Smoke without fire

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

"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.