There are a lot of ways to make a living in Australia that don't involve illegal drugs. It's not like he's in some destroyed village in Afghanistan, or a rebel-held town in Colombia where opium or coke farming is the difference between food on the table and starvation. He's in an affluent, first world country, in a major city. And MDMA being a synthetic, manufactured substance takes out the other argument that can be made regarding marijuana, mushrooms etc.. He's also not sitting in jail 'for life'. He's sitting in jail for four and a half years, which basically means that if he behaves himself he'll be there for three, tops. Anyway, what countries next to Australia have legalised MDMA?
While you may feel that Bobridge
shouldn't be a criminal, that's how you should frame it. Not that he
isn't a criminal, because he is. It's not like he was showing civil disobedience because of a moral crusade against perceived unfair drug laws, because his motive was not to draw attention to a perceived unfair law but to make money, and
the majority of Australians are against the legalization of ecstasy anyway. As you can see from that, the study shows that while half of Australians felt ecstasy should be 'decriminalized', only 6,2% thought it should be 'legalized'. Also, a key factor was that support for decriminalization of the drug was limited to possession of quantities for personal consumption only, and not support for the decriminalization of sale or supply.
Anyway, I don't really want to get bogged down in the minutiae of drug laws, because I feel a lot of your points on the subject are fair. I'm just arguing the semantics, pointing out that it's nonsense to say that Bobridge is not a criminal, because he was neither unaware that he was breaking the law, nor is there any great moral purpose to his actions. He's just a drug dealer, and nothing more, and for that he's committed the crime - and now he's, quite rightly, doing the time.
Proffate is the one that invoked Godwin's Law, suggesting that imprisoning drug dealers is equivalent to pardoning Nazi camp guards because of following the law at the time, because they don't like the current drug laws, which is how the sliding scale of civil disobedience discussion came about.