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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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New Zealand: Cannabis referendum: What now for the law and police? Farah Hancock of Newsroom.co.nz Stuff.co.nz Friday 30 Oct 2020 Donations of $4.20 a week to the 'yes' campaign weren’t enough to swing the preliminary results of the cannabis referendum to ‘yes’ vote for legalisation The Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill got the thumbs down with 53.1 percent of votes against legalisation and 46.1 percent of votes for it. There are still around 480,000 special votes to be counted and the final result won’t be in until Friday November 6. Today’s result is a step up from the last poll done before Election Day which had the ‘no’ vote winning with 41 percent saying yes, 51 percent saying ‘no’ and 8 percent still undecided, but it was clearly not the result people campaigning for legalisation were seeking. ‘Yes’ campaigner Russell Brown thinks the gap will decrease when the special votes are counted but not enough to tip the scales in the favour of legalisation. “It’s a shame the public health voices didn’t come into this discussion much sooner.” He said health specialists such as Michael Baker, Doug Sellman and the Public Health Association did eventually speak out, but the New Zealand Medical Association “should be ashamed of its role”. The association changed its stance after early voting had opened from not supporting the bill to having a neutral position. NZMA chairperson Dr Kate Baddock said the organisation’s stance against legalisation was based on a 2012 position and NZMA "didn't do anything" when the referendum was announced. She fell back on this 2012 position without consulting members. Make it Legal spokesperson Sandra Murray told Newsroom after this happened several people contacted the organisation asking if they could change their votes. They couldn’t. Once cast, a vote can’t be changed. Brown worries for the ‘green fairy’ community. These are people who produce cannabis products for therapeutic use. Often their customers are people with cancer, or other conditions. Medicinal cannabis is legal, but only one product is approved by Medsafe and it’s not subsidised. Using it can cost around $1000 per month, far more than what cannabis costs from the black market. “There are tens of thousands of people using cannabis therapeutically,” said Brown. “The people making green fairy remedies are not going to stop. A yes vote would have offered a way forward. The no vote is just a mess.” Brown worries about the position the police face. “I think when specials come in next week, the police are going to be charged with enforcing a law that half the country doesn't believe in. I think that's really problematic in itself.” The no vote means nothing changes and recreational cannabis is illegal, with police having discretion whether or not to prosecute. Former police detective Tim McKinnel was involved in enforcing drug laws during his time with the force and has called the current system a complete failure. He lent his voice to the yes campaign and is disappointed with the preliminary results. “Discretion is a funny thing. It’s an incredible privilege given to certain sectors of society. I think we still see from the way M?ori are treated in criminal justice in general, that it’s very difficult voluntarily or consciously to make those adjustments where bias exists.” He’s not sure what impact the vote will have on how police conduct their work. “We are left with a system where hundreds of millions of dollars a year and tens of thousands of police hours are spent enforcing cannabis laws. From my perspective, that seems like a terrible waste, particularly when prosecuting growers, dealers and users has done very little to stop widespread use.” Make it Legal’s Murray said she always knew the result of the referendum would be close. She’s still waiting to see how the specials play out. She said she’s heard a large number of people enrolled and voted on the day in order to vote yes on the referendum. “So, you know, what, you just never know, do you?” If the vote stays as a 'no' after the specials are counted she said the volunteer organisation would probably take time out to see what’s next. Many have been campaigning on top of day jobs, with funds coming from donations. “We had an enormous amount of people who were donating $4.20 a week to us, directly into our bank. We had a small number of people who would do larger donations of $420.”Green MP for Auckland, Chloe Swarbrick, who lobbied for legalisation said around 67 per cent of special votes would need to be ‘yes’ for the bill to be introduced. "There's every chance that this does flip when it comes to the specials, but it will be that razor thin margin." Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern refused to share how she planned to vote on the referendum until the preliminary results were out. Today she said she voted yes. Swarbrick was asked if she thought this might have swayed the vote in favour of legalisation had Ardern been open earlier: “I’m in the Greens because I have courage in my convictions”. Justice Minister Andrew Little doubted Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern could have swayed the vote if she had made her own position in favour of legalisation known sooner, saying there had been significant public debate and a draft bill for people to consider before making their mind. He would not have done anything differently, saying the Government had fulfilled Labour’s commitment to the Greens through the confidence and supply agreement while ensuring every parliamentary party had input into the draft legislation. Little said it was unlikely the result of the cannabis referendum would flip in favour of legalisation, given roughly 70 per cent of the 480,000 special votes yet to be counted would need to break in favour of ‘Yes’ to overturn the preliminary result. While the Government had in its last term made tweaks to the Misuse of Drugs Act and given police greater discretion to take a health-based approach to cannabis, Little said the referendum result made a more significant overhaul improbable. “The electorate has spoken on a pretty clear-cut question, ‘Do you want legalisation?’, knowing the consequences of that are greater control, greater harm minimisation, and it's a pretty convincing result to say ‘No, the New Zealand electorate is not ready for that’. “On that basis, I don't see there’s a basis on which we could entertain further drug reform of that nature.” Any move towards “more pure” decriminalisation would not address the criminal element that sat behind the supply of cannabis and served as one of the major social harms of the status quo. The Government would need to ensure it continued to have harm minimisation strategies for cannabis in the coming years, he said, while it could also review how the new provisions giving greater discretion to police were being applied. What’s next While the yes campaigners are split over when the special votes might tip results in their favour, there is one thing they do seem to agree on. People might not have voted for legalisation but it doesn’t mean they all support the status quo. A half-way house of decriminalisation could be an option people are happy with. “Although a majority of New Zealanders did not vote for the proposed model of legalisation, the debate has shown a clear public desire for legal change in some form” said chair of the Drug Foundation, Tuari Potiki, today. “The debate has highlighted issues that we can’t now turn our backs on as a country. Even those who campaigned for a ‘no’ vote publicly accepted that cannabis use should be treated as a health and social issue, and decriminalised.” Russell Brown, said decriminalisation could be an option but is an “inferior solution”. “You lose all those public health levers.” https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/cannabis-referendum/300146366/cannabis-referendum-what-now-for-the-law-and-police
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