A man from Ulladulla, Australia, entered a cannabis plant into the tomato category of the town’s garden competition and won first place.
In September, a rumor spread online about an Australian man riding high after entering a cannabis plant in the tomato category of a local garden competition — and winning the first place prize.
For example, a Facebook page called The Local Situation posted the claim alongside an image purportedly showing the 83-year-old budding “tomato” gardener with his alleged gold medal cannabis plant (screenshotted). The caption says the man is from Ulladulla, a coastal town in southeast New South Wales.
“Panellist Marjorie Budd said the panel was so taken by its lush foliage and rich aroma that nobody asked where the tomatoes were,” the post adds.
The rumor spread elsewhere on Facebook (screenshotted).
Snopes readers searched our website to determine whether the story was rooted in truth or just blowing smoke.
In short, the claim is labeled as satire. The Local Situation Facebook page was the first to post the rumor. The account’s content is dedicated to fake stories based in Australia.
“Real local issues with a satirical edge,” the page’s account description reads (archived).
The person behind The Local Situation said in an email to Snopes that the story was satire and had no connection to any real stories.
“I regularly do Cannabis related satirical posts to raise awareness for medical cannabis driving rights and cannabis legalisation in Australia,” said the account owner.
Growing and consuming cannabis for recreational purposes is illegal in New South Wales and in most of Australia.
The image in The Local Situation’s post was also generated using artificial intelligence, according to OpenAI’s detector tool, which checks for an invisible AI watermark known as SynthID. (OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT; its detection tool can only tell if the image was created using the company’s own AI software.) The Local Situation also confirmed that the image was created using AI.
(OpenAI)
Other indicators the image is AI-generated include distorted faces in the background and unreadable text on name tags and labels.
Pangram, which is considered a leading AI text detection tool, determined that 100% of the text in the original post was also AI-generated. (Despite Pangram’s comparative reliability, it is worth noting these tools are still fallible.)
If this story were true, reputable local news media outlets would likely have reported on it. Searches using Google, DuckDuckGo and
These searches did, however, find several Australian news stories about men who were busted or arrested on charges of growing cannabis, who either claimed they were growing tomatoes or were actually reportedly growing tomatoes near the cannabis plants.
Snopes has debunked similar fictional rumors, such as a claim that Canada faced a major donut shortage shortly after the country legalized recreational marijuana use.
Since the effectiveness of satire is subjective, we use “originated as satire” or “labeled satire” ratings based on creators’ description of their work. It’s your call on whether you agree.
