Forget Uncle Shane Jones naked threatening of the Forestry Industry if they don’t give the Bonny Wee Prince of the Provinces votes for his dollops of Government largesse, there is something far more corrosive occurring over at NZ First, their promotion of death as a valid social policy…
NZ First halts festival drug-testing policy proposed by Labour
NZ First has put the brakes on a plan to legalise drug quality testing at music festivals this summer, in its latest move blocking policies proposed by Labour.
Police Minister Stuart Nash this year threw his backing behind a law change to allow testing of pills at public events around the country, after police found illegal drugs containing traces of a pesticide at the Rhythm and Vines festival in Gisborne.
The tests help those planning to take pills check if they’re safe and contain what they’re meant to. Testing has been carried out by volunteers for about four years at some gatherings on substances such as MDMA, LSD and cocaine.
The legal situation was currently a grey area for those involved in the testing, Nash said.
But NZ First law and order spokesman Darroch Ball said his party was opposing the policy after discussions.
“We’re going down a very, very slippery slope when we’ve got illegal drugs being tested in green safe-zones,” he said.
“This is a party drug, this is for recreational fun times and young people are making that conscious decision to take those illegal, dangerous drugs. What these pill-testing stations do is totally absolves all of those young people from taking personal responsibility for their decisions.”
…whoa. What?
So NZ First’s position is that they won’t support drug testing stations at festivals because that “absolves all of those young people from taking personal responsibility for their decisions”… because death is a totally legitimate ‘I told you so’ lesson for young people right?
Where the hell do these weirdo puritans get off stopping a process that will save lives and reduce harm just because they want young people to suffer from poor decisions?
So they wouldn’t bother helping in car crashes where the passengers aren’t wearing a seatbelt?
They wouldn’t lift a finger if you accidentally burn down your house because you started frying some food and fell asleep drunk?
NZ First wouldn’t do anything to make the world safer because you made your bed and now you can lie in it old fashioned banjo twanging values eh?
This mentality, that young people should suffer if they take some ecstasy shows a bewildering appreciation of how lovely MDMA is and what a spiteful Political Party they really are.
Labour should like to some in the National Party who at least will be rational about this and leave NZ First to the primordial ethics pit they have become bogged down in.
It is obvious that the only reason behind any NZFIRST policy is if they can get votes out of it . Winston used to talk of not wanting any baubles of office but now they see themselves slide back into obscurit. Shane with the forestry Ron Marks with the veterans and armed forces Tracy Martin the elderly. They seem to have no shame and I only hope National do not give them any cause to think we would go into partnership with them . TheI only use at moment is they are putting a brake on the Greens. Let’s hope the country can hold out for another year before sanity rules again.
Agree with NZ First on this one. Drug testing has traditionally been carried out with controlled trials under controlled conditions. Given the proliferation of some scary and dangerous party drugs, this is quite important.
The primary purpose of party drugs is not to save lives, it’s to make money by selling legal highs. It would be quite easy for unscrupulous drug vendors to circumvent or fiddle products at official in situ testing, and if illegal drugs are also tested, then this could be seen as officialdom sanctioning, and thereby possibly encouraging something illegal, which could be seen as irresponsible, and legally compromising. It’s by no means a black and white situation.
Having said that, I would still help out at an accident or drunken frying pan fire, and want no-one to die – except maybe pedophiles.
Kia ora Martyn
Drug testing is quality assurance. As such it makes for market efficiency in the illicit drug trade, and is welcomed by “responsible” illicit drug manufacturers and suppliers as well as their customers.
Meanwhile, those who seek to suppress the illicit drug trade will act against all points in the supply chain – manufacture, quality control, wholesale distribution, quality assurance and retail sales.
Those engaged in illicit drug quality assurance would normally be subject to criminal penalty for their part in the trade, but in New Zealand at the present moment, where the regime is divided on the merits of continuing to proscribe drugs or making them freely available, quality assurance falls into what is called a “gray area”.
In fact, as the New Zealand state enters the third (multi-cultural) phase of colonization the entire market between retail suppliers and consumers, including quality assurance, has been made a “gray area”, and there is a strong move to make that end of the market, and ultimately the entire market, a lawful form of commerce.
In the first phase of colonization, when the Crown coveted the land, the Crown itself was the primary promoter and supplier ,of addictive drugs such as rum and tobacco.
When those drugs had served their designated purpose of weakening and impoverishing native society, the Crown entered upon the second phase of colonization, in which indigenous labour was required to work the confiscated land. During this phase, the drugs which detracted from labour productivity, in particular liquor along with all the illicit drugs, were either closely regulated or prohibited. (Opinion was divided over tobacco, which some in the regime considered a means to enhance productivity, rather than a burden upon it).
Now in the third phase of colonization, some (though not all) elements of the state consider that indigenous labour is no longer necessary to the success of the colonial economy, that migrant workers can be cheaply and easily used to fill gaps in the labour force, and that indigenous workers are safer when addicted to drugs than when on the streets confronting the regime.
So that is why the regime moved from promotion of drugs to prohibition and is now slowly moving back towards legalisation.
As far as we are concerned, it makes little difference. All drugs, including alcohol and tobacco will continue to be banned from areas such as the freedom village at Ihumaatao, and most if not all marae throughout the motu which are within the nationalist jurisdiction. That is because our own interests remain diametrically opposed to those of the Crown.
NZ First’s economics are not neoliberal economics and that is a good thing but their desperation to survive the next election is causing them to tap into some really stupid stuff in an attempt to motivate voters. I guess we’ve only got ourselves to blame if the only neo-liberal party in parliament has to resort to this sort of thing to get attention
Winston’s policy has always been: Winston First.
List of used and abused mates in the House and hopefuls is to long to scribe here.
But survival policies are same old same old:
Pander to the paranoid and pathetic
The earth is flat
Xenophobia
Gold card or pension protection
Anti abortion
Anti dope
Pro John Wayne and Condalessa
Bring back Buck
Chevas Regal double on the rocks
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