The crop copters have taken to the skies above the hinterland once again, protecting the helpless New South Welshman from the insidious scourge of cannabis. 2023 and Reefer Madness is still in full swing! That highconic piece of propaganda came out in 1936 – almost 100 years ago – and Australia has made little progress when it comes to cannabis laws.
We’re instant criminals if we’re ‘caught’ having smoked our legal, medicinal stuff a couple of days before driving; that’s if you can afford the legal stuff at all. I spoke to my GP about going legit – he said not only was it insanely confusing for a doctor to navigate the intricacies of prescribing, it’s also prohibitively expensive for many. He said to just keep smoking black market stuff.
Which got me thinking; why am I trying to support corporate weed in the first place? The growers, dealers and activists who have long suffered and made the industry what it is are not let into the club – it’s not their product you find in pharmacies. It’s big business that is running and dominating the legal weed scene, people with no cultural connection to the history. Resist cannabis gentrification; boycott corporate weed!
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
