quasi Report This Comment Date: June 26, 2009 01:42PM
SYDNEY (AP) — Wallabies snacking in Tasmania's legally grown opium poppy
fields are getting "high as a kite" and hopping around in circles,
trampling the crops, a state official said. Tasmania Attorney-General Lara
Giddings told a budget hearing Wednesday that she had recently read about the
kangaroo-like marsupials' antics in a brief on the state's large poppy industry.
Tasmania is the world's largest producer of legally grown opium for the
pharmaceutical market. "We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy
fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," The Mercury
newspaper quoted Giddings as telling the hearing. "Then they crash. We see
crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high." Calls to
Giddings' office were not immediately returned Thursday, and The Associated
Press was unable to obtain a copy of the brief she cited. A manager for one of
two Tasmanian companies licensed to take medicinal products from poppy straw
told the newspaper that wildlife and livestock — including deer and sheep —
that eat the poppies are known to "act weird." "There have been
many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting
and they all walk around in circles," Tasmanian Alkaloids field operations
manager Rick Rockliff said. Others in the local poppy industry could not be
reached for comment. Tasmania supplies about 50 percent of the world's raw
material for morphine and related opiates. About 500 farmers grow the crop on
49,420 acres (20,000 hectares) of land.
PrOpHeT Report This Comment Date: June 26, 2009 02:13PM
Just set up methadone clinics...
Duh!
[
www.IfYouSeekAU.com]
pulse Report This Comment Date: June 26, 2009 04:37PM
That's how we roll yo