What on earth is this?
Simon Bridges against cannabis legalisation, worries about signal it would send
National Party leader Simon Bridges is not in favour of reforming cannabis and euthanasia laws after the government revealed it was aiming to have referendums on both issues, as well as electoral reform in this term.
National’s leader told Breakfast both cannabis and euthanasia were conscious votes for MPs, but he was wary to voting in favour of cannabis legalisation, having seen the impact marijuana use has had on many.
…ok, before I want to go to town here, let’s note how utterly unacceptable it is for the Leader of the Opposition to not have firm and well educated position on each of these issues. Here he is with a chance to lead the agenda on the referendum issues of the day and what does have to say?
Nothing more than ‘sanctity of life’ meaningless mumbles on Euthanasia.
Nothing on MMP reform.
Loads of bollocks on cannabis reform.
How woeful is that as a Leader?
“I’m loathe (to vote in favour of legalisation) simply because I think it’s about the signal that it sends,” he said.
The signal decriminalising cannabis and making it a legal market would send is one to organised crime that their days of monopoly profits are at an end and many New Zealander’ forced to become criminals would no longer be criminals.
That’s a great signal!
Who finds fault with that signal?
Who prefers the status quo and in fact wants to go further by cracking down on synthetics…
Mr Bridges did want changes made when it came to synthetics, saying a crackdown on suppliers was needed.
“You look at synthetics, 45 people, probably more than that actually, have died in the last year, this is I think you can say an epidemic,” he said.
“You’ve seen something like 70 kids hospitalised from, maybe, you know, just using a spoon or something that their parents have been using these drugs on.
…the madness of course about synthetics is that we wouldn’t have a problem if the Government hadn’t forced it underground in the first place, and actually just legalised cannabis…
“Crack down on suppliers, at the moment it’s not treated seriously enough, it should be treated like at least a class B drug, that’s a maximum sentence of 14 years maximum because it is killing people.”
…he wants to create harsher laws while doing nothing about the current failure??
He wants to actively make the environment worse by MORE war on drugs crap?
That’s the position of the Leader of the National Party. More social damage, more prison time, more violence and stress and profit motive for organised crime?
How utterly immoral, to push social policy that is pointlessly counterproductive just so he can scratch his social conservative itch with the voters.
He goes on…
“I’ve seen the devastation and the debilitation in communities and I think there is a real mental health issue (around cannabis use).”
…ummmm, a big part of that was how you underfunded mental health services for 9 years and forced synthetics under ground. Blaming an outcome from failed draconian welfare policy combined with social service underfunding that your Party made is like an arsonist blaming his matches for the current fire.
The taxation revenue raised by legalising cannabis could easily fund rehabilitation programmes far better than they are currently funded and a fixed percentage of cannabis taxation should be earmarked for rehabilitation services of all types of drug addiction.
Legalising the market would undermine organised crime, bring hundreds of thousands out of the black market while providing taxation revenue and massive social cost savings in Prisons, Hospitals, Police and the Justice system.
There is a far better option right in front of us that reason demands is the right social policy to take, and what does Simon Bridges opt for? More counterproductive options to make the current appalling situation even worse than it is right now just to satisfy his social conservative bias.
Fucking neato.
If you want to be on the wrong side of history Simon, so be it, but for a Leader who is barely hanging on, you’re running out of moments to actually step up for something.
Finally, let’s just kick this bullshit myth that every bloody Politician scrambling to justify the current farce that is cannabis prohibition uses to justify the status quo…
The punishments for those caught in possession was minor anyway, Mr Bridges said.
“So, the truth is today, if we’re honest about it, if you’re caught in possession of a joint, you’re not going to be dealt with severely by the system if you like but I do worry about the signal it sends,” he said.
…this just isn’t true. They’ve been using this bullshit excuse for as long as I can remember first hearing about the cannabis debate decades ago.
Two and a half thousand New Zealanders under 25 are convicted annually of cannabis possession and as many as 15000 arrests a year. The average time in prison for possession? 49 days.
This is not minor stuff, this is a kick in the guts beat down within a police force that is highly subjective when it comes to brown kids getting arrested and prosecuted for drugs.
Simon Bridges had a chance to show some real Leadership today.
He failed miserably.
Don Brash said we were wasting 14 millions dollars a year on cannabis policing and its not working but we still keep doing the same, why?
We now how bigger and worse things to worry about like synthetics but progress seems to be far too slow on addressing the synthetic problems despite many deaths.
All bloody true that is.
Definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result every time.
Bill Hicks, Was pot gods mistake.
https://youtu.be/TEF7Di_nkRk
So Bridges wants more people put in prison for using drugs?
How many billions of dollars will be spend on building more prisons to house the thousands more incarcerated?
The lack of insight and imagination from Bridges is deeply troubling.
The policy of not smoking in cars is not good for Maori it has the potential for more Maori to end up in prison or our discriminative racist court system. Far better to spend money on good health promotion and education cause the hard core selfish people that smoke in their cars with their children in the car will still do it no matter what. And unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it. I am sure we can come up with a better strategy as that one stinks and I can see all the problems we are going to have enforcing it.
If his pollsters tell him it’s an issue he can use to his advantage then of course he will. And the criminal records, wastage etc etc – who cares, it’s about getting elected.
You get what you vote for .. plenty of parties out there who want to legalize; ALCP, TOP, The Greens, Act, etc.
It’s like the City Council here in Christchurch .. everybody complains about their ridiculous spending and decisions, yet come election time they keep voting the same folks back in!
Unfortunately a large portion of Kiwis don’t participate in democracy so are ruled by inferiors, incompetent individuals and the self serving.
To quote Benjamin Franklin,
“Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner. Liberty is a well armed sheep protesting the vote”
‘conscious votes’?
Perhaps a little too much to expect all votes in Parliament to be ‘conscious votes’…
Simple Simon is a leaderless soldier. A good sergeant but definitely not officer material.
this labour govt is encouraging us to stop smoking cigarettes but to curry favour with the Greens want to allow smoking mind altering drugs.There is no cheap way to measure how impared a person is if involved in an accident on the road or at work and there will most likely be an increase in acc and insurance cost becourse of this
By that logic alcohol should be banned! Cannabis doesn’t have to be smoked either, it can be vaped and baked. Also extracts from cannabis can obviously be used to create medical grade medicines.
I’d rather work with a ‘stoned’ person than a ‘drunk’ person HANDS DOWN, any day of the week~!!!
Considering NZ’s high rate of cannabis usage, when was the last time you read about someone smoking weed and causing a fatal road accident? .. I wouldn’t say cannabis improves driving, but studies have provided evidence which could be used to make that argument.
Trevor, where on earth did you get that idea from? It is so dumb and uneducated. The current Government do not want nor encourage smoking mind altering drugs, quite the contrary.
I agree with Zack 100%. I too would rather work with a stoned person than a drunk person. Did you know – you obviously don’t but I will say this anyway – that the majority of violence in this country as well as deaths and injuries from car crashes is caused by alcohol abuse and there is a direct correlation between these statistics and ACC payouts and insurance costs.
Comments are closed.