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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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New Zealand:
Bay of Plenty Times Tuesday 27 Sep 2011 Act Party leader Don Brash raised eyebrows when he announced a call to decriminalise cannabis when he spoke on TVNZ's Q&A; programme on Sunday. The former National party leader is one of New Zealand's more conservative political figures and was announced as the new Act Party leader earlier this year. The party traditionally has strong views on law and order. Mr Clarkson, who is a Tauranga Act Party member and former National MP, said the issue of legalising cannabis needed robust debate. "When you have a law that a big percentage of the population breaks, there is something wrong with the law." Mr Clarkson referred to the number of people who travelled on open roads at 110km/h as an example of a law that was not working. "So when there is a marijuana debate, it's quite simple. If 80 per cent of people are smoking it, it doesn't seem to be doing any good spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year with the cops trying to stop it. "Let's be fair, if the thing was legalised - and I will offend some people but the facts are the facts - first of all we will get income and it will stop a lot of crooks. "Crooks rob people to buy drugs." Mr Clarkson said he did not smoke cannabis, and never had. "I don't touch the stuff." And it was unlikely he would if the drug was legalised, he said. "I'm a petrol head and I like racing. It's risky and there's every chance I could get hurt but that's my choice and I do it. It doesn't mean it's for everyone." Dr Brash said prohibition of the drug had not worked and policing it cost millions of taxpayer dollars and clogged up the court system. "It's estimated thousands of New Zealanders use cannabis on a fairly regular basis, 6000 are prosecuted every year, and $100 million of taxpayers' money is spent to police this law." But National MP for Tauranga Simon Bridges opposed the decriminalisation of cannabis. Mr Bridges said such a move would send entirely the wrong message, particularly to young people "who might be inclined to try it if it were legal". "As a Crown prosecutor I did a lot of cannabis cases throughout the Bay of Plenty and there is nothing good about the drug. It is bad for people and ruins their brains." Mr Bridges said Dr Brash was entitled to his views but "I can't see the decriminalisation of cannabis having much appeal in Tauranga". However, the National Addiction Centre has backed Dr Brash. "Compared with alcohol, which has been demonstrated to be a Class B equivalent drug ie high risk to public health, cannabis is estimated to be of low/moderate risk to public health," addiction centre director Doug Sellman said yesterday. "Low-risk cannabis use for adults, which is using cannabis at a level associated with a one in a hundred chance of dying from a cannabis-related event, has never been scientifically validated as far as I know. "This is one of the problems of having the drug prohibited and yet used by thousands of New Zealanders on a relatively frequent basis," Prof Sellman said. The Government said that Act's cannabis policy was going in the wrong direction and Family First national director Bob McCoskrie described Dr Brash's call as dangerous. "A weak-kneed approach to marijuana use will simply send all the wrong messages that small amounts of drug use or dealing aren't that big a deal." Act should be calling for better treatment facilities for addiction, he said. Prof Sellman said a recent Law Commission Review of the Misuse of Drugs Act encouraged discussion about drugs from a health perspective rather than just as a criminal justice issue, and to use scientific evidence to guide policy making rather than perpetuating drug use as a moral issue". http://www.bayofplentytimes.co.nz/news/clarkson-joins-call-to-legalise-drug/1117303/
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