South Australia’s drug laws could be closed over loophole

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South Australia’s drug laws could be closed over loophole

A loophole in South Australia's drug laws could have been closed because of a loophole that could have seen serious criminals charged with lesser offences.

Under the previous laws, people who trafficked large quantities of a drug in pure form could only be charged with a basic trafficking offense, which carried a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The SA Supreme Court overturned the convictions of a couple who had been found guilty of trafficking 200 litres of a drug known as fantasy. The court found there was no specification in the Controlled Substances Act for what constituted a commercial quantity of a drug in its pure form.

The state government introduced an amendment bill to close that loophole, which sailed through both houses of parliament yesterday.

Attorney-General Kyam Maher said the government wanted to send a very clear message to drug traffickers.

If someone thought they'd get a lighter sentence because of the Supreme Court decision, you won't. Maher said the law would be applied retrospectively.

He said that anyone who has committed criminal offenses before the courts will not be able to use this loophole.

They will have to face the possibility of life in prison for trafficking a pure form of drugs in a large commercial quantity. The attorney-general said that limited consultation had been carried out with the Director of Public Prosecutions DPP before the bill was introduced.

We didn't want a situation where defence lawyers and their clients lined up for sentencing to take advantage of this loophole, so we moved very quickly and by necessity there was very limited consultation, he said.

He also defended the retrospective nature of the law.

It is an unusual step to take to make criminal laws retrospective, but what we were doing was restoring the laws to how lawyers, the courts, the DPP, understood them to apply before the Supreme Court decision, he said.

The state legislature passed new laws targeting murderers and those that help them hide or defile bodies.

There have been no specific offences in South Australia that prevent a person from concealing or interfering with human remains.

It comes as the SA Police continues its investigation into the suspected drug overdose murders of three men in Adelaide's southern suburbs, linked to the methamphetamine scene.