MEDIA WATCH: Labour’s cannabis cowardice & middle class party pill hypocrisy a terrible indictment for public policy 

Tuari Potiki’s column in stuff highlighting the obscenity of Labour’s cowardice to do nothing on cannabis reform despite almost 50% of the country supporting reform is worth reading…

Create a new drugs law for the modern world

In 2019-20 there were more than 3000 convictions for minor drug offences and about 40 per cent of those were Māori. Māori carry the burden of our drug laws, receiving 49 per cent of all convictions for drug possession and use, and they are more likely to go to prison for low-level offences than non-Māori.

…the middle class party pill hypocrisy while ignoring the racist element of the canabis laws is a terrible indictment for public policy.

But it is so much more worse than that.

Jacinda’s decision to hide her vote matters but the argument put forward that the referendum was a 51% majority against reform is so disingenuous, it forces one to intellectually vomit.

What Jacinda is saying is that the tyranny of the majority rules. That if 51% wanted to criminalise the other 49%, as far as she is concerned, that’s ‘democracy’ working.

This isn’t democracy, it’s majoritarianism.

This referendum WASN’T binding, yet Jacinda has made it binding by refusing to actually do anything.

This is public policy done as poorly as possible.

The first decision of the second term of the Labour Government was choosing to keep a racist drug law.

Disgusting.

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