Nimbin facing 'overdue' cop crackdown

[Al B. Fuct]

Meerkat, all your points about 'playing the game' and so on are very well taken. All you have to do is find a few willing evangelists and a messiah or two.

 

Being an Ed Rosenthal, Marc Emery, etc is not a casual decision; it's a life choice. Being an identifiable public advocate for something which has been so thoroughly intergenerationally demonised as has been cannabis frequently earns one the sort of praise normally reserved for paedophiles.

 

Have a squizz at how the zero-tolerance ideologues treat the doctors and nurses who staff the Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC):

 

The most professional and white-coated Dr Ingrid van Beek writes:

 

Dear Supporters

 

On behalf of the staff of the MSIC, I am pleased to inform you that legislation to extend the trial of the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) for a further 4 years (to the end of October 2011) has now passed successfully through both houses in NSW Parliament. We are of course glad that the NSW Government continues to support this important public health initiative. The support for this bill from the Greens, Independents including Clover Moore, Dawn Fardell and Robert Oakeshott and five Liberal MPs (who were allowed a conscience vote) was also very encouraging.

 

While the parliamentary speeches in favour of the bill were heartening for the staff at the MSIC, comments like the following made by [Alan Cadman] the member for Castle Hill in his speech against the bill were less so:

"I am willing to bet that some of those working at the centre will be trawling the streets for addicts to get their numbers up because, after all, it is their livelihood. Indeed, when I pointed out the escape clause [the new provision that a review will be triggered should MSIC utilisation drop below 75% of current levels] to my wife she immediately suggested that staff would pull people in off the street and get them to inject inside the injecting room so that they could maintain their jobs. "

 

Likewise, repeated assertions that the MSIC merely encourages experimentation with dangerous drug cocktails were abhorrent to us. I sometimes wonder if anyone ever suggests of my cardiologist colleagues that they must be very concerned about the impact of the decreasing rate of tobacco use in the community on their “livelihoods”…surely not, given their obvious life-long career commitment to improving the community’s health status. Similarly those of us who have chosen to work with drug users in what is arguably one of the most challenging fields within the public health sector don’t deserve to have such aspersions cast.

 

It was also deeply disturbing to see the extent to which the misinformation produced by Gary Christian of Drug Free Australia (DFA) permeated many of the speeches of those opposed. That this compilation of pseudo-science gained credence comparable to the various reports tabled by the team of internationally recognised researchers from Australia’s National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research who undertook the MSIC’s evaluation, is a travesty. I suspect that many of the MPs who used DFA’s various statistical extrapolations in their speeches didn’t even realise that apart from being fundamentally flawed, they referred to the first 18-month period of what has now been a 6-year trial. But I am reassured that it did little to change the way the politicians actually voted in the end.

 

I have pasted hereunder the

MSIC’s response

to the

6 key arguments circulated by Mr Christian

to all MPs prior to the parliamentary debate for your information (attached herewith).

 

Finally, to coin the words of DFA’s CEO: that the Australian Medical Association, the Royal Australasian Colleges of Physicians, Emergency Medicine, Psychiatry, the Alcohol and other Drugs Council of Australia, the Australian Drug Foundation, the Australasian Society of HIV Medicine, the Hepatitis C Council of NSW, the NSW Users and AIDS Association, the AIDS Council of NSW, Family Drug Support, the Ted Noffs Foundation, Reverend Bill Crews of the Exodus Foundation, Sydney City Council, all of the parishes in Kings Cross, the large majority of local residents and businesses in Kings Cross and many others support the MSIC - speaks for itself.

 

Your ongoing support is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

Dr Ingrid van Beek

 

Medical Director

(bold emphasis mine- Al B.)

 

Now, if you think DFA's Gary Christian's and Member for Castle Hill, Alan Cadman's (wot's in a name, Mr. Cad?) treatment of Dr van Beek and the MSIC in general is repugnant, it's absolutely pale compared to how the sainted Dr Alex Wodak of St Vincent's Drug and Alcohol Treatment Unit was treated at a recent Parliamentary enquiry. It's massively long, but try to suffer through this Hansard record. Note with amusement one zero-tolerance ringer physician giving evidence who claims cannabis causes osteoporosis. Bronwyn Pike deserves an Oscar for spewing things she believes but doesn't know.

 

Now, that's the Parliamentary and procedural bullshit the ZiTs will pull on you. Don't forget about all the dirty tricks. Talk about CATTY!

 

A public cannabis advocate is gonna cop all this and more. Who's putting their hand up? ...anyone....?

 

Lest we forget, cannabis advocate Dr Andrew Katelaris escaped jail despite being busted with over 49,000 cannabis plants, but they still convicted the guy despite his work researching cannabis as medicine.

[jabez]

The thing is the only reason marc emery was able to do so well is because he got a green light from the coppers to sell seeds.

 

He would have just been another burnt out bong head if he didnt have his bussiness to fund his cause. Dont get me wrong I totally respect what his done but I think there was a lot of luck involved.

 

What someone needs to do is start a club or union and if you could slowly get a desent amount of members you can start mass voting like the christians and gun clubs in the US do, thats how you get power over the government

[Shithappens]

Well Yes i agree we need more of an activist sceen around australia

 

As far as Nimbin is concerned i think that it is doing more harm then good with publicity like this....

 

The activists around there should act sensibly around the town and drive out the profiteers

 

They could easilly do this buy flooding the market and taking away the profit margin out of the market...

 

If they where really concerned about the activism of the pot culture then they would consider such an easy way to remove the scum.

[Luke Skywalker]

Hey Jabez, just wanted to point something out...

 

What someone needs to do is start a club or union and if you could slowly get a desent amount of members you can start mass voting like the christians and gun clubs in the US do, thats how you get power over the government yahoo.gif

 

What do you think this is? Big ass club. Mostly growers, but not all. We're not a huge mob of aussies, but we do have power in numbers, that is very, very true.

 

Great posts here, keep it coming, we need ideas and ideas-men (and women) to repeal prohibition.

[Luke Skywalker]

Hey al, just read that hansard... jeez, I never thought Bronnie "Whiteboard" Bishop could sound like the asshole she is in text, but she's managed beautifully.

 

The ignorance and hypocricy is breathtaking.... That woman, (and Cadman, you see the Chaser sketch about Cadman for PM? hilarious...) is an absolute terror and fundamentalist evil bitch. And I say that with the greatest disrespect due to her.

[jimbojones5678]

and they obviously have never been to Nimbin recently. They said the bus tours were full of old people who come to see the freaks, when in reality its mostly backpackers looking to score a smoke. giving the public an ignorant opinion as usual....

 

I also liked the way they showed a pic of a skinny guy with dreads while talking about "skinny junkies". was it a cheap ploy to associate stoners with junkies or do these braindead sacks of shit really think a steak, beer and pot belly are the signatures of a healthy lifestyle?

....spot on.

 

Jimbo

[Al B. Fuct]

Hey al, just read that hansard... jeez, I never thought Bronnie "Whiteboard" Bishop could sound like the asshole she is in text, but she's managed beautifully.

 

ah fuck, I said Bronwyn Pike, didn't I?

 

all those Bronwyns just kinda melt together in a disgustingly authoritarian sorta way...

 

The ignorance and hypocricy is breathtaking.... That woman, (and Cadman, you see the Chaser sketch about Cadman for PM? hilarious...) is an absolute terror and fundamentalist evil bitch. And I say that with the greatest disrespect due to her.

 

Haven't seen the Chaser sketch abt Cad-man, but I'm sure it's worth seeing... compared to some other shit they've done recently, where they simply pick on the wrong ppl. Their 'advert road test' often picks on the employees on the front line instead of the morons who wrote the script for ridiculously overstated adverts.

 

Cadman's something like 68 years old... his worldview was formed 50 years ago... and mother, does it show.

 

Good bloody onya for suffering through the Hansard transcript. Bishop is so nauseatingly knee-jerk that you wonder how she gets through a day without consulting her horoscope. Her prejudice on the matter of harm minimisation and her ad-hominem demonisation of any HM advocate ought to qualify her to be kicked out of any of her portfolio positions relative to the topic. She's not serving the Australian people, for damned sure. She's driving an ideological bus over a slippery slope- and in 100 years will be unearthed by sociological anthropologists and compared to flat-earth and pre-Copernican earth-centric universe theorists.

[Bubble Bags Australia]

The thing is the only reason marc emery was able to do so well is because he got a green light from the coppers to sell seeds.

 

And what do you base this on, did you actually live in Vancouver ?

 

Selling seeds was only the means to bring in an income to financially support the BCMP, it had nothing to do with the politics and the hard work done to change the mindset and laws there. Yes seed sales did help a lot in that they allowed the BCMP to be able to afford staff and PR materials and office equipment and such, but that is all.

[jabez]

And what do you base this on, did you actually live in Vancouver ?

 

Selling seeds was only the means to bring in an income to financially support the BCMP, it had nothing to do with the politics and the hard work done to change the mindset and laws there. Yes seed sales did help a lot in that they allowed the BCMP to be able to afford staff and PR materials and office equipment and such, but that is all.

 

I think you just answered your own question dude

 

Let me point out (again) that I think emery is a legend, I was just pointing out the fact that a lot of other people would have been just as passionate and worked just as hard and have gone no where because they have nothing to fund the cause.

 

I mean just imagine how the OZ stoner community would blow up if they had the green light to sell seeds over the net

 

And no I never lived in Vancouver but you can check the story out on the net, as you pointed out in one of your earlier post

 

He seems like a good bloke and of course I respect what his doing. I was just saying not everyone could do it

[jabez]

Hey Jabez, just wanted to point something out...

What do you think this is? Big ass club. Mostly growers, but not all. We're not a huge mob of aussies, but we do have power in numbers, that is very, very true.

 

Your 100% right and people like me who like to talk the talk really should be walking the walk and fully supporting big ass clubs like this

 

Ill get right on to it