2013 International Drug Policy Cannabis Symposium

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It’s been 20 years since the first Drug Foundation Cannabis symposium and let’s be honest, we’ve gone backwards on cannabis prohibition. It’s embarrassing that NZ is now lagging behind America in terms of cannabis and yet no where on the political horizon is cannabis reform making any sort of revival, despite the over 70% support for reform from The Vote show on cannabis.

NZ has made massive strides in regulating the legal high industry, but cannabis remains the no go issue akin to Israel illegally occupying Palestine or not blaming parents for children living in poverty. The Drug Foundation are dependent upon the government for its funding so it’s always pulled its punches on cannabis, but as NZ falls further and further behind the rest of the world, someone has to force the issue, so I am very much looking forward to going to tomorrows symposium to see where the state of the debate now stands.

We know cannabis is far less harmful than booze and tobacco, we know it allows the Police force vast amounts of power to invade our personal lives, we know it costs us hundreds of millions to imprison and police, we know it empowers organized crime, we know it punishes people for a victimless crime and we know most political parties are simply too frightened to show any leadership.

While no deaths have ever been directly caused by marijuana, the U.S. has executed 322 people for using and dealing it since 1982.

This war on drugs is a war on reason and intelligent debate. How have we managed to become so warped as a society with this prohibitionist scumbaggery?

5 COMMENTS

  1. Labour? This is where you step up and do the right thing…
    Are you going to decriminalise this and put the money into education and rehabilitation? Or is it still the same old from you lot?

    Sure, it isn’t the first thing we need sorted in this country, but it is a bone you can throw to the younger generations, since it looks like you are sticking with the neoliberalised education system.
    Seriously, do you Tony Blair wannabes even know people under 40 exist?

  2. Bomber, many thanks for standing up publicly as an anti-prohibitionist. We need more people to do this, and hopefully the Labour and Greens policy committees are paying attention to the points you raise.

    “…we know [prohibition] empowers organized crime…”

    A friend of mine who lives on the fringes of the outlaw militia culture in a small town once explained to me exactly how it does this. Cannabis can be grown with very little capital input, and under prohibition, returns large wads of cash from multiple sources. This cash is then invested in obtaining the really addictive illegal drugs like Heroin, Cocaine, and Speed/ P, which are quite expensive to produce or need large wads of cash at one time to import in bulk.

    In other words, the illegality of cannabis provides organised crime groups with an inexpensive way to pull together fresh investment capital after busts, rip-offs etc. Create a legal R18 market for cannabis (and other drugs like LSD and MDMA which according to most experts are less dangerous than alcohol), and you collapse a large chunk of the business model which keeps street pushers selling the more dangerous drugs. Put the remaining addicts on prescription in voluntary treatment programs like those currently prescribing methodone, and the personal and social harms related to drug abuse mostly disappear, as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition spokespeople have been saying for decades.

    Let’s make it happen here.

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