New Zealand Listener
By Noel O’Hare

David Hadorn: "A picture of my ugly mug appears with the story, along with the caption "David Hadorn: ‘If people were just given the facts . . .’" Also a photo of the Cannabis Connoisseurs Club in Amsterdam is accompanied by the caption "In the Netherlands, where cannabis use has been liberalised, fewer teenagers have tried hard drugs."

WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS

A group of prominent New Zealand scientists and professionals say that it’s high time cannabis was treated the same way as alcohol and tobacco.

David Hadorn keeps his stash in full view on the sideboard. "I’ve graduated to the hard stuff," he admits. His preferred recreational drug is one you wouldn’t want your kids to get hold of. Used inappropriately, it’s addictive, causes liver and brain damage, is linked with violence. The social and health costs associated with its use are horrendous. Even if it can be proved that most people use the drug in moderation, the chances of any modern government legalising it are fairly small. It’s fortunate, then, that the question of legalisation is not likely to arise. Hadorn’s stash of wine and brandy is strictly legit. Alcohol, after all, has been around so long, and is so ubiquitous, that the only way to control it is to regulate its sale.

The fact that he can have a cellar full of his favourite drug, while others end up with a criminal record for possessing small quantities of relatively harmless cannabis, is one of those social conundrums that Hadorn finds impossible to leave alone. As director of the Drug Policy Forum Trust, a group of scientists and professionals who want rationality to govern our drug laws, he spends all his spare time trying to convince politicians, the media, and community groups that drug users are not criminals. "Drug use, drug abuse and drug related harms are health and education issues," he says. "They’re not legitimately law enforcement issues. When you inject a policeman into what is fundamentally a health issue, you inevitably make the problem worse."

Hadorn is not some aging hippie who wants to turn on the world. He’s a medical doctor and highly experienced health researcher, who is currently chief advisor to the Health Funding Authority. The trust includes some of the most respected names in medical science in New Zealand. The first step towards a sensible drugs policy, they argue in a soon-to be released report, is to regulate the use of cannabis in the same way as alcohol and tobacco.

Wee Robbie Burns’ special on cannabis bullets may a pipedream, but Hadorn is convinced there is a mood for change in New Zealand. That optimism has been shored up recently by the leaked 15-year WHO study on cannabis which confirmed that cannabis is safer than alcohol and tobacco.

The findings of that report have also been echoed by a new book *Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts* by two distinguished American scholars, Professors Lynn Zimmer and John P Morgan. The book reviews all the scientific evidence of the past 100 years and finds little to support anti-cannabis campaigners’ claims. You could say the jury has now returned and pronounced its verdict: cannabis is not guilty as charged.

The issue, however, is not much about the harm to health as the effects cannabis may have on teenagers. No one much cares, for instance, whether politicians swap their single malt whiskies for joints in Bellamy’s (it might improve behaviour in the House). But many parents worry that their kids will gain greater access to cannabis and lose all drive and ambition.

Hadorn believes that those fears are unfounded. The same arguments, he points out, were trotted out when it became legal for wine to be sold in supermarkets. The same scaremongering occurred over homosexual law reform. "People said ‘if you do this, society will fall apart. Kids will be seduced.’ Of course that hasn’t happened."

So what would he say if his own teenagers started experimenting with cannabis? "I’d tell them ‘If you’re going to use it, you have to be careful. Use it after you’ve got your homework done or at weekends, and only if your grades are staying up.’"

Hadorn says it’s a myth that cannabis destroys the ability to do school work, particularly in older teens. Although he eschews anecdotal evidence as a basis for the campaign, "you can maintain a straight-A average and still use cannabis for relaxation and social purposes or stress relief, which it happens to be very good for." The belief that cannabis acts as a gateway to other drugs is also incorrect, he says. In the Netherlands where cannabis use has been liberalised, fewer teenagers have tried hard drugs than is the case in countries, like the US, with harsh prohibition policies. By making it easier for young people to obtain cannabis, the Dutch argue, they are not exposed to a criminal subculture pushing harder drugs; the connection between the two types of drugs is broken.

Regulating the use of cannabis may be a rational evidence-based alternative to a policy of total prohibition which even anti-drug campaigners will admit is not working, but how likely is to happen?

Hadorn points to New Zealand’s heritage as a social laboratory; its reputation for social pioneering. "If people were just given the facts instead of the silly outdated myths propagated by people who speak out on the issue" He has high hopes that PM Jenny Shipley, a hardliner on cannabis reform, will be open to evidence-based policy as she was as Minister of Health.

Last year the Sydney Morning Herald reported how Australia was prevented from undertaking drug reform by a veiled US threat to close down the highly profitable and legal opium industry in Tasmania. As the newspaper commented: "Australians talk most of the time as though this country can decide the fate of their own narcotics law. This is a delusion. As a good citizen of the world and a loyal supporter of the United States we have signed international treaties which pledge Australians to stick to the prohibition strategy." Those same treaties can be used by the US to try to bully New Zealand into line over cannabis reform in the same way that pressure was applied over the nuclear-free issue.