Smoke without fire
New Zealand Listener|May 28 - June 3, 2022
In his 1995 memoir In Harm's Way, the British war correspondent Martin Bell wrote memorably that "People blithely imagine that journalists are where the news is.
RUSSELL BROWN
Smoke without fire

"You're doing it all wrong. Everyone knows the way to a man's heart is through his stomach."

Alas, not so; the news is where the journalists are." It might also equally be said that sometimes the crime is where the police are.

At the 30th annual J Day cannabis festival in Auckland's Albert Park, the police were not present. As far as I can tell, they have not bothered since 2000, when they were obliged to arrest a 24-year-old man who offered them a joint. "That's going a bit far," the arresting officer told a journalist at the time. In their absence this year, the crimes of possessing, using and supplying cannabis might as well not have existed.

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