PRESS RELEASE - 12 August 2003

A Current Affair
Nimbin Story - (Click this link to vote on whether you consider marijuana to be harmless!)

The Nimbin HEMP Embassy was relieved to see A Current Affair's latest Nimbin story, screened last night, was a big improvement on last time when David Margan and the Brisbane crew came with lies and a hidden camera. However, a couple of errors are worth noting.

Firstly, A Current Affair said Nimbin's famous cannabis cafes were booming. Unfortunately this is two years out of date!

As much as we wish the cannabis cafes were still operating in Nimbin, unfortunately they are not, having been closed down by police raids a couple of years ago. Consequently, street dealing and all that goes with it is celebrating prohibition daily. Not that we blame the dealers, how else can unemployed cannabis users buy their medicine other than stealing - the former is clearly more preferable.

For those who don't know, the extraordinary success of the 'unofficial' cannabis cafe trial a couple of years ago, was so popular, fair and sensible that it got up the nose of all sorts of people who lobbied the National Party local member, Thomas George, who in turn went to the Police Minister who had no choice but to send in the troopers. The consequences of this are glaringly obvious to Nimbin visitors today and George himself is apparently too frightened to walk the Nimbin street now.

Otherwise many people in Nimbin were impressed today that ACA managed to get across the message of how risky it is to smoke cannabis with tobacco, an entrenched Australian tradition. Also the possible dangers of unregulated hydroponically grown cannabis were revealed.

Unfortunately the youth counsellor, Jill Pearman gets it all wrong in the program when she guarantees that if you give up cannabis for a week, you'll be climbing the walls! Michael Balderstone, spokesperson for the Nimbin HEMP Embassy says, "like many other people around here who don't smoke all the time, when I stop, the only drama is it's difficult to get a full night's sleep for a while. But that's because I don't smoke with tobacco. It's amazing to us that 'experts' like Jill and Professor George Patton, with his 'groundbreaking' study haven't yet twigged to the importance of the tobacco/pot mix. We think the government is completely irresponsible in not communicating this message clearly to Australia's cannabis users and young potential users, despite us lobbying them on the matter for years."

Michael Balderstone
Nimbin HEMP Embassy
Phone: 02 6689 1842
B/H: 02 6689 0326
A/H: 02 6689 7525