It is seeking to stock the community's outstation, Sefton, with horses and cattle to give the young something to do. Petrol sniffing, recently on the rise in Central Australia, encapsulates the nightmarish, seemingly intractable visitation of social ills on Aboriginal communities - the young destroying themselves and those around them, the older people paralysed by powerlessness or seeming indifference. There is an intrinsic dilemma in trying to overcome this form of substance abuse, says Dr Craig san Roque, a psychologist who has assisted several communities. Just as petrol sniffing dissolves the connecting processes in the brain, it dismembers the connections between people in communities. It produces hallucinatory images redolent of aggression and death, such as skulls and poisonous snakes.
Users destroy their brains.
Under the influence, they lose the capacity to discriminate between heat and cold, hunger and satiation, friend and foe. They may destroy their communities, smashing houses and cars and menacing people with axes and knives. Ending petrol sniffing seems too hard. Yet, there have been successes. Seven years ago, the Arnhem Land community of Maningrida switched from petrol to Avgas, an aviation fuel which causes severe head and stomach aches and does not pack petrol's euphoric punch.