PRESS RELEASE - 13 JUNE 2003

FORBIDDEN FUN NEEDS AN EXPERIENCED BONG DISPOSAL UNIT

The HEMP Embassy is amazed by the outcry over the high school student at Maclean caught with a bong in his bag. Dealing with reality on this issue is overdue.

Spokesperson Michael Balderstone said, "I guess there's no chance of getting the job, but the NSW Dept of Education could hire us as their 'bong disposal unit'. No doubt we're a joke to most, but many young people have more experience and knowledge on cannabis than most of the people preaching to them, and they are interested in hearing from long term users".

For example, we are finding many of the young teenagers caught up in smoking pot daily are hooked on tobacco without realising it. We, like many social workers, are discovering chronic bong habits from people who don't realise mixing their pot with tobacco has led to nicotine cravings keeping them stoned every day. This is the kind of education the NSW government could be giving out, though we understand Carr's resistance to anything that remotely sounds like 'normalisation of drug use'. The longer heads are kept in the sand, the worse it all becomes.

Education is the way, rather than criminalisation, not to mention 'life-time sentencing' by not allowing students to sit their exams. That seems a bit unfair considering statistics show tons of high school kids are experimenting with pot. The official figures are around 50% for both boys and girls, in NSW.

Young people find cannabis relatively safe and predictable, certainly compared to the unknown chemical powders and pills which are increasingly popular because you don't get caught.

Cannabis being illegal just makes it more attractive, the forbidden fruit syndrome.

Hammering Maclean's kids just alienates young pot smokers further and drives the problem deeper. They won't stop, we know that, they just hide it more and quite possibly, abuse it more. It's the opposite results to what everyone wants, which is presumably for them to at least wait until their body reaches maturity before they experiment with any drugs. To achieve positive results out of such a situation, we need open honest talk, which is kind of what John Howard was telling us to do with teenagers in his famous postal swamping. Which school kids are going to talk openly about their cannabis use now? And whatever happened to 'the truth will set you free'?

In Holland, where pot is no longer glamourised, teenage use has markedly decreased.

The suspension without proper proof makes the whole thing even more disrespectful for youth. Because of the stupid American war on drugs, we now have a situation where something forbidden and illegal turns out to be fun for most people who try it! Not an easy situation for anyone to manage but obviously the Dept of Education is out of its depth.

The Nimbin HEMP Embassy's offer to be a 'bong disposal unit' is not so mad when you realise our policy is to encourage young people to leave drugs alone until their body has matured. But if they are smoking, using tobacco could be preventing them from stopping, and they certainly shouldn't be using plastic orchy bottles as bongs, but who's going to share that sort of knowledge with them? Some parents.....