Prisoners Milking Spiders For Venom High

[bloodrayne]

Prisoners Milk Redbacks For Venom

NSW prison inmates kept deadly redback spiders to milk their venom and inject themselves for a hit.

The State Opposition also revealed today that some other prisoners managed to cultivate a 40cm marijuana plant in the grounds of another jail.

The four "pet" redbacks were discovered at Grafton prison on February 19 this year. Their venom had been milked and watered down to be injected for a high.

The marijuana plant was found at Long Bay jail four days later.

Figures obtained by the Opposition show weapons in NSW prisons have quadrupled in 12 months, while drug use and jail brewing have doubled.

Fifty-five "shivs" – homemade knives – and 78 other weapons, including sharpened paint scrapers and steel spikes, were found in the first quarter of this year.

In the same period last year, prison officers found a total of 36 weapons.

Marijuana finds escalated from a total of 13 grams to 33.4 grams, while there were 46 discoveries of other drugs early in 2004 – exactly double that of last year.

"NSW prisons are more like a holiday farm than a prison system," Opposition justice spokesman Andrew Humpherson said.

Mr Humpherson said despite promises of a crackdown on contraband, prison officers were still not tough enough.

"Prison officers are either compromised or corrupted into getting these things in," he said.

[MichaelMyers]

Nasty.