Jessica, who is now in her late 20s, has been smoking marijuana since she was 19. She describes cannabis as a “creative drug” and a refreshing and mind-opening experience. She strongly supports drug legalization, but she herself consumes the drug quite rarely nowadays.

“I only smoke a little now because I discovered I have a heart condition and I tend to get heart pains when I smoke too much,” she stated.

Jessica, who urged to keep her last name at bay, is one among the 16 long term users of cannabis whose portraits are going to be featured in an exhibition next month at a Sydney gallery.

Simon Bernhardt Gateway is about to feature portraits of eight women and eight men, which includes a teacher, the father of a young kid, a computer programmer and all of them were photographed while using cannabis except for the father, who preferred smoking tobacco during the shoot.

The exhibition, which is going to open at the Black Eye Gallery in Darlinghurst next month has an aim to bubble out the stereotypes about cannabis users, while trying to figure out if the widely used drug is some sort of a passage to other illegal drugs.
“I want to break the stereotypical stoner tag that these people are hippie losers living on their parents’ lounge,” Bernhardt says.

He performed the shoot in his studio in Sydney in the month of January and also interviewed his subjects about their drug usage and also asked them if they hid this habit of theirs from their family and colleagues.

Simon said that few people were quite open about their cannabis use and were not worried about being judged. All his subjects were in favor of cannabis legalization.
Jessica who is just the subject 16 in his exhibition and the accompanying book said that her friends and family are very much aware of her cannabis use, but she opts not to “flaunt” this habit of hers among her colleagues.

Also she did confess of trying other illicit drugs as well: “I have tried other harder drugs but I do not think that cannabis was the gateway. Some of these harder drugs I had already tried prior to experimenting with cannabis. I think maybe every drug can be a gateway to try other drugs, not only specifically cannabis.”

Jan Copeland, the Director of the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre, says that in the past there has been really vigorous debate about cannabis being the very first move towards other illicit drug consumption, given the majority of the injecting drug users who used cannabis before being injected for the first time.