothes. He pushed me against a wall and saw the camera I was hiding. This wasn’t James Bond. It wasn’t a sophisticated camera and there wasn't much doubt about what he’d found. What I did was launch a torrent of abuse at him about picking at my clothes and I started moving really slowly. If you run away from a pack of wolves they catch you and eat you but if you stare at them in the eye and leave in a bold fashion you can confuse them for long enough to escape.

I was so bold and slow and un-bothered that he gave me time to walk away. I managed to get away all the time he was shouting to his mates “he’s heat! He’s f*cking five O!’ And the dealer said ‘nah he’s fine'. I almost got to the end of the carpark. Almost. But then I heard running behind me and I thought 'this is it'. It was the guy cutting up the crack and he comes up to me and says ‘nevermind my mate. He's a dickhead’. And I go along with it and say ‘these aren't even my clothes. I borrowed them this morning’. And then he gave me a rock of crack and I carried on walking. His mate was still screaming ‘mate he’s five O!’ Eventually, his mate must have convinced him i was from the police because when I got to the end of the carpark I heard screeching tyres.

I ran onto the pavement and could hear it zooming behind me, getting closer. Luckily I get to some railings but I must have been a metre away from being run down by the car. I got back to a safe location and was debriefed by the special operations team and gave descriptions of the people and registration of the car. An intelligence guy told me ‘I don't know why they didn't shoot you.There's loads of intel that there’s a gun in the car!’ They probably thought they could get me in the car and I was too close to civilisation. I was lucky. Lots of times I was lucky.

When else was your life in danger like that?

There are so many instance! Once I was doing a long term job in a pub run by outrageous almost cartoon-like gangsters who were organised car thieves and the main guy was a coke and crack dealer. The mistake I made was making myself out to be a connoisseur of amphetamines which I’m obviously not. I meet this guy and he tells me he’s brought me a present. It’s a bag filled with pink toxic goo that was dissolving the plastic bag it was in. He said ‘I bet you've never had anything like this before'. Just before this, he’d ordered someone to be beaten and he'd been dragged out bloody and bruised. This guy was a maniac. He picked up on my hesitation instantly and became suspicious. So I had to try some of it or I’d be in trouble. So I tried it and he said ‘no, you want more than that’.

So I took a big lump. And I could almost feel the mouth ulcers forming in my mouth. It turned out whereas street amphetamines are between 5 to 7 per cent pure, this was 40 per cent pure. It was horrific. I felt this warmth in my stomach and I was out of it. I had the most horrendous intense anxious feeling. I didn't sleep for three nights. Mind you my house has never been so clean.

You have a wife and children - what was it like for them?

Well I didn't have the best relationship with my wife at the time but I still took kids swimming on a Sunday. I’d be away two or three nights a week and travelling but on weekends I was with the kids. But I couldn't tell friends or colleagues what my job was. Even the officers I worked with didn’t know what my real name was because I would be managed by a special operations unit.

Has anyone ever recognised you? Aren’t you afraid someone will seek revenge now you've gone public with your story?

There is always that risk but I worked some distance away from home. I’ve only been back to Brighton once and Northampton once very briefly. I don’t try to avoid places although I suppose I won’t be hanging around estates in Leicester anytime soon. That could be fairly risky. But I used used to risk my life doing the work because I used to believe I was doing good. Now I realise everything I did only caused harm.

Now, I feel duty bound to continue taking risks because it’s a matter of principal. And I wouldn’t expect anyone to seek revenge because organised drug dealing is a business and these people use violence as part of the business model. They use violence against their own communities to protect themselves from being arrested and grassed up. This is caused by policing drugs so to come after me for revenge doesn't fit into this model.

What is the biggest misconception people have about drugs and drug laws?

When I went into policing I thought addicts had made the mistake of trying drugs and had no willpower to stop. Actually, problematic drug users - or at least all the ones I knew - were self medicating. Most of the heroin users I knew were self-medicating for childhood trauma, whether physical or sexual. As an undercover officer I spent a great deal of time getting to know these people. The more I knew someone the more I could manipulate them. They’re like puppets. And they trusted me and saw me as a peer.

There was a young lady I met in Northampton who went by the street name Uma. She explained to me she sometimes came off heroin to bring down her tolerance but that she became suicidal because she remembered the abuse she received from her uncle. Heroin is a very powerful painkiller of the body but also the mind. To the law, she’s a criminal to the law and I as an agent of the state was there to capture people like that. But they were caught in the crossfire between the police and gangs. She quite clearly needed help. If people were prescribed heroin they would be rescued from sexual exploitation. These people are slaves to drug dealers.

When did you decide that the war on drugs was futile?

I knew that I couldn’t win early on. But I kept being tempted back into it because I was good at my job. The police departments would say ‘Woodsy, we need you. These gangsters are even nastier that the other ones. They’re burning people to death. They’re using rape as a weapon. But in Brighton they had been overusing the tactic and in very unimaginative ways. And groups were very savvy and had created perfect defences.

They used homeless people as a point of contact and they instructed them ‘you are now our dealer and if you bring anyone within view of us you will be killed and we’ll find someone else’. At the time there was the highest drugs deaths in the city per capita in the country. And homeless people were dying from overdoses. I can’t say that those overdoses were deliberate but everyone on the streets was convinced that they were. But police reports just showed up as an overdose - and what cop cares about that?

And it was because of me that organised crime was getting nasty. I was developing the tactics. I put dealers in prison for over 1000 years and I only disrupted the heroin supply for two hours. Policing can’t affect the demand so policing drugs is completely futile. I can’t emphasise that enough. More people die and it gets more violent. Drugs have got stronger and cheaper and more varied since the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

If criminalising drug users isn’t the answer - what is?

The answer is to regulate drugs and take the power away from organised crime. The illicit drugs market is worth £7billion a year. Our communities are ruined by organised crime intimidating populations to protect themselves so we need to regulate the drug supply like we do with alcohol.

All drugs can be harmful but cannabis is the most to young people, so we need to protect them from it. Gangsters are almost all recruited through the market because it’s where our teenagers first come into contact with organised crime. I saw one young man in an inner city go from a cheeky 17-year-old who was quite likeable to a terrifying 18-year-old in six months. He had to learn from his new team of buddies that if you want to survive you have to be completely vicious so people are scared of you. The drug market is shaping the personalities of our young men. We can only stop this by regulating drugs.

Which countries can we learn from?

I don’t advocate a free for all. In Switzerland they brought in Heroin Assisted Treatment in the 1990s. Heroin users set their dosage and receive counselling. Eventually the users decrease their dosage. And they now have less shoplifting and almost no street prostitution. And deaths from MDMA deaths are so rare because they have labs where people can test their drugs. Canada is about to regulate the market right across the country and the interesting thing is that the winning Liberal Party campaigned to regulate cannabis to protect children from crime. They won while campaigning for that. Portugal has a progressive drug policy and they have a fraction of drug deaths compared to other countries.

What do you want to see in the UK?

The most urgent is heroin assisted treatment to save lives and bring down crime. The net cast by crime and the health costs is huge. Prescribing heroin will undermine the power of organised criminals and reduce exploitation. We should regulate the cannabis market to protect our young people - this is a child protection issue. The third thing is to have organised drug testing along the lines of the Loop so we save lives of young people.

SEE ALSO: How to spot an undercover cop

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Animated map of what Earth would look like if all the ice melted

from All About Law http://www.businessinsider.com/why-an-ex-cop-who-went-undercover-as-addict-wants-drugs-decriminalized-2017-5

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nancy-astorga · 8 years ago

Text

Why an ex-cop who posed as an undercover heroin addict wants drugs decriminalized

For 14 years, Neil Woods risked his life as a drug squad police officer posing undercover as a heroin and crack addict.

To Woods, the war on drugs had failed. Determined to undo the damage he’d done as an officer – which caused him to suffer from PTSD – he launched Law Enforcement Against Prohibitions (Leap) in the UK. Founded in the US, the organisation brings together former members of the criminal justice system, including ex-members of MI5 and the authorities in Afghanistan who have seen how the black market funds terrorism.

The Independent spoke to Woods about his most extreme experiences as a drug squad cop, and why he believes politicians need to decriminalise drugs.

How did you end up being an undercover cop? Was it something you always wanted to do?

The type of work I did didn’t really exist when I started doing it in 1993 and there was a lot of pressure from Home Office for forces to deal with the latest moral outrage of crack cocaine. I was working with the drug squad in Derbyshire and I was asked to have a go at crack cocaine. It was successful and dictated the next 13 years of my life. This was before there was formal training and rules for undercover work. I helped to develop the training and the tactics that were rolled out three years later. I was just throw in at the deep end.

Was it tough starting out? Do you remember your first operation?

The first place I was posted was in Derby and it wasn’t actually that difficult. There were some proper gangsters selling crack and heroin but they weren’t used to the tactic so although it was a bit scary it wasn’t tremendously difficult because they weren’t expecting it. But thing the about undercover work is that it doesn’t take long for criminalise to learn the tactics.

How did you pretend to be an heroin addict? Did you go to acting classes? Or cut down your diet to look scrawny?

When has the art of deception saved your life?

In 2001 – by that point I’d been doing it for about seven or eight years – I was in a six month operation and I got to know one gangster really well. But I had no footage of him corroborate the other evidence. He had been hiding out so I tempted him to a car park with a load of counterfeit clothing and he came with this massive block of crack cocaine the size of a videotape and two mates that I didn’t know. One of them was instantly suspicions of me and I was sort of fending off his suspicions with subtle verbal jousting to steer the questions away from me.

Eventually he started picking at my clothes. He pushed me against a wall and saw the camera I was hiding. This wasn’t James Bond. It wasn’t a sophisticated camera and there wasn’t much doubt about what he’d found. What I did was launch a torrent of abuse at him about picking at my clothes and I started moving really slowly. If you run away from a pack of wolves they catch you and eat you but if you stare at them in the eye and leave in a bold fashion you can confuse them for long enough to escape.

I was so bold and slow and un-bothered that he gave me time to walk away. I managed to get away all the time he was shouting to his mates “he’s heat! He’s f*cking five O!’ And the dealer said ‘nah he’s fine’. I almost got to the end of the carpark. Almost. But then I heard running behind me and I thought ‘this is it’. It was the guy cutting up the crack and he comes up to me and says ‘nevermind my mate. He’s a dickhead’. And I go along with it and say ‘these aren’t even my clothes. I borrowed them this morning’. And then he gave me a rock of crack and I carried on walking. His mate was still screaming ‘mate he’s five O!’ Eventually, his mate must have convinced him i was from the police because when I got to the end of the carpark I heard screeching tyres.

I ran onto the pavement and could hear it zooming behind me, getting closer. Luckily I get to some railings but I must have been a metre away from being run down by the car. I got back to a safe location and was debriefed by the special operations team and gave descriptions of the people and registration of the car. An intelligence guy told me ‘I don’t know why they didn’t shoot you.There’s loads of intel that there’s a gun in the car!’ They probably thought they could get me in the car and I was too close to civilisation. I was lucky. Lots of times I was lucky.

When else was your life in danger like that?

There are so many instance! Once I was doing a long term job in a pub run by outrageous almost cartoon-like gangsters who were organised car thieves and the main guy was a coke and crack dealer. The mistake I made was making myself out to be a connoisseur of amphetamines which I’m obviously not. I meet this guy and he tells me he’s brought me a present. It’s a bag filled with pink toxic goo that was dissolving the plastic bag it was in. He said ‘I bet you’ve never had anything like this before’. Just before this, he’d ordered someone to be beaten and he’d been dragged out bloody and bruised. This guy was a maniac. He picked up on my hesitation instantly and became suspicious. So I had to try some of it or I’d be in trouble. So I tried it and he said ‘no, you want more than that’.

So I took a big lump. And I could almost feel the mouth ulcers forming in my mouth. It turned out whereas street amphetamines are between 5 to 7 per cent pure, this was 40 per cent pure. It was horrific. I felt this warmth in my stomach and I was out of it. I had the most horrendous intense anxious feeling. I didn’t sleep for three nights. Mind you my house has never been so clean.

You have a wife and children – what was it like for them?

Well I didn’t have the best relationship with my wife at the time but I still took kids swimming on a Sunday. I’d be away two or three nights a week and travelling but on weekends I was with the kids. But I couldn’t tell friends or colleagues what my job was. Even the officers I worked with didn’t know what my real name was because I would be managed by a special operations unit.

Has anyone ever recognised you? Aren’t you afraid someone will seek revenge now you’ve gone public with your story?

What is the biggest misconception people have about drugs and drug laws?

When I went into policing I thought addicts had made the mistake of trying drugs and had no willpower to stop. Actually, problematic drug users – or at least all the ones I knew – were self medicating. Most of the heroin users I knew were self-medicating for childhood trauma, whether physical or sexual. As an undercover officer I spent a great deal of time getting to know these people. The more I knew someone the more I could manipulate them. They’re like puppets. And they trusted me and saw me as a peer.

When did you decide that the war on drugs was futile?

If criminalising drug users isn’t the answer – what is?

Which countries can we learn from?

What do you want to see in the UK?

The most urgent is heroin assisted treatment to save lives and bring down crime. The net cast by crime and the health costs is huge. Prescribing heroin will undermine the power of organised criminals and reduce exploitation. We should regulate the cannabis market to protect our young people – this is a child protection issue. The third thing is to have organised drug testing along the lines of the Loop so we save lives of young people.