NZ Police milking 'P epidemic'

Mild Greens say TV1's 'operation flower' special demonstrates that in busting hard-line crims for 'p', the people really 'taking care of business' are the prohibition administrators, police, courts, judiciary and lawyers and prison builders.

"It would be much safer and less expensive to the community, to have speed pills prescribed by doctors in a harm-reduction/health-promotion context, than have the police milking a predictably irrepressible and dangerous black market" say the Mild Greens.

TV1's Sunday special on the big Auckland 'P' bust, never once questioned the efficacy or ethics of the 'prohibition' mode of control. (Although the police investigator Brazier noted that for every operation shut down, 3 or 4 more new meth labs are springing up to take its place....)

While the police argue for 'more resources' the Mild Greens argue for 'less stupid policing' via progressive 'decriminalisation'.

In focusing on the 'harms caused by p' the documentary makers ignored the fact that these mainly are 'side-effects' and 'unintended consequences' of the prohibition, and criminalisation policy.

Dozens of police, working and snooping on the case over 3 years, $1.1 million in legal aid, plus untold millions spent in prison housing the hard-line meth suppliers featured in the bust, is money being extorted off the taxpayer, say the Mild Greens.

The reformers say that the public are being beguiled into feeding a large prohibitionist workforce in NZ (and wholesale abuse of civil liberty), for no net gain in 'harm minimisation'. (and where is the cost-benefit analysis?)

Of course NZ's famously unworkable cannabis prohibition forms the 'bread and butter' of policing in NZ, and ensures there is a ready market of tens of thousands of people alienated from the disreputable, bullying rule of law, more than willing to partake in outlaw activities, including meth.

"With the double standards and hypocrisy surrounding drug use in NZ - including alcohol and tobacco, Police couldn't promote speed and other drugs better if they tried", say the Mild Greens.

It is anticipated the upcoming report of the health select committee into appropriate health strategies associated with cannabis "and consequently the most appropriate legal status" will enlighten New Zealanders as to how much they are being taken for a ride via manufactured consent, media-fuelled 'anti-drug' hysteria, and discriminatory law.

The 1998 inquiry into the mental health effects of cannabis found existing policy to be ineffective (and inappropriate by implication) in reducing cannabis use, and that prohibition double standards impeded drug prevention efforts.

While the police and public health administrators ignore the HSC 1998 admissions and insight, one must be extremely skeptical of the motives of those police and politicians advocating 'tougher' prohibition, and 'additional resources to crack down', say the Mild Greens.

"Prohibition dis-ease is the root of all that is sick and dysfunctional in NZ society".

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