Pubdate: Wed, 30 Apr 2008
Source: Northern River Echo, The (Australia)
Contact:  2008 TAOW P/L
Website: http://www.echonews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4736
Author: Luis Felin
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/nimbin (Nimbin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

TOP COP ASKED TO MAKE PEACE, NOT WAR

The Lismore area's top cop has been asked to come in peace or stay 
away for this weekend's annual MardiGrass festival and cannabis law 
reform rally in Nimbin. He has also been invited to take part in 
workshops on the myriad uses of hemp and listen to experts on drugs 
and criminality at this weekend's 16th annual MardiGrass. The call to 
Richmond Local Area Command chief, Superintendent Bruce 'Bluey' 
Lyons, was made publicly over a loudhailer during a street protest in 
Lismore on Monday morning outside Lismore Courthouse where several 
people were due to face cannabis charges related to the controversial 
police raid on the village on April Fool's Day. After the raid, which 
netted mostly cannabis leaf, cakes and cookies, Supt Lyons vowed to 
continue targetting Nimbin and its popular festival, saying the days 
of Nimbin's tourist trade "living off the back of drug dealing" were over.

Hemp activist and festival parade marshall Graeme Dunstan invited 
Supt Lyons and his officers to "enjoy" MardiGrass, making an 
impassioned address to the small crowd about harassment by police of 
"peaceful, ever-loving hippies" at Nimbin saying "Bluey Lyons has to 
get it right and make peace now" with the community. His pleas were 
well within earshot of the courthouse and the adjacent new police 
station. "Superintendent Lyons is deluded if he thinks he can 
suppress Nimbin... no power on earth can stop us ever-loving 
hippies...the citizens of this ever-loving community will be on the 
streets on Sunday to demonstrate how we feel," Mr Dunstan said.

HEMP Embassy spokesman Michael Balderstone said "no-one wins this 
stupid war on drugs" and as a result of recent and other raids on 
Nimbin, police were "losing respect in the community".

Mr Balderstone said the drug laws, especially in regard to possession 
of cannabis for personal use, were oppressive and gave many young 
people criminal records for the rest of their lives.

In California, 400 vending machines legally sold cannabis for 
medicinal use, he said. US filmmaker Shelli Lipton, an ambassador 
from Nimbin's sister-city Woodstock in New York state, said the two 
villages shared a common cause in "standing up to bad laws". Ms 
Lipton told the crowd that marijuana was once legal and widespread 
throughout the world but the push to make it illegal, led by the US, 
was all about oppressing people. Dr Alex Wodak, president of both the 
Drug Law Reform Foundation and International Harm Reduction 
Association, will speak at the Nimbin Town Hall at 1pm this Saturday, 
May 3, as part of the debate about marijuana prohibition, which will 
also include nationally-renowned criminologist Professor Paul Wilson.

Senior police have told media that police would not try to keep 
people away from the festival but would target those possessing or 
supplying drugs.
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