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.