UN CHANCE TO REFORM CANNABIS LAWS

[Daily Times preamble: Dr David Hadorn, director of the Drug Policy Forum Trust, headquartered in Wellington, believes an opportunity for New Zealand to promote rational cannabis policies will occur in the United Nations next week. In this article he explains why. His essay is also a response to our most recent editorial on the subject (ODT 4.4.98) against the trust’s recommendations.]

Two months have passed since the Drug Policy Forum Trust, a group of physicians and other professionals, recommended that cannabis be accepted as part of contemporary New Zealand culture and treated like tobacco and alcohol, through a system of regulation and taxation. Adopting this approach to cannabis control would:

• dismantle the lucrative cannabis black market;
• improve the effectiveness of drug education and treatment programmes;
• save a tremendous amount of money.

The response to our report has been generally positive. Many New Zealanders, it seems, are ready for a change. Others have raised objections, of which the following are the most common:

• Cannabis is harmful, so it should remain illegal (to protect the children). .
• We already have enough trouble with alcohol and tobacco; we do not need a third (legal) drug.
• Removing criminal penalties from cannabis would cause an increase in drug-related problems.

None of these arguments is supported by available evidence.

Yes, cannabis can be harmful, especially to troubled teenagers, whose compulsive over-use of cannabis can cause a variety of problems, but making criminals of these kids does nothing to help the situation, and indeed makes matters worse. It is worth reinforcing this point. We do not deny that cannabis causes harm, but dozens of scientific studies have shown that prohibition policies magnify the harms of cannabis. What we are saying, then, is "here’s how to minimise the harm". When prohibition advocates reply, "but cannabis is harmful", they simply are not listening.

Finally, the claim that a regulated cannabis market would increase drug-related problems, such as addiction or harmful public health impacts, is completely unsupported by overseas experience. Wherever cannabis laws have been liberalised, as in The Netherlands and several states in Australia and the US, neither drug use nor drug-related harms have increased. In The Netherlands, for example, the rate of both cannabis and hard drug use by teenagers is among the lowest in Europe—and much lower than in the prohibitionist United States.
See
Go Dutch!

Unfortunately, those who make claims such as these are very seldom (if ever) required to support those claims with actual evidence. Were they required to do so, for example, by news reporters, the lack of a solid scientific foundation for cannabis prohibition would become readily apparent.

Cannabis prohibition is an even more serious problem when viewed from a global perspective. Entire governments in Latin America and elsewhere have been subverted and corrupted by the hundreds of billions of dollars pumped into the international criminal underground by the war on drugs, most of which is focused on cannabis. Meanwhile, drugs of all kinds are cheaper and more available than ever.

New Zealand might be part of this vital rearguard action. Our delegate to the UN special session is Tuariki John Delamere, Associate Minister of Health and Minister of Customs. Mr Delamere has in the past spoken out in favour of cannabis law reform. If he is able to speak his conscience in New York, New Zealand might very well put a cat among the pigeons.

Concurrent with the UN special session, dozens of major public events will be held around the world to marshal support for more compassionate and effective drug control policies. In New Zealand, such events will be held in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. By attending these events, the people of New Zealand can "send a message" to our politicians and to the international community. As such, these events are analogous to the anti-nuclear, anti-Vietnam War, and anti-apartheid protests held in years gone by.

New Zealand society is almost certainly matured to the point that we are quite capable of managing a regulated cannabis market. Moreover, by leading both by example and exhortation we can help the world find its way out of the blind alley of cannabis prohibition.