Darren Coyne
Growers (and farmers) beware … the choppers are in the air.
The police helicopter and its ground troops were spotted out Uki way earlier this week, with reports that their low-level surveillance for cannabis was again scaring livestock and children in the area.
A property owner along Blue Knob Road received a call while she was at work in Nimbin that almost 30 of her cattle had ended up on the road.
The cattle reportedly escaped through a barbed wire fence after being spooked by the choppers, with a number of the animals receiving injuries.
This morning, an Echonetdaily source has reported a large contingent of police – dressed in black t-shirts with ‘Police’ on the back – were congregating at Durrumbul Hall near Mullumbimby.
Further social media posts indicate properties in the Main Arm area were being buzzed mid-morning.
Tweed Byron Local Area Command has been contacted about the sighting but had not responded to a request for information prior to deadline.
Hemp Embassy president Michael Balderstone said the annual cannabis eradication program was ‘an incredible waste of money’.
‘They’re busting outdoor cannabis so everyone then has to rely on chemically-enhanced hydroponic cannabis grown by organized crime,” Mr Balderstone said.
‘This is happening in the same week that the Federal Government announces legislation that will allow the cultivation of cannabis for medicinal purposes.
‘It’s hypocrisy and it’s a tragic waste of money. All they are doing is pushing more and more people onto harder substances like Ice.’
Mr Balderstone said police had scant regard for the people they were terrorizing.
‘If you don’t think it’s a drug war then you’ve never had the chopper flying low over your home,’ he said.
‘The animals freak out and the kids freak out but the police don’t take those concerns seriously.’
Police say the cannabis eradication program has seized and destroyed around $300 million worth of plants since the program was introduced in the 1980s.
Meanwhile, opposition continues to grow towards the NSW Police drug-driving regime following meetings in both Lismore and Nimbin this week.
At both forums, people questioned how on one hand the government was moving towards allowing medicinal cannabis, while on the other the police were continuing to harass drivers for having negligible amounts of cannabis in their system, despite no evidence of impairment.
Mr Balderstone said whenever medical cannabis was mentioned in the media the Nimbin Hemp Embassy received another 50 calls from people wanting to access medicine.
‘These are people with terminal illnesses or battling disease and yet they find it difficult to access good quality outdoor cannabis,’ he said.
‘It’s also clear that the hippies who have been breeding and growing cannabis for medical use for years are going to be cut out of the program and the police will continue to be gung-ho with their helicopters’.
The Police are not only eradicating cannabis crops but also identifying those people who will not be given commercial licences to grow the medicinal crop.
Balderstone and his pot head mates will not be commercial growers as most have criminal records.
So, commercial crops will be grown by farmers that do not have criminal records and in a controlled manner such as the opium crop in Tasmania requires.
Oh come on! When is an adult likely to be terrorized by a helicopter flying overhead. Perhaps a Viet Vet but not your average adult, And children. They are more likely excited to see a low flying helicopter than be terrified.Clearly animals are a different situation.
May I suggest to play this to the cows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5s5qGg01nE
That should fore them up. It is a song about cows with guns.
Can we please get ‘our’ police force out of the choppers and off DUI-‘drug’ patrol and into securing the wellbeing of staff and patients in our hospitals.
No, I don’t smoke, nor do I grow the stuff. I am simply sober enough to understand that scarce resources would be better spent on dealing with the real crisis.
I would not be happy if 30 of my cows got spooked by a helicopter. Time the coppers went and got a real job.
“The more obvious the failure becomes, the more shamelessly they [the prohibitionists] exhibit their genuine motives. In plain words, what moves them is the psychological aberration called sadism. They lust to inflict inconvenience, discomfort, and whenever possible, disgrace upon the persons they hate — which is to say, upon everyone who is free from their barbarous theological superstitions, and is having a better time in the world than they are.”
“They cannot stop the use of alcohol, nor even appreciably diminish it, but they can badger and annoy everyone who seeks to use it decently, and they can fill the jails with men taken for purely artificial offences, and they can get satisfaction thereby for the Puritan yearning to browbeat and injure, to torture and terrorize, to punish and humiliate all who show any sign of being happy. And all this they can do with a safe line of policemen and judges in front of them; always they can do it without personal risk.”
—an extract from “Notes on Democracy” by Henry Louis Mencken, written in 1926, during US alcohol prohibition, 1919-1933
Scared the hell out of my horses too. Ridiculously low In our little valley. Thanks a lot, at least one lame horse!
What a sad joke obviously the police have nothing better to do other than violate our human rights honestly if the police have nothing
better to do with their time we need to cut their numbers and save our tax money for much better things such as medicinal cannabis farms which the government is finally doing now after how long of people suffering and now they come along like the Heros when the real Heros are the cannabis farmers who have been helping the people all along the ones that had no regard for the pathetic cannabis laws because they knew even back then it was absolute bullcrap, DO NOT interfere with the cannabis farmers, they are helping to heal the nation, this government has no concerns for our health because I can walk 2 min down the road from my house buy some cigarettes ( poison ) and that is fine I can smoke a pack an hour that is fine no one blinks an eye I can drink myself unconscious with alcohol everyday that is okay but a herbal flower that is designed to interact with my body in a positive way and which heals my body is illegal no one has no right to interfere with what Mother Nature intended 50 million years ago, the way I see things are this government is a death cult it’s as simple as that, I can’t have something that will heal me but I can have something that will kill me
Perhaps what we need is a no fly register similar to the one with Country Energy. I have horses and have registered that I do not want helicopters to fly over my place and they are okay with that. It is not essential that they fly over to check for plants it is just quicker. If you do not genuinely want them to fly over, register that with the local police and invite them on to your place to do the inspection on foot instead. Get them to sign off that you are registered and if they do fly over and a horse is injured they would be liable.
I’m wondering where to start with this. I used to live across the lake from Oka where the uprising occurred on Native lands in Canada back in 1992, I am fully aware of the terrorising sound of low flying helicopters.
I come from Canada, back in ’92 it was a Conservative gov with a right wing agenda clamping down on Native Americans. I’m afraid there are varying degrees of this behaviour still but that is another story.
PRESENTLY, Canada is in the throws of legalising marijuana.
I have a friend who is a grower. He is now paid by the federal gov of Canada to grow medicinal marijuana.
Is anyone aware that the current police commissioner, Troy Grant is also minister for the Arts? WTF? An extreme right wing SOB who is pushing for road side swab tests merely because Mary Jane is illegal is also minister of the arts?
Look, I feel I live in an extremely beautiful part of the world, here in the Shire but with nonsense crack downs such as the examples in the above column, I’m seriously considering returning to my country of origin where common sense seems to be more of a focus than what I am seeing everyday in the news here.
Turnbull seems to be turning out to be version of Abbot Lite.