Police Raided Australia’s Cannabis Capital

Image via the Daily Telegraph

At a time when the Uruguayan government and several US states are legalizing marijuana, Australia’s New South Wales (NSW) Police Force is cracking down on marijuana possession in the small township of Nimbin. Situated in northern NSW, Nimbin has been renowned as a hub of alternative lifestyles and recreational marijuana use for more than three decades (VICE filmed a documentary there a few years back and got really, really stoned).

Last Thursday, 11 September, 70 police officers descended upon the town, carrying out raids on the well-known Oasis Café and Perceptio Bookshop, as well as random street searches, resulting in the arrest of eight people and the seizure of two kilograms of cannabis. This is not an isolated incident but part of an ongoing drug war between the police and the locals. 

The raids were part of Operation Oleary, which was established in March 2014 to target cannabis supply in the local area. Along with the raids in town, a separate one was carried out upon a residential property in nearby Jiggi, resulting in the seizure of “a large amount of mature cannabis plants.” Sniffer dog searches were also undertaken in Nimbin, targeting the whole community along with tourists. These events are not the end of the operation, with further seizures and arrests expected. 

Richmond Local Area Commander Superintendent Greg Martin stated to the press that community discontent over the local drug situation led to the operation being carried out. “As a result of this operation, we have dismantled a criminal group we allege was responsible for supplying significant amounts of drugs throughout the Nimbin area,” he said. “Those charged with ongoing drug supply face up to 25 years jail. We will continue to target drug offenders and treat them with the seriousness they deserve.”

Jim Moylan, national campaign director of the HEMP party, said last week’s raids were not the first such events. In 2010, there was an increase in police searches and raids were carried out. He pointed out that the date, 11 September, “is not an accidental date. After the last round of the police… almost every three weeks driving in with four vehicles and holding the whole town under siege, marching along and strip searching anyone they wanted, four years ago on 9/11 the population of Nimbin marched on the police station and stood out the front for four hours to make the point that they’re the occupiers here, we’re the residents.”

Yet the police actions can be traced back further to 2008 and the notorious April Fool’s Day raid, when several dozen local police and Sydney riot squad arrived on the Nimbin streets, raiding the Hemp Embassy and Museum. 

April Fool’s Day raid, 2008. Photo via Nimbin Hemp Embassy

According to Moylan, Cullen St., the main road of Nimbin, is under constant observation. “There are ten or eleven surveillance cameras for that streetscape, which places it under more scrutiny from law enforcement than any other part of Australia,” he said.

A lawyer, who’s been providing free legal advice to those arrested at last Thursday’s raids, Moylan explains that as soon as street dealers are taken away, others come along to replace them. This is because the cannabis trade in Nimbin is bustling, due to the car and busloads of tourists that arrive in the town every day. “It’s no surprise that the local council did up the road into Nimbin but not to the other towns around there,” he said. “On the one hand we have this sort of backhand nod to the incredible commercial activity generated by the illegal market place at Nimbin and then on the other hand, we’ve got this arbitrary pounding on the people who are servicing that marketplace.”

Nimbin Hemp Embassy president Michael Balderstone said that at most, only about 5 percent of the Nimbin population has a problem with the local drug trade. He told VICE that prior to the raids, Operation Oleary involved undercover police buying drugs off local dealers. “They’ve been buying weed off people here for six months, so they can get people for supplying three times, I suspect, which will get them locked up. It’s a much more serious charge—you’ll be lucky not to go to jail, if you’ve sold three times.”

Balderstone believes police only arrested half the people they were after and denies that they dismantled a major operation, but rather targeted low-end street dealers. “They’ll put a dozen young boys in jail. What’s that going to do?” he asked. “And I think they’ll be hunting to pick up the extra dozen people they didn’t find on that day.”

“The town, you know, we’ve been raided so many times and we’ve been picked on so many times and we’re still resilient; people just keep on,” Balderstone reflected.

The police in Nimbin are simply enforcing the law, and although Dr. Alex Wodak, president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, would like these laws to change, this is how he views the events of last week. 

Wodak would like to see recreational cannabis sold legally on the market, in the taxed and regulated way that alcohol and tobacco are. That would include “warning labels on the packets, health-seeking information, consumer information, and… a system of hard-to-get but easy-to-lose licenses for production, wholesale, and retail.” He believes that the majority of people interested in buying recreational cannabis would prefer to do so legally, so restrictions on its lawful purchase should not be too confining or the black market would continue to prosper. 

In regards to worldwide trends toward legal status for cannabis, Wodak believes it is a process that is gradually occurring. He points out that the penalties for cannabis possession in Australia have been decreasing for some time and that in some parts of the country small-scale possession has been made legal. 

“The logic of it is that we’ll end up with a regulated market, and so we should, in my view, to everybody’s benefit,” Wodak said. “One of the benefits to that would be reducing corruption among police and public officials.”

Follow Paul on Twitter.

More on drugs:

This is How Europe Takes Drugs in 2014

I Went to Montreal’s New Cat Cafe on Shrooms

What Would Drugs Look Like in an Indepdent Scotland?