Forty years ago, while living in a share-house in Port Stephens (north of Newcastle, NSW), I arrived home from work one evening to a house that was suddenly and inexplicably littered with drug paraphernalia. Of course, I immediately gathered most of it onto the coffee table in the loungeroom and puzzled over it. Then, after a very official pounding on my front door, the house was suddenly full of coppers.
Initially I was interrogated about the bongs, pipes, syringes, and bottles of pills that I had helpfully laid out for them on the coffee table – all before a constable walked in carrying a small planter containing two cannabis seedlings. After which, suddenly and magically, all of the paraphernalia, syringes, bottles of pills, and even any hint of their existence, simply disappeared. I was transported to the Newcastle lockup and charged with ‘Cultivating Indian Hemp’.
When I fronted court the next morning the police helpfully provided the Magistrate with a transcript of a confession that I had (purportedly) made. It seems that I had admitted to conspiring to grow several hundred cannabis plants in the nearby bushland and that I had been planning to sell the drug in the township. Nevertheless, the police had heroically nipped this dastardly conspiracy in the bud. They had also reluctantly decided to proceed with only a cultivation charge, instead of also adding a ‘conspiracy to supply’ charge (but inquiries were still ‘ongoing’).
The Beak scowled, declared that I was so very lucky that I only had driving and alcohol convictions on my sheet, otherwise I would be ‘banged up smartly’. But because this was the case, he was going to ‘go easy’. All before fining me $2900.00 and giving me just one month to pay. (So, adjusted for inflation, in 2022 dollars, I was fined $12,796.19 for two cannabis seedlings that did not even belong to me). Moreover, in those days, if you couldn’t pay a fine you were locked up until you had ‘cut the fine out’ at the rate of $85 a day. Consequently, a month later I showed up at the Silverwater Penitentiary to cut out my fines.
In the same week that I was imprisoned, Dr Kerr opened the National Organization for the Reform of Marihuana Laws (NORML) office (in Seaforth) in Sydney. So, immediately upon release, I fronted at the office and signed up to protest the cannabis laws. A few decades later I would be part of the founding of the HEMP Party. Another decade on and there would even be members of state legislatures that are part of the cannabis law reform movement.
But the moral of this story is hardly uplifting. Four decades after my one and only cannabis charge, not much has changed. The BIG LIE – that cannabis is a dangerous drug – still dominates in our politics, press and social mythologies. The police might be more subtle in their oppression, but they still terrorize cannabis users every day of the week. Being ‘verballed’ in a court room might be a thing of the past, but otherwise law-abiding citizens nevertheless continue to be hauled up before the Magistracy and gaoled or fined on the basis that the state is protecting them from harm.
Four decades later many of my personal circumstances have changed. I am now an academic lawyer. I teach other lawyers about the ‘Philosophy of Law’ and ‘Constitutional Law’. But I am still at the mercy of these unjust and ridiculous laws. I still have to travel overseas to be able to smoke a cone without fear of arrest. I still cannot enjoy a joint legally in this country. And while the politicians rarely still refer to cannabis as being a ‘moral hazard’, the BIG LIE nevertheless still persists. These hypocrites continue to perversely insist that they are protecting us cannabis users from ‘harm’ – by gaoling and fining us!
They can shove their phony concern up their tight sphincters for all I care. This is because, despite the passage of more than forty years, the same knee-jerk bigotries are still everywhere on display.
The bullshit persists, even though, in the intervening years, it has also become obvious to almost everyone in our society (aside from politicians and lobbyists), that every cent spent on policing or regulating the cultivation, sale, and use of cannabis, on the basis that these laws are needed to protect us from ‘harm’, is simply money thrown away. Most Aussies now fully understand that our leaders might as well be burning huge wads of cash in a forty-four-gallon drum, on the steps of parliament house, and justifying it on the basis that they are keeping us ‘warm’.
So, in recent times I have given up on even pretending to be tolerant of all of the bullshit. In recent encounters, whenever any elected official begins to talk bullshit about cannabis in my presence, they are at once interrupted and asked about the ‘harm’ they are proposing to protect me from? I also ask why they seem to show this phony concern about the health of the citizenry when talking about cannabis, but not when talking about rugby, alcohol, paracetamol, fishing, aspirin, parasailing, horse-riding, or sugar?
I then ask them to tell me precisely how it is dangerous? Also, where and when did any particular instance of harm occur? In other words, they will be invited to name just one person – on the face of the globe – who has been killed or maimed by cannabis use, ever.
I feel that such intolerance is warranted. I am simply well past engaging in any sort of hypocritical charade with a bunch of ill-informed liars and fools. I suggest others follow suit. Cannabis is a relatively harmless recreational drug and therapeutic herb. I will no longer watch as moral purists and political partisans continue to highjack the debate and flood the zone with bullshit.
We need to acknowledge that we are not participating in a ‘debate’ that is being undertaken in good faith by all parties. Cannabis law reformers are advocating for the facts; opponents of cannabis law reform are engaging in fear-mongering.
If a politician in 2023 is not aware of the truth, they need to be voted out of office as they are grossly ignorant. If a politician in 2023 continues to insist that cannabis is a dangerous drug – they need to be voted out of office on the basis that they are knowingly lying to the Australian public.
I just want to be able to have a quiet toke at home and not be hassled by the coppers. But four decades of being polite has achieved precisely nothing. I still have to hide my cannabis use. The liars and fools remain in charge. If you think cannabis should remain illegal, and say so in public, you are either a fool or a bigot. So will loudly invite you to mind your own business and stop talking crap.
I reckon the time for tolerating bullshit is waaay past.
VOTE FOR HONESTY, EQUALITY and ‘NO BULLSHIT’ POLITICIANS.
Free the weed: VOTE #1 LCA (Legalise Cannabis Australia).
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