High Headliners!
A few joyful sunny days have put crispy edges on the mud, a bit like meringue, and seem to have puffed up the fat mandarins as well, or it might be the cold nights finally arriving.
The dust has settled a little on the NSW Premier’s new Roadside Drug Testing ideas, which caused quite a stir, including some very unfair finger pointing at our Jeremy and Alex Greenwich, who were not included in designing any of it. As far as I can tell, it was all done by Police and Transport, and even Minns himself seems confused about the level of ng we will be tested for and how it will happen beside the road. We’ll find out soon enough.
The NSW Police have been getting a hard time, first it was Four Corners last week and now a big report reveals the main reason members quit the Force is internal bullying. Why am I not surprised? They’re so old school! I’ve met dozens of police in the last fifty years and most of them good people who didn’t join to be front line in a drug war. It’s an increasingly stressful and fearful job they are creating for themselves.
Fact is, for years, nearly all who would speak to me agree cannabis should be legal and some even congratulated the HEMP Embassy when medical got the green light. Many of them have smoked pot in the past, some even buying it in Nimbin back in the day! Quite a few ex-cops buy it here now for their PTSD, preferring the home grown bush weed to the super strong imported chemical stuff.
I stumbled onto a book last week written by an ex NSW cop, Paul Horner, who quit the Force because of PTSD. His stories of battling mobs of drunk blackfellas were the stuff of nightmares. Eventually he copped a full stubby of beer in the face, hurled at him from close range. Just shocking images in impossible situations.
I’ve had lot’s of Aboriginal mates over the years, they love nyarndi (cannabis) and have lots in common with hippies, both are nature lovers, really. Weed can keep them off the grog and brings out their marvellous sense of humour and fun, they love it.
More than half police work these days is related to the war on drugs. It used to be simple and straightforward, but their war has dramatically changed drug trends. Cannabis is by far the easiest bust, it’s bulky and smelly to carry and of course when you smoke it everyone nearby knows. Swallowing a tiny pill is incomparable and powders are easily hidden as well.
The RDT saliva testing has done the same. Whatever is not tested is now popular, but not as safe as pot! People aren’t idiots, they work out ways around bad laws there is no respect for. There are multiple substances that can change your state of mind, not just pot, cocaine, MDMA and meth, the only four tested.
Cannabis however is the safest and the most passive. It used to be a popular reason to bust peaceful hippies who never had guns but those days have changed with a cocktail of drugs mixed up in the black market now.
Our police have become Big Pharma’s army. I just wish they could see it themselves, but they’ve been fed so much propaganda, and no doubt most of them are locked in with mortgages. Meanwhile, Canada earned $2.5 billion from adult use cannabis sales last year. When will we wake up?
Love to everyone, and it’s worth writing to your local MP about how RDT affects your life!
Michael Balderstone
Nimbin HEMP Embassy Head
