Nimbin - hippy capital of Australia

Photo from Google Images. Taken during Mardi Grass festival. Police checking people outside the 'Bringabong' shop with it's window display of the giant golden bong which is a permanent fixture.

According to the latest Nimbin High Times newspaper, Nimbin was recently named as one of the top 10 hippy sites in the world. It was up there with Kathmandu and Amsterdam. Also in this week's Echo, another freebie newspaper (which actually has much better quality reporting than the local mainstream rag, The Northern Star), a Lismore councillor failed in his motion to install 'drug-free zone' signs on the main street of Nimbin (ala the alcohol-free zone signs you see around the place). Most of the other councillors derided such a move as being, well, just silly. 'Because there is drug-related activity on lots of streets in lots of places - why single Nimbin out?' they cried.
Reasonable point but, to date, I haven't been asked if I wanted to buy weed/smack/cake/cookies/e/k/speed/amphetamines/ice in Lismore or Kyogle or Casino or Bangalow or Byron. But I do in Nimbin. Pretty much every time I visit.
Now, just for the record..as long as tobacco and alcohol are legal then I simply can't wear the illogic of allowing some drugs that cause considerable personal and community harm and not allowing others. I'm pro decriminalisation of rec drugs. So, my rant here is not with the actual use of recreational drugs.
My rant is about inconsistent application of the law. Last time I looked, Nimbin was still part of Australia. Where you have open selling of drugs on streets in pretty well every other part of Australia you get some police activity to mark the fact that well this is just not appropriate behaviour - indeed it is illegal. But not much sustained action takes place in Nimbin.
There's some sad looking smack-addicted characters that sell the drugs and not a few young guys, some who look younger than 15. I wonder whether lots of Nimbin kids become 'Saffy's' (drug-intolerant daughter of Ab Fab's Edina) and eschew drugs as teenagers?
But much of Nimbin's tourism (which by the way seems to be thriving) is drug-related. It's very interesting from someone who is interested in tourism as a thing to study. Loads of backpackers come up each day from Byron in minibuses with tour companies like 'Psychodelic tours' or 'Sky-high tours' to buy some dope off the lads (and ladies) on the street.
But the alternative view to mine, which was expressed by a female estate agent when she was showing me a couple of houses in Nimbin was that 'well everywhere has its drug problems....its just that ours is out in the open'. She has a point.