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Home Grown: The Strange and Savage Times of the Australasian Weed

The 1970s newspaper Australasian Weed remains a remarkable chronicle of a very different time when a flourishing counter-culture created the space for a regular pro-drug publication at the edge of legality. Content analysis of the Weed and associated publications reveals an expected preoccupation with legalisation campaigns, instructional material and zany antics but a more surprising interest in detailed investigations of the legal process, the history and literature of drugs and health and safety issues. While influenced by the US underground press and drug writers like Hunter S. Thompson, the Weed was nevertheless in the Australian tradition of larrikin, alternative press with a crusading agenda and a confrontational approach to authority. The Weed's stormy career and eventual demise point clearly to the limits of a free press in Australia and raise questions about the efficacy of government drug education programs.