Isn’t it odd?
We are having two referendums, one that seeks the Right to die without pain and another that seeks the right to smoke cannabis to not feel pain.
We will allow you to commit suicide to end a life of pain, but not smoke a joint to alleviate the pain that makes you want to die?
This referendum overload highlights the existential confusion of NZ.
The Euthanasia referendum will trigger the adoption of the law because David Seymour had the courage of his convictions and crafted the law inside Parliament, where as the cannabis referendum triggers nothing because Parliament has been too cowardly to write the legislation.
The individual is supposedly adult enough to choose to die, but not adult enough to choose cannabis.
We are a confused, uptight society and these two referendums manage to highlight that.
Personal freedom in NZ has the low imagination horizon of private property rights. My body, my personal property, so it is up to me to end that life if I’m suffering. That freedom can not be extended to cannabis use however because the freedom to be stoned is freedom from a coercive state, and property right fetishists demand a strong state to protect their precious property.
Our collective sense of personal freedom has all the sophistication of a garden variety settler nation culture that hasn’t settled.
I hope these dimwitted politicians realise that if they dont get the cannabis laws right everybody will just carry on as they are now and they achieve nothing. If we are having a referendum is should be binding, otherwise its just nothing more than an election piece where afterwards politicians can write the rules as they wish because they have a ‘mandate’ but since there is no direction they can do whatever they bloody feel like.
See-more said last week that ‘It is nobody business if a person chooses to end their life’ does that mean it also nobodies business if a women chooses to have an abortion and how come he has made this his business and its still in the crimes act. Seems we have double standards on some issues in our country.
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