PRESS RELEASE to all media 1/11/1999

Clueless Law & Order experts sitting in the dark, say ALCP

"PROHIBITION BREEDS IGNORANCE, and clueless major party justice spokemen Ryall, Goff, Prebble, Brown & Robson, are all sitting in the dark", say Christchurch cannabis law reformers.

Parliamentary candidates Blair Anderson & Kevin O'Connell responded to TV1's special Saturday night broadcast supposedly on "Law and Order". Sadly, not one of the major party justice candidates challenged the glaring anomaly of prohibition, in the 1hr. election special.

"Stop denying the destructive social mechanism of criminalisation", warn the anti-prohibitionsts- "Prohibition is an abuse of reason, and we are coming for your jobs!" With 600 full time police "narking" the one in six surveyed Kiwi adults who admit to inhaling, one law appears dangerously intrusive and glaringly in disrepute in our culture- THE DOPE LAW!

On academic databases, including ones networked from the University of Canterbury and www.alcp.org.nz , literally hundreds of papers link the politically driven "prohibition disease" with untold alienation from rule of law, and subsequent criminality & community danger.

The Cannabis Party's number 3 list candidate and newly accredited Waimakariri challenger, Kevin O'Connell, says "we have a choice between TRUE and FALSE in this election- and the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party intend to restore law & order on election night!"

"It's time to go Dutch and reintroduce individual responsibility", he says. "Holland legalised in '76, minimised harms and never looked back." According to international evidence, legalisation in NZ will put the $2 billion per annum black market value of marijuana back into the community and neutralise a competitive criminal scene, while at the same time deglamorising drugs and protecting against alienation & prejudice. Against this alternative, existing "crime prevention" is untenable.

Direct justice system savings alone of allowing adults to grow their own pot in NZ start at $100m, p/a, quantified in their own Justice Department reports. Real benefits are figured to be staggeringly greater, factoring in also the abundant industrial uses of the plant, and the unheralded harmonising of our socio-ecological dimension.

The Cannabis Party is also hedging its bets on Mr O'Connell to win back Waimakariri for the people, in the wake of Mike Moore's apparent prohibitionist traitorship. And the party with the most lucid and potent policy is threatening to be under the spotlight, come election night!!

"While Ryall and Goff and Prebble and company expound on about providing rights for victims, they are all complicit in keeping people in the dark about outrageous scale of criminalisation", said Mr Anderson, an independent who hopes to take Te Tai Tonga to set the people free.

It would appear that the War on Drugs is either totally good or it is totally evil-. Who do you believe- Major party "War and Order" pretenders, or the peace warriors of the ALCP??

Conscienctious objectors may be subjecting Parliament to a "marijuana referendum" under a strategic MMP vote on the 27th November. "Come on troops, punish these bastards", say Kevin and Blair "Vote Aotearoa Legalise!!" - only one in 20 votes nationally will flick the liberation switch and TURN THE LIGHTS ON.

Kevin O'Connell, Blair Anderson (03) 389-4065

Blair Anderson mailto:blair@technologist.com Independent Candidate for the Great Southern Land, Te Tai Tonga phone ++64 3 389-4065

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