Since the Legalise Cannabis Party got members of parliament elected, I have to say it’s been a crash course in political reality for me.
It’s an incredibly conservative world we sent those MPs into – another planet almost for Jeremy Buckingham, compared to his piece of hippy paradise near Bellingen where he was living.
His first job was to change the driving laws for cannabis users. Then we’d like to grow our own please Jez!
We always knew the police opposed any drug laws changing, and I realised it was their jobs at stake, or so they thought, and their power. Just having a Nimbin address means they can search you anytime. Maybe you don’t even need a Nimbin address these days. Extraordinary power like no-one else has.
People forget this is a real war and of course it’s the police Generals in charge and not the politicians, as it is in any war. No use asking the army to stop fighting, it’s what they do… and believe in, or do they? I’m not surprised people are not joining the police like they used to any more and their numbers are way down.
The majority of people in Oz now support cannabis law reform, which in fact has happened even though for many of us we don’t like the way it has. All personal drug use is increasingly seen as a health issue, and the harder the police push the worse it gets. The jails are overflowing, and gangs are shooting at each other in Sydney streets every day.
I got my saliva taken again a month or so back, and again it was positive, of course. The cop agreed I didn’t look impaired, but I reckon delighted in telling me impairment has nothing to do with it.
It’s just the presence of cannabis that counts. Doesn’t matter how long ago you used it or if you are influenced by it at all or not. It’s a bad joke creating disrespect for the police wherever it plays out.
The police clearly know this, yet last weekend, as we wait for the Premier to announce his new long-promised rules for prescribed medical cannabis drivers, they decide to have one more slash with their scythe.
They caught 604 people with positive saliva tests in operation RAID, ‘Remove All Impaired Drivers’. Nothing to do with being impaired, but their propaganda machine, their massive media department, keeps on with the emotive nonsense.
If we’re being real, it should have been called RADPOD, ‘Remove All Drivers with Presence Of Drugs’. Saliva testing is just a weapon in their drug war, rather than being about making the roads safer.
One in ten tested drivers are detected with illicit substances, the police say. How do they know if the weed is legal or not? They don’t. And the ratio is distorted because the testing is not random, which you will know once you’ve been busted, because you’ll keep getting tested.
The regulate and control system is doing its best to corner us into buying the legal weed, mostly imported and irradiated hydroponic pot from Canada or Thailand. If you get a legal prescription via a doctor, you should be able to keep your licence once the new legislation arrives. You won’t be waved through, they’ll still want to check you’re not impaired and you are in no way allowed to grow your own, unless you live in Canberra.
Cannabis and cannabis users are so easy to bust. We are soft and safe prey. No guns on stoners! Almost war games practice compared to other drugs!
So, if you were one of the unlucky ones busted at MardiGrass by the spit cops, or any of the 600 busted in operation RAID, I recommend not paying the $700 fine or you will get a very sly letter a few weeks later advising you’ve lost your licence for three months. I guess because you admitted guilt.
Instead, I suggest you go to court and plead your case. If you have a prescription and were not impaired the magistrate can let you keep driving if he so chooses. If he so chooses. The law is the real crime. The sad thing is they all know it.
The good news is we expect with the new legislation you will not lose your licence when the little blue line shows you have cannabis in your saliva, if you have a prescription. You may not be able to drive on, but you won’t have to go to court. It’s at least a start, some change.
I have to keep reminding myself all the time the conservative people, the generals in the army making the rules, have no weed experience, the only drug they likely use is alcohol. Or Big Pharma’s pills, like anti-depressants or sleeping meds. They don’t get that we use cannabis for the same reasons!
Or worse, they smoked a cone when they were young, probably after a few drinks, and had a bad experience, or got whacked. Nothing like the experience of regular cannabis users or people like me who’ve been smoking for 50 years.
Some good news is that more Americans are using cannabis on a daily basis these days than using alcohol. The pendulum is swinging. This is 30 years after California first legalised mediweed in 1996.
It’s a significant change, and one that heads us in the right direction as far as changing our understanding and consciousness, which is the bottom line if we are to arrive into a new age when we are kinder to each other and the planet.