Waatea News Column: Armed Police & Cannabis prohibition – 2 examples of bias against Maori

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The stats when it comes to Māori cannabis convictions and shootings by armed Police make for sobering reading.

66% of All New Zealander’s shot in the decade between 2009 and 2019 have been Māori or Pacifica and Māori are four times more likely to get a conviction for cannabis than Pakeha are.

Arming Police and continuing with cannabis prohibition have enormous impacts on Māori and the impacts are all negative and seeing as social policy must be for the social good, shooting more Māori and punishing them harsher for cannabis clearly flies in the face of good social policy values.

We can not discuss arming Police and continuing with cannabis prohibition without acknowledging the deeply discriminatory outcomes of that policy on Māori. We must see leadership from Māori Politicians on this yet all we get from Paula Bennet and Simon Bridges is a continuation of the existing status quo that is so damaging.

The armed police trial finishes in 5 months and next year we get to vote on the cannabis referendum, people wanting better more equitable outcomes will be scrutinising both results closely.

First published on Waatea News.

3 COMMENTS

  1. And our NZ Police are rolling out a new programme when the last failed but in the mean time it is business as usual this is a fucken joke they need to change there entire culture before they roll out anything. We know the police have a bullying culture of there own so why would we trust them to roll out another programme. Just another waste of money with the wrong people again, when are we going to learn in our country and what will it take?

    • Nz must show the way for the world
      policies should be made for the people and not for corporate or globalist world order trends.
      Nz is being lead by the nose to
      total big brother state and slaves to the system
      break the trend.
      I am one with Nz
      We are one with the world

  2. My friend is a former policeman. He told me if a Pakeha and Maori had cannabis it was the Maori who would be arrested.

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