Cannabis - Alcohol hypocrisy rules New Zealand

The ALCP is disgusted with repressive policing of gardening shops and their employees, while a virtually unfettered free-market approach is taken to an evidentially more harmful drug, alcohol.

These latest costly busts will incur huge harm to the individuals charged, their families, and to the wallets of Kiwi taxpayers. Worse, the busts are only the tip of the iceberg of up to 20,000 cannabis convictions per year in NZ.

Despite yesterday’s 250 arrests it will be business as usual for the black market on the one hand, and police, courts and corrections on the other. The real reason this sick law remains on the statute books is the amount of money being made from prohibiting cannabis.

The party is also critical of media who on the one hand are reporting the NZ Law Commission’s alcohol recommendations - notably a call to revert the liquor purchase age to 20years - and failing to draw any linkage with the way alcohol’s neighbouring intoxicant, cannabis, is being 'regulated' (or completely unregulated as the case may be).

Double standards are by definition wrong. Prohibition policy which does not come close to working as intended is emphatically not useful.

The hypocrisy of the alcohol/cannabis double standard situation does not, and never will, win respect amongst the youth of NZ, which explains why drug and alcohol health promotion is such a failure in this country.

It is obscene to see NZ police milking the black market the way they do while New Zealanders – particularly young Kiwis - remain wholly unprotected by dysfunctional and contradictory regulatory approaches.

The ALCP encourages New Zealanders to make submissions to the NZ Law Commissions review of the 1975 Misuse of Drugs Act (closing this Friday 30 April) see http://www.talklaw.co.nz or email lawreview@lawcom.govt.nz

ENDS

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