MP Attaks ABC's Drugs and Bombs Internet Sites

CANBERRA, Jan 25 AAP - The ABC's Internet site was linked to pages detailing how to make drugs and bombs, a federal Liberal backbencher said today.

Queensland MP Kay Elson called on the ABC to clean up its website and listed a series of Internet addresses linked to the site which contained recipes for synthetic drugs and home-made bombs.

She has written to ABC managing director Brian Johns asking the material be removed immediately and to ensure links with other Internet sites were appropriate, and has also asked Communications Minister Richard Alston to look into the matter.

"Most parents would be horrified to find good old Aunty is directing our kids to Internet sites on making drugs and bombs, let alone promoting and condoning illegal drugs," Mrs Elson said in a statement.

Drug material, including recipes, was available via links to a site for ABC Television's science program Quantum, which ran a series last year called What's Your Poison, covering both legal and illegal drugs.

Material on the ecstasy episode began: "Of all the poisons in this series, MDMA or ecstasy, generates the most hysteria. Like many illegal drugs, the popular press has done a very successful job confusing the public about its relative dangers.

"The fact is, there are many more alcohol and tobacco-related deaths than there are from people who die from taking the notorious party pill."

Ecstasy links carry the disclaimer that the ABC did not endorse or take responsibility for views expressed at sites it suggested for further research but Mrs Elson said that was not good enough.

A Triple J "cool sites" listing of Backyard Ballistics explained how to make a range of explosive devices, including the Aussie Mortar using a soft drink can.

Experiments carried the warning they "can not only kill but can explode flesh and bone".

Mrs Elson said What's Your Poison? told young people ecstasy was safe and outlined so-called benefits of marijuana and cigarettes.

"The whole tone of this section glamorises illicit drugs and plays down the dangers of marijuana and ecstasy, almost mocking the fact that they are illegal," she said.

Mrs Elson said ecstasy was often used at rave parties, had killed many Australian teenagers and often drew people into using cocaine and heroin.

A comment from the ABC was not immediately available.

(These comments below are not part of the news article, and is only the opinion of myself, the author of this web site - Chay Neal.)
I'd just like to add my own comment in response to the news article above. I'd just like to say that there is no way that the ABC can keep up with all the web sites they have linked to, easily. For example, my site is listed on the cool sites page. I could very easily change my page into an illegal porn page in probably just a few hours. Triple j and the ABC cannot take responsibility for what somebody else puts on their web site. Web sites change, disappear and pop-up very frequently! You can't blame the ABC for this as they have no control. And if they stopped linking to sites other than government and large commercial web sites then everybody would miss out on the real beauty and richness of the Internet. The number of people that actually visited any of these links from the ABC's web site was probably not quite as large as they would think, so I don't think there's a real problem to begin with. And then once any of those people visited the link and found it was not about what they thought it was they would generally leave. It all comes down to censorship (which I am very much against!). If people wanted to find out information on bombs and drugs then they could just look it up - not search through the ABC's web site for the off chance that there is a dud-link! For example if I wanted any of that sort of information I could probably find tonnes of it in minutes! But even though I have been using the ABC's web site for years I have never come across any of these links myself through the ABC. Well, I just had to add my little comment to this one, because as usual, the media is very good at manipulating stories and only showing one side or view to try and bend the public's view, which I think is wrong, and just hope not too many people are stupid enough to take in everything the media spits out at us.