The northlondonhippy

I’ve been try­ing to put some­thing together to post here about the ramp­ing up of the false cannabis hys­te­ria in the last week or so, but the whole god­damn thing has me so fuck­ing fucked off, that I’ve been strug­gling with putting my thoughts into a sen­si­ble and ratio­nal form.

Basi­cally, my anger and rage at the lies, mis­in­for­ma­tion and ques­tion­able sci­ence has knocked me off bal­ance. I aim to redress that in the next day or in a series of posts I’m already preparing.

I want to get this one right. There’s too much at stake regard­ing the sta­tus and view of weed in UK soci­ety and some­one has to be the voice of reason.

That some­one is going to be me.

Because of my long rela­tion­ship with cannabis, specif­i­cally “skunk” as the media likes to dub any decent, well-grown strain; I am uniquely qual­i­fied to com­ment on this subject.

And that’s the thing, in all of this “debate”, there has been one side of the argu­ment miss­ing; one voice not heard and that’s the views of some­one who smokes and enjoys cannabis, reg­u­larly and responsibly.

Meet the hippy. That’s me. I’ve smoked cannabis daily for 26 years, around 25 of them, “skunk”. It’s always been avail­able, if you knew where to look.

As well as being a habit­ual and unapolo­getic smoker of cannabis for over 2 decades, you’d also find me a mature, charm­ing, intel­li­gent, respectable, use­ful, gain­fully employed, tax-paying mem­ber of soci­ety. I’m also clever, smart and fun to know. You’ll have to take my word for it.

I’m prob­a­bly no dif­fer­ent from the major­ity of cannabis smok­ers. We’re your neigh­bours, your co-workers, your friends, rel­a­tives; we’re a lit­tle bit of everybody!

We’re not demons, we’re not mon­sters, we’re actu­ally a fairly chilled out, relaxed bunch of peo­ple, who would pre­fer to spend an evening reclin­ing on the sofa, watch­ing a good film or read­ing a good book or lost in deep conversation.

We’re not the sort you’ll find in a city cen­tre at mid­night, piss­ing in alley­ways and pick­ing street fights with the old bill.

The prob­lem, with those of us who are both pro­duc­tive mem­bers of soci­ety and cannabis users is we can’t thrust our hands in the air and declare our admi­ra­tion of weed, because of its cur­rent legal status.

We are all forced to remain under­ground and in the shad­ows, for to come out pub­licly as a dope smoker, would be to invite all man­ner of crit­i­cism and scorn which would threaten your stand­ing in soci­ety, per­son­ally and professionally.

And that’s just plain wrong.

For me, the sit­u­a­tion is different.

Not only am I uniquely qual­i­fied to com­ment on the sub­ject, because of my long asso­ci­a­tion with cannabis, but also because of my nom de plume as the northlon­don­hippy and this web­site. I have a forum to express my views as well as share the truth with you all, with­out fear of ret­ri­bu­tion. I’ve been doing it already, for a few years now.

That’s why I am putting myself for­ward as the voice of rea­son, san­ity and expe­ri­ence on all things cannabis related. And I’m not lim­it­ing myself to only this web­site, but I would like to offer my ser­vices as a self-proclaimed expert on the sub­ject to other media out­lets as well.

That’s right, you clever young researchers who man­age to find me, I am avail­able for inter­view on any cannabis related mat­ter and this offer is open to news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines and radio pro­grammes only. I won’t appear on tele­vi­sion, so sorry guys, because I will not be iden­ti­fied as any­thing other than the northlondonhippy.

I’d also be happy to pro­vide com­ment pieces for news­pa­pers, if you would like to com­mis­sion some­thing, please feel free to con­tact me.

But if it is an inter­view you’re after, here are my sim­ple conditions:

1) My real name and any other iden­ti­fy­ing facts about me shall remain secret. Your dis­cre­tion is essential

2) You are free to men­tion and refer to my web­site, actu­ally I would encour­age that.

3) You can ask me any­thing you like about cannabis in gen­eral and my long-time per­sonal expe­ri­ence with it as well. I will answer some per­sonal ques­tions, but oth­ers I will not. And it will be down to my discretion.

4) I’m not look­ing for pay­ment. My reward will come from telling the truth and cor­rect­ing the lies, false­hoods and sci­en­tific mis­in­for­ma­tion passed off as proven fact.

5) While short notice requests for inter­views may be pos­si­ble, some notice will be required. I do have a life out­side of this blog and weed…well, sort of.

6) Ini­tial con­tact via email first is rec­om­mended and encouraged.

7) For any live media out­lets, ie radio, pre-interviews are fine and I promise not to swear or say any­thing slan­der­ous. I won’t how­ever, get into shout­ing matches with the irate and ill-informed. I will only par­tic­i­pate in civilised, ratio­nal debates on the subject.

And here’s a bit of back­ground on me, which you may quote from at will:

“The northlon­don­hippy is the biggest inter­net celebrity that you’ve never heard of, until now. He’s media pro­fes­sional by trade and has been blog­ging under this name for over 3 years.

His blog, www.northlondonhippy.com cov­ers all aspects of his life, but con­cen­trates on the hippy’s long-time love affair with cannabis. The hippy is part philoso­pher, part media critic and a keen observer of society.

As the debate over cannabis heats up, the hippy has decided to put him­self for­ward as the voice of respectable, decent peo­ple who hap­pen to smoke cannabis and don’t believe they deserve to be crim­i­nalised for it.”

For more infor­ma­tion about me; and my per­sonal views, please feel free to dig deeper into this site. It’s all there, if you look hard enough.

I think I might put out an actual, old-style press release, mak­ing this offer and I will tar­get the fol­low­ing media outlets:

- The Guardian news­pa­per
– The Observer news­pa­per
– The Inde­pen­dent news­pa­per
– The Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day
– The Times news­pa­per
– The Sun­day Times news­pa­per
– LBC Talk Radio
– BBC Radio FiveLive

I think that’s a rea­son­able start. I’m seri­ous, I’ll be send­ing out a short press release to them all, offer­ing my ser­vices and cre­den­tials. I want to rep­re­sent you, my fel­low cannabis-smokers. Though we must exist in the shad­ows, we don’t need to have our views go unno­ticed and unheard any more.

If you would like to add your voice to my cam­paign, please feel free to email me. I’ll be very happy to post your views, here on my site.

And my offer to all of these media out­lets is gen­uine and sin­cere. If you strive to pro­vide bal­ance, then both sides of the argu­ment deserve to be heard. I’m mak­ing it that much eas­ier for you to accom­plish this goal.

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