By Nick Bikeman
I’m woken abruptly on hump day, startled by the piercing anxiety-inducing wail of police sirens getting closer. They were coming for ‘Fat Jack’ a few doors up. I join the rest of the neighbourhood sticky beaks peeking out behind half-opened blinds. Squinting through the smudged dawn light, I make out two unmarked cop cars blocking the road as tooled-up plainclothes detectives frogmarch a cuffed, bowed and busted ‘Fat Jack’ to the kerbside.
The boys in blue flashing lights arrive to administer further humiliation, loading oversized evidence bags into their cars. I struggle against the rising urge to fling open the window and shout, “You’re going home in the back of a Divvy Van!!”. I wonder would the rest of the street spontaneously join in if I did.
We’re going to miss Fat Jack, our enigmatic, slightly menacing, local dope dealer, not that I was his best customer or even a regular smoker, but it was good to know you could call past on the way home from work for a couple of quick cones or grab some ‘takeaways’, a little like popping down to the Aldi. And just like at Aldi, it was quality gear too, none of that hydroponic Brew & Grow Shop shit but genuine old school organically grown weed from seed. It’s all chemical-free the way nature intended, raised with love on his uncle’s farm somewhere up in the sticks, or so he says.
The fact is, according to the 2022–023 National Drug Strategy Household Survey (NDSHS) an estimated 47% or almost 1 in 2 people aged 14 and over have illicitly used a drug of some kind in their lifetime while abuse of legal prescription medications is at an all-time high, (pun intended). Whatever the preference, illicit or otherwise, many people enjoy taking drugs.
And the economics of drug dealing is big business. The Federal Government themselves estimate the size of the illicit cannabis market in Australia at roughly $5 billion annually. That’s a lot of unregulated, untaxed money controlled by organised crime circulating in the ‘cash economy’ pissing off the Reserve Bank by stockpiling $100 bills, while further down the food chain low level suppliers and users are those most likely to feel the heat from law enforcement.
At the same time, we have a War on Drugs, ‘Big Pharma’ wants to muscle in on the action, supporting strict controls over the growing, supply, and sale of ‘medicinal cannabis’ to licensed medical practitioners. Big Pharma already controls the lucrative licit Tasmanian Opium business; their modus operandi (MO) seems to be lobbying to make drug use legitimate for those deemed eligible and deserving, then corner the market. It’s a conspiracy, man.
Cultivating your own Marijuana is the gateway drug to tomatoes, broccoli, and a host of other seasonal vegetables. It starts innocently enough, a couple of plants for personal use hidden in the backyard, then scratching about in the dirt, you unknowingly breathe in a specific soil bacteria called Mycobacterium Vaccae, which triggers the release of serotonin in the brain. A natural anti-depressant with a feel-good vibe that hits you with a rush. Before you realise what’s happening, you’re in the queue at Bunnings for the Saturday sausage sizzle, subsequently arriving home with a car boot full of seedlings. Gardening is an addiction.
Obeying rules and the dictates of authority certainly won’t make you happy or a good person, or the world a better place. Maybe we don’t need the guiding hand of the State creeping into our lives; we can and do make our own life choices that run contrary to the accepted norm. I’m not advocating folks embrace recreational drug use as a lifestyle choice, unless of course you are old, worn out, bone sore, or beyond redemption. In that case, take everything you can get your grubby, withered hands on! To paraphrase French novelist Voltaire, people should ‘dig one’s own garden’, essentially mind your own business and get on with your own life while leaving others to theirs, because that’s where happiness lives.
