Groan.
This move to make synthetic cannabis Class A is just so stupid.
Here is what will happen the second you increase the penalty.
It will make the drug jump in price.
Far heavier criminal organisations will step in to take over industry as profit margins rise.
Police will over step their powers, end up arresting a whole bunch of addicts who need help and not jail and make the situation worse.
The madness that the Government are going to make a bad situation that they themselves have created even worse is just the most inane bulshit.
The Parliament legalised synthetics, didn’t have the courage to push through the testing regimes that would be acceptable, this created a wild west situation with no safety standards being enforced, public backlash was enormous, Parliament revoked legalisation and sent the industry underground where it is killing 50 people a year.
And now the Government want to make this situation worse by increasing penalties.
The cherry on this shit cake is that we wouldn’t have this bloody problem if cannabis was legal!!!
We really are very stupid as a country sometimes.
We get to flog these politicians with the cannabis reform referendum due next year.
NOPE, absolutely essential step!
And the conservative in me says costly step as well.
No, power to the police, crack down and deal to them.
The thing about the word synthetics is you can derive precursors from almost anything and get high.
I am an anarchist and I don’t give a shit about the law, I do what I see fit, drugs, alcohol or else, ffs.
Our police cant even deal with the meth epidemic how do you expect them to deal with synthetics
Tongue in cheek, ya know?!
This is a bad move we might as well build the mega prison if we are going to do this and fill it with more of our Maori whanau.
How are they going to reduce Maori incarceration rates with this law in fact it will do the opposite.
Its the people manufacturing this drug that are the main culprits and it is putting people in prison with drug addictions the only and best way to solve this problem.
Where is the counselling, rehab and support networks we don’t have nearly enough and we have known this for some time.
Why isn’t more money from drug crimes going into helping these people instead of looking to lock more people up. Do we lock up our alcoholics and we have many in our country causing strive.
Who made legal synthetic drugs available (peter dunny) this started an epidemic this is his legacy he should be ashamed.
Why have so many people died and yet very little action is happening.
The parents of kids who have died after using the synthetic stuff should take collective action and sue the government for millions
…as should the relatives of loved ones who were denied legal access to real home grown cannabis …and who died of epilepsy …or old age
ailments and were killed off by doctors using fentanyl and other opioids
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/83570824/princes-death-drug-prescribed-to-new-zealands-elderly
More than this, it will see people driven back to the real stuff, push up the price, encouraging the heavies to expand, and create exactly the climate of repression that certain people are wanting just as we are getting baby steps in cannabis law reform.
So having been let loose by the NACTs to kill scores of people, synthetics becomes the stalking horse to clamp down further on natural weed against the global trend to legalisation.
Revving up the punishment for synthetics tells us that this Coalition Govt is more about repression than liberation of the people. We now have another excuse for tougher police surveillance and a further criminalisation of ordinary kiwis who are using a natural, and harmless herb.
As for its impact on medical cannabis is it exactly what big pharma and big booze and investors want to commodify cannabis and clamp down on self-growers as infringing on their privatising of common property in nature.
Can somebody organise an All-Parliamentary Group tour to Portugal to see how much success they’ve had with their drug decriminalisation programme please?
And they can stop off in Colorado and Canada on the way home to find out about how to run legal cannabis sales with their requisite huge tax revenues being used to fund schools, hospitals and alcohol and drug education programmes, rather than providing enormous revenue for the gangs.
But we are a kind society though Martyn, kindly giving our water away, kindly going through your electronic devices, kindly imprisoning addicts.
So kind.
People need to start voting for ALCP and TOP.
Is @ MARC on something, do you think…?
Anyhoo.
I agree with you entirely @ MB.
And I’d go so far as to suggest that making yet another hideous chemical designed you get the consumer fucked up,( Because reality is worse than a drug induced near-death, and in some cases, actual-death experience?) is someone else’s profit margin.
Fear peddling is a great psychological mechanism to get people to buy instant gratification junk and/or to control, and make people feel powerless, thus compliant. Fake THC is another weapon in the arsenal the New World Order will use against a confused and compliant population because they can argue that tougher ‘regulations’ are therefore required to keep us in line. It is, of course, all bullshit and will only appeal to the terminally stupid.
The ONLY way to stop that happening is to decriminalise ALL drugs immediately.
The God bothering, flat earther’s who believe dinosaur bones were put here by the Devil about seven thousand years ago to confuse True Believer Creationists will have never heard of Portugal, and if they have? They’ll believe Portugal was put here by the Devil about seven thousand years ago to confuse True Believer Creationists.
Repeat until believed.
Legalising actual Pot will be a slow down the mechanism, for sure. But when you have a small rich country like ours being parasitised by Big Fat Rich People with the help of our very own tax systems, tax systems they’ve infected with their agendas. And as we lucky few are able to enjoy an evening out on the town but must walk past wretched other people living in the gutters we’ll always have substance abuse. Taking plasti-toxins into our bodies to get high to side step, just for a moment, the hideous and banal slog that’s poverty and an absence of hope is no more nor less than slow motion suicide.
I personally know two GP’s, an orthopaedic surgeon, a consultant pathologist, an immigration lawyer, a Canterbury Law Professor, a district court judge, a court official and two street level cops who all agree. All recreational drugs should be a medical health issue. Not a criminal justice issue.
So. What the fuck? We have to endure the stupidity of limelight seeking pop star politicians who’s very own brain farts are the only advice they think is best?
Does that not reflect badly upon the collective ‘Us’ for allowing their ignorance and greed to influence our lives?
Legalizing natural cannabis is the only way to stamp out synthetic cannabis.
This is totally the opposite of what should happen. Legalise safe cannabis, earn huge amounts of tax for the benefit of the communities, drive these deadly synthetics off the market and drive all the black market dealers out of business and the crime that goes with it. It has happened in other countries and States. Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, plus an ever increasing number of US states. Why do we not learn from existing examples, or do we go on being a backward thinking country forever!
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