Why are NZ Police confiscating legal medicine?
Police confiscate prescribed medicinal cannabis after pulling over driver
Chris Stuart was driving to the supermarket with his wife when he was pulled over by police, it ended with officers confiscating the prescription medication he takes for anxiety, cannabis.
When the two officers pulled over his vehicle on Memorial Dr, Alexandra, on Sunday afternoon, they told the 50-year-old Roxburgh man that his licence plate was “flagged” in their system.
When those same officers checked-out his vehicle they claimed they detected the smell of cannabis, giving them the power to undergo a warrantless search.
But that search netted only two items, a plastic bong made out of a Lipton Ice Tea bottle attached to a metal pipe purchased legally from a store only a few metres from where police pulled them over, and a bottle of prescription medicine.
The officers were interested in the bottle, containing prescribed medicinal cannabis containing cannabidiol (CBD) and Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which was labelled.
An attending officers asked Stuart, who last consumed the product the night before, why he needed the medicinal cannabis, and later phoned to check whether it was allowed.
Most Kiwis are not aware that legal medicinal dry leaf cannabis is now available in New Zealand, and that seems to include the NZ Police.
Medicinal cannabis is now perfectly legal, you need to contact a licensed medicinal cannabis Dr, have a consultation and you get a legal prescription to buy dried flower cannabis from them.
Prices range from $200 to $450 depending what you are getting.
It is legal.
The Police have no right to confiscate your legal medicinal cannabis.
It is obvious that the person in the news story was targeted and the Police are now testing what limits they have under the new regime.
The Police need to be reprimanded in this case, and immediately hand this patient back his medicine.
This country almost voted to legalise weed, the compromise was a bullshit medicinal cannabis regime that acts like a recreational market while masquerading as a medicinal one.
We all agreed this was the bullshit compromise and yet here are the cops once again trying to fuck it up.
Tell these cops to get out of our legal weed, we’ve found a loophole in the current legislation and we will exploit it every day of the week.
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The plods usually manage to drag the chain when it comes to social change. Before Homosexual Law Reform of the 80s they used to enjoy hanging out at public toilets trying to “catch” gay men, they viewed assault in a relationship as “a domestic”, when unionists run a picket they are there in 10 minutes when the boss calls them, but try getting a burglary investigated.
The cops are still busting Cannabis growers with aerial search operations. This has to come from the “top” somewhere at Police command and Parliament where there is still a powerful wowserism related to Cannabis.
A sizeable industry and subsequent tax take is waiting to go. Booze is fine, but dope is not a happening thing for these conservatives. Police are meant to take a lenient line on personal use but they clearly are not.
The Referendum was manipulated by conservative groups including one US one!–SAM, “Sensible Approaches to Marijuana”, a prohibitionist lot that poured money in beyond the spending limit, lack of co-ordination among the Yes Lobby, COVID interrupted the momentum, and…something else to blame Jacinda for…a simple smile or positive comment from her would have got it over the line.
Can’t you just do without weed? If not, why not? I used to smoke weed, and I’d also make all the usual excuses as to why I “needed” it. While admittedly it does have some value, nobody needs it, and most people would be much better off without it.
Clearly you had no issue with deciding not to. Can’t be that addictive then can it.
Why should people not be allowed to enjoy something they can grow in their back yard? Just puritanical control freaks.
Stoned people being part of society make it a worse society. Same as drunk people. It made me a worse person, just as it does every other pot smoker. Ultimately, it’s a crutch that weak people use to lean on. They know this too, but are too scared to change.
Wheel. “Why should people not enjoy…?” Because they can get behind the wheel of a car and kill a nurse in his way to work or demolish part of a bridge, or play Mallard-type music, or go psycho? “
Didn’t know any of this – good article.
Cannabis is a gateway drug for police and their judicial masters. It’s a gateway to bully the community if they catch them with a spliff, instead of using resources to go after organized crime gangs who import tonnes of meth into the country. It’s a gateway to escalate meaningless herb possession to a criminal charge, while the western world has moved on from this and has legalized the ganja. These do-gooders have nothing but their reefer madness.
maybe he got a prescription and a medically labelled container and then used it as cover for transporting illegal weed around town to his buds.
the reporter isn’t thinking deviously enough
I agree with your comment “acts like a recreational market while masquerading as a medicinal one”. It is bad for everyone. Including the medical system – using their prescription monopoly to leach dollars off the desperate, doing overpriced ‘cash for stash’ jobs.
The pricing and prescription process sounds like a ‘pill mill’ – the clinics in North America that leached off their opioid painkiller epidemic.
The police should find the whole thing confusing. It is. Who was the bad guy here? Follow the money.
Studies have proven that cannabis has an effect on the brain but only over the course of many decades and only if oxygen deprivation is a factor, which of course it wouldn’t be for either recreational or medicinal users.
The police have a habit of going by their own rules though. It is the elephant in the room. It ought to be addressed. Until there is more legal framework put in place to penalise officers and this institution over all for instances where they don’t follow the law which they have sworn to uphold, I don’t see that this issue will be resolved.