*murders in the back blocks - i see there’s anohter ‘gang related’ killing in hte news.
*alienation from rule of law - people learn disrespect for ‘values’ from a very early age in NZ - something to do with hypocritical health messages?
*liscence to discriminate / hate (as in intolerance and prejudice when the scapegoat is wrongfully targetted, well by that standard, anything goes)
*devaluation of the power of arrest. (and how much money are we paying for extra police and prisons with no significant reduction in crime
*someone even suggested to me the amount of national grid electricity going into ‘home grow’s across the country must be massive. Oh well flood another valley for hydro or gas fire some more fossil fuel.
*how many young people abuse alcohol or take up ‘cool’ smoking habits because of the non-credible double standard messages surrounding alcoh,tobacco and pot rendering health promotion a joke(and how many lives are damaged/ ruined as a result)
*normalised systemic self interest (ie thousands middle class crime industry salaries mean no real incentive to actually stop crime) and corruption etc
*normalised home invasion and ‘crack downs on dissent’ by the state (lest you think the ‘Police raids’ thread is being lost)
*also where did the most revolting aspect of law enforcement (cavity search) come from? Bio security? no DRUGS

all because law enforcement makes no significant impact on restricting the availability or popularity of weed. IN fact its quite arguable that if they really wanted to reduce uptake and use of pot, th’ey be better off making it compulsary (thanks PaulMcM for that one)

cheers

However, for the record- the KEY bit of evidence, is the FACT that ‘there is no evidence that liberalisation of cannabis laws [in other jurisdictions] has resulted in a significant increase in use’
(cannabis the public health issues, ministry of health, 1996)
- a fact echoed by both Parliamentary cannabis inquiries past decade.

So prohibition protects no one, no matter what the cons are of pot use. On the basis of this KEY FACT an imperative exists straight away for liberalisation of pot laws eg tolerance of adults home grow and restraint of police ‘arrest’ powers for personal quantities, minimising state interference in the lives of the people. (but notice the coalition agreements specifically forbid this….), but the select committees ran and hid from this logic.

Actually I attempted to spell-out a ‘pros and cons’ type sheet for the select committee law review (2001) in bar-graph form - based on the KEY FACT: basically apart from the public health burdon of cannabis use itself, all the
costs,
harms,
unintendended consequences,
ramped-up-police-powers,
hypocritical messages,
abuses and erosion of civil liberties,
failures and costs,
criminality,
black market gateways (eg methamphetamine)
corruption of law enforcement agencies
denial of beneficial uses (incl hemp/med)
occuring under prohibition are all for nothing and therefore COMPLETELY UNJUSTIFIED.

But the powers that be keep spending another 100million++ direct costs a year on abusing cannabis users (Maori 4 times disproportionally) and pretend that kind of harm doesnt need to be minimised.

Sick, A? - or more to the point, corrupt.

So basically, jh, there are no cons of decriminalising (usage will remain fairly stable but will have a harm reduction context).

On a philosophical note, to restore social justice carrys only positive Karma. its all win win (including restoring moral authority to parents) -
except for the grift-sector (police judiciary, harm prevention groups, judiciary, corrections dept, bureaucrats etc etc) will have to go and get a real job.

No one is suggesting an unfettered market as in alcohol (note the double standard how much hypocrisy is loaded into NZ’s ‘alcohol tobacco and other drug policy’). Just letting adults grow their own. And that’s green party policy after all, so i’m hardly being the devils advocate….

(and its not called the Bay of Plenty for no reason I suspect…)

regards

https://debatemapper.com/sf/home.aspx

pot smoking maori seen defiantly outside court on tv3 news… there is your real vehicle for oppression suppression and depression and repression. ramping up police powers, eroding civil liberties, electronic survellience, normalising hypocrisy and funding of useless programmes/grifter groups, busting & locking up maori 4x disproportionately, more prisons, more divisiveness amongs kiwis, and more criminality than ever before (despite the thousands extra police)

prohibition of cananbis has been the glaring non-crime on the statutes for 30+ years with up to 20,000 arrests a year and god knows how many hundred million misappropriated to the ‘crime creation industry’. this terror raid bullshit is just the next level of manufacturred dissent. And no one mentions cannabis (big taboo status) so it is a conveniently self perpetuating legal status.

and its not even that harmful, especially if you dont smoke it.

But the greens have got very cold feet interms of their cannabis reform ’social justice’ advocacy, and nandor seems to have forgotten what being a rasta stands for

work on taking away the states unwarrented and totally counter-productive anti-cannabis power and we’ll go a long way towards reintegrating the alienated and being the real civil society and shining light for common sense and social ecology.

regards

You are wrong, Klark and this corrupt govt have driven more good Kiwi’s out of this country than any other administration, 700 of our best are leaving every week and we replace them with refuges (Labour voters)

Verbal threats are assault by definition - trouble is Police here won’t (in my experience) enforce the Law - even when invited to do so.

Incidentally the Sarge likes your car….he’s gonna book you as a Boy Racer and grab it…better go home the other way.

If you think safety was a geuine problem then take off your leafy-tinted specs and read what Inspector Erasmus has to say about that.
http://stuff.co.nz/thepress/4212215a6530.html