Chroming

As I wandered past the Supreme Court building just after 10am on Monday, I spotted a middle-aged bloke carrying a bold placard proclaiming "Judges Are Corrupt".
This is not the place to debate the veracity of his claim but it did seem to me a particularly impertinent sort of protest.
I shook my head in wonderment that anyone would so beard the judicial lion in its den and began to wonder whether any sort of authority had survived the journey into the new century.
Then, on the same block, I came across a gang of kids bullying, openly chroming from bottles protruding above the necks of their sweatshirts.
I had seen (and wrote about) a similar group a few months earlier but, stupidly, I just didn't think anyone would have the audacity to sniff glue, solvents, paint or whatever right outside the Supreme Court.
The reason for such insolence, of course, is that it is not illegal to chrome, although it is illegal to supply harmful substances to kids. This is among the mysteries the Crime and Misconduct Commission is looking into in a review of police powers on chroming.
Like most CMC inquiries, this one seems to move with all the majesty of a glacier, nothing having been heard since April when first I became aware of it.
I bring no special knowledge to the CMC's deliberations, except to note that among the published effects of chroming are bad breath, sneezing, glazed or bloody eyes, a runny snoz, nose bleeds, sores around the mouth and disorientation. Long-term effects include irreversible brain damage.
That might not sound entirely unlike some people you work with, but the immediate effects of chroming also include extreme, stupid, or dangerous behaviour and unwanted sex and fights.
Maybe, just maybe, everyone has the right to exhibit anti-social symptoms or even risk brain damage but a proclivity towards violence is another matter.
And there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that chroming and violence affect other lives, although it is difficult to quantify. Certainly, there is enough violence for many of my correspondents to call for swift justice and an end to our softly softly approach to chroming.
The Australian Institute of Criminology has found a hideous correlation between drug use and crime, with findings that more than 74 per cent of police detainees in Brisbane last year had used some kind of drug, for women the figure is more than 80 per cent.
The institute's Drug Use Monitoring in Australia figures show drugs are involved in the whole catalogue of crimes, with a heavy weighting towards violence and theft. There are no specific figures for chroming, maybe because active ingredient "X" in solvents and other inhalants are "substances" not drugs.
That's a pity because if the tendency towards violence, which is alluded to by most experts, were reflected in the crime figures, chroming might be way up there with traditional illegal drugs such as speed, tranqs,marijuana and heroin.
Making it illegal to chrome, particularly in public places, would probably achieve little in curbing this scourge, but it might make other citizens feel a little more comfortable in their daily lives.
And, unfashionable as it might be, its discretionary enforcement might give police another weapon in tackling the problem and saving a few young lives.
Grabbing kids and shipping them off to safe houses is a grand idea but the sad fact is we probably have more watch houses than refuges.
It may be paternalistic, authoritarian or plain selfish, but I'm just a little bit sick of stepping off the footpath to avoid mindless, brainless chromers as I go about my business. And any evidence (if it exists) that fear of chromers is more in the mind than the reality, cuts no ice when you're in that situation.
It is truly bizarre that kids can walk down the street blasting their brain cells with impunity. It is contemptuous of public opinion and civil liberties that they can indulge in activities that demonstrably lead to fear and violence with equal impunity.