In daring fashion, activists projected pro-marijuana art onto Sydney’s Opera House and Harbour Bridge to celebrate 4/20. 

For many, 4/20 (April 20th) is yet another day to celebrate the drug marijuana, weed, cannabis, pot – choose your go-to term – and spark up. As you’ve likely witnessed, marijuana has recently experienced international reform, namely, across multiple states in the US – “I get my weed from California“.

In Australia though, the drug remains illegal except in the nation’s capital, where Canberrans can possess up to 50gm of dried cannabis. Despite reportedly over 40% of Australians wanting the drug legalized, (a percentage that has doubled since 2013), weed remains legally inaccessible for the majority of Aussies who may want it.

That’s why the activists decided to illuminate a marijuana leaf onto the Harbour Bridge, and “who are we hurting?” onto the Opera House sails. “We also want to educate the Australian taxpayer on the benefits of fully legalising Cannabis in Australia, and on the huge amounts of money that will flow into the coffers of the Australian government for use in health care, schools, and roads, as currently the profits are being made by private entities and organized crime,” commented William Stolk, a member of the activist group.

Another key reason behind the push to legalise cannabis came from one of the founding activists, Alec Zammit, who argues that Aussies using the drug medicinally cannot afford the government’s current rates: “We need to implement processes to grow our own [marijuana] so as to aid lower-income patients that are unable to afford the current process”.

Two of the activists were held in remand for 10 hours after and subsequently issued court attendance notices for ‘Distribute etc advertisement etc on Opera House premises’.

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