Stephen Berry

Status Quo Parties Display Their Ignorance

Tamaki Independent candidate Stephen Berry is unsurprised at the reaction of most parliamentary political parties following comments from Act leader Don Brash on the decriminalisation of cannabis. “Every parliamentary political party defends, to a varying degree, the status quo of state control of the lives of individuals. The principles of every parliamentary party are based on the idea that politicians are smarter than you.”

Prime Minister John Key commented on cannabis legalisation saying, “There is no place for drugs in our society. Ask parents if they want their children smoking a joint on the way to school.” Stephen Berry thinks such comments verge on lunacy. “Drug legalisation for adults does not result in greater drug use by children. Do kids drink a beer on the way to school? With comments like that, why isn’t John Key advocating alcohol prohibition? It is because he has no principles and will take the low road to popularity.”

United leader Peter Dunne is also predictably condemning the position of cannabis legalisation despite having previously smoked it in the past. Berry says, “Mr. Dunne also lacks any sort of principles either. After previously demanding Nandor Tanczos hand himself into the police for using cannabis, Dunne has also failed to turn himself in despite admitting to smoking the drug in the seventies. Dunne can’t see any consistency in Act’s position but I fail to see any in his.”

Labour’s Clayton Cosgrove also opposes any change in the law saying, “Good god, look at our young people and look at the mental health issues we have in our prisons.” Does that mean prohibition and throwing drug users with mental health problems into jail is working then?

None of the parties in Parliament and none of the candidates in Tamaki are talking about freedom of the individual. The exception is Independent candidate Stephen Berry. “I have long been on public record as advocating the legalisation and de-regulation of all substances, whether medical or recreational. The medical establishment should lose its coercive monopoly over the distribution of drugs. Individuals should have maximum sovereignty over their own bodies as long as their actions do not violate the rights of others and they are responsible for them. Naturally drug legalisation can only occur in conjunction with the privatisation of the health system.”

“Voters in Tamaki have two choices this election. Varying shades of statist status-quo or the one candidate for individual freedom, Stephen Berry.”

Ends

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