Why I’d Vote Cannabis Again

I voted for the Marijuana Party as a teenager. Here’s why I still would.

I’ve been voting for the Marijuana Party, or whatever version of it happened to appear on the ballot, since I was old enough to vote.

Back then, it felt half cheeky, half defiant. You’re young, you see a list of parties that look identical in spirit, and you think, surely there’s something better than this. Sometimes voting is less about belief and more about protest.

At the time, politics felt like a closed loop. Liberal. Labor. Democrats. Independents. Same arguments, different suits. When something unusual popped up on the ballot, it stood out like a sign in a sea of logos.

I remember one year the Jedi Council appeared (or did I write that on the ballot paper?), and of course I voted for them, without a single thought about where that vote actually went. It felt harmless. A shrug in pencil.

Not long after, the Marijuana Party appeared. To a young bloke, that felt oddly appropriate. You’d have to be in a slightly altered state to even attempt changing how people think, right? At the time, that logic felt clever. Looking back, it was naïve, but not entirely wrong.

Big shifts rarely come from sober, risk-averse thinking.

Fast forward to today. I’m in Kingscote on Kangaroo Island, and I spot a Legalise Cannabis van parked in town. Proper signage. A QR code. And a local candidate standing for South Australia, not as a novelty, but as a serious advocate.

Suddenly, that long trail of “joke votes” doesn’t feel so throwaway.

Yet I really should make this clear: I’ve never sat around smoking joints. I know the smell. I know the effect. And in my case, it’s not about getting high. It’s about quiet serenity. When cannabis has been in the air around me, my tinnitus eases. The internal noise drops away. My thoughts line up instead of crashing into each other. I feel calmer, clearer, and more in control. That matters.

For some of us, cannabis isn’t an escape. It’s a stabiliser.

Treating it purely as a criminal issue keeps it expensive, stigmatised, and trapped in a black market that helps no one. Legalisation, handled properly, makes it safer, more accessible, and less loaded with shame. Places like California have already shown that regulation doesn’t mean chaos.

So yes, I’ll vote for legalisation again.
Not as a gag. Not as a protest.

But because sometimes the ideas you back early, clumsily, even jokingly, turn out to be the ones that finally make sense. Maybe all those votes from years ago are part of why this conversation is now being taken seriously.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s how change actually works.