Melbourne. Saturday, 12.15pm
Thank God (or Goddess) for Nimbin.
The big joint hangs over Nimbin’s Hemp Embassy stall, an unfashionable big thing hanging in fashionable Melbourne’s exhibition centre, where the venue is packed with stalls exhibiting everything to do with cannabis – or marijuana – or hemp – or whatever you want to call it.
It’s the Hemp Health and Innovation Expo and Symposium.
Cannabis is becoming fashionable again. So it should be. Humans have been using the plant since at least 4000BC for all sorts of purposes. (Like, it makes their lives better.) It was only corporations (giddy with the power given to them by ignorant humans) that maligned and slandered this most useful plant. Christians railed against it, calling it the Devil’s weed despite their God (not Goddess) gifting it to a poor lost Moses on Mount Sinai.
The corporations, with the help of their most obedient servants: governments and churches, even made the ‘burning bush’ illegal, like it was a refugee or something.
I’m not surprised. Corporations have been pillaging the planet since we created them. They are the monster to our Frankenstein. This fiscal fiend now runs the planet (into the ground) and is beyond control, dissolving life in vats of poisonous economic deceit.
However, the light of the ‘burning bush’ is too bright to remain buried, even under the bushel of corporate disparagement. Now, more than ever, the world needs cannabis. It may not save the planet, but its reassertion as a most beneficial plant is, at least, a symbol of sanity in the suicidal slide of progress. So, here at the Symposium are gathered wise men and women from around the world to help us relearn the cannabis facts.
And here too is gathered business…
Business, who besmirched this plant’s reputation with a barrage of lies that would make Trump sit up and admire, is now jumping on the cannabis bandwagon. Cannabis is big business. Well, there’s money to be made – like there was in oil and DDT and napalm – especially as the government has kept this dear little plant illegal. (Cannabis is good, except for THC – that’s bad.)
It could be free and available to all, this medicine, this building material, this cloth, this lotion, this recreational activity – but no, where’s the money in that? So, the business bees are buzzing around the honey pot.
Thank God (or Goddess) for Nimbin.
Nimbin town is like cannabis. It’s a beautiful and helpful place that has been besmirched and persecuted by government, and remains unacknowledged for all the good it has done. It is Nimbin that has lead and leads the way in shining the spotlight on the beneficial qualities of cannabis. It is Nimbin which has the expertise to grow hemp or medical cannabis.
Yet the police fear this village, like corporations fear free access, like governments fear freedom, like Christians fear the truth, like business people in hemp suits fear THC.
So, the police patrol this village like confused kids at an adult party, a Canadaian corporation gets a licence to grow acres of cannabis in Casino, Christians think jailing refugees is cool and pot isn’t, and business people in hemp suits get to charge a mint for synthetic cannabis medicine.
Thank God (or Goddess) for Nimbin.
With dreadlocks and bald patches, with laughter and coughing, with generosity born from caring, the Nimbin crew rumbles with the big sellers, celebrating humanity and keeping the joint sane.
Here, under the big plastic joint (yes, plastic), is Nimbin’s Hemp Embassy taking its message to Melbourne. And the message is cannabis (even that naughty THC bit). There’s no business plan, the profit is knowledge, everyone is a shareholder and the gunja faeries dance.
Good on ya, Nimbin.
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