Cannabis Club Set Up in Whangarei

A Whangarei cannabis club, set up by Daktory founder Dakta Green on Friday night, attracted around fifty locals but not the attention of police.

“Despite Mike Sabin’s call in the local paper to have us locked up, Whangarei Police were as good as their word and stayed away,” said Dakta Green, who founded The Daktory in the Auckland suburb of New Lynn in October 2008.

The legalise cannabis campaigner is leading a hikoi of vehicles that set off from Cape Reinga early this month, heading to Parliament. They visited Whangarei MP Phil Heatley's electorate office in the afternoon, before setting up a temporary Daktory smoking club in town that evening.

Whangarei police, who knew the hikoi, including NORML’s CannaBus, was coming to protest and stay the night, said they wouldn’t be approaching the group unless they received a complaint.

“It seems the people of Whangarei didn’t mind us being there,” Dakta Green said. “The locals who visited our Whangarei Daktory and shared their hospitality with us got a chance to experience what our motto ‘live like it’s legal’ means, and let me tell you: they loved it!”

Dakta Green said that Mike Sabin’s demand that police come bursting in and try to arrest him simply for smoking cannabis was an admission of his anti-democratic nature:

"In a democratic society, the primary role of the police is to keep the peace; not go after people for minor technical breaches of the law."

“Mike Sabin, on the other hand, seems to think that political protestors should be spied on and harrassed the moment they commit a minor offence as part of a public protest," Mr Green said.

“I challenge Mr Sabin to a public debate on this matter. Protesting the law by smoking cannabis in public is a non-violent act of civil disobedience."

"However, he wants me arrested for smoking cannabis. I invite him to meet with me publicly – he can choose the time and place – and explain why he thinks I need to be arrested,” Dakta Green concluded.

ENDS

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