I've been off visiting my Norwegian relations (and eating lots of fish and brown cheese) the past few weeks, so am only catching up with Bong Blotter-worthy events just now. As it happens, the most remarkable (that's another way of saying least depressing) bit of marijuana news just happens to come from northern Europe.
To wit: activists in Gottingen, Germany have planted countless marijuana seeds all over town to protest that country's ban on marijuana.
]
According to Der Spiegel, the mass weed planting is the work of a group called “A Few Anonymous Flower Children,” and began in early June. Now, the fruits of their labor, the magazine reports, is “sprouting up in parks, planting boxes, and flower gardens across the city.”
City authorities are reportedly doing their best to tear up the plants, but the group is claiming a certain victory in at least showing people exactly what it is that the government is so afraid of allowing people to consume.
“We can't set eyes on this useful and beautiful plant because it's absolutely forbidden in Germany to grow it,” the group argued in a letter explaining its motive was to fight against the “demonization” of marijuana. Appropriately enough, the action was supported by Germany's Green Party, which told Spiegel that a similar action took place in the city last year but on a much smaller scale.
Given the dismal state of California's ongoing experiment with legalizing medical marijuana, maybe it's time Orange County tried something similar. The possibilities are tantalizing: mass marijuana planting could even finally provide a use for Orange County's so-called Great Park.
Given that most of OC's already paved over, where else would make an ideal location for a spontaneous pot grow?
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).