by frog
Despite Peter Dunne’s frothing at the mouth, Nandor’s Private Member’s Bill is a reasonable and, yes, mainstream response to the current cannabis crisis. Of course, I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Well, actually, it’s not me saying this. It’s Professor David Fergusson, an Otago University academic who has been studying the health effects of cannabis use for decades.
Reports the Press:
A leading cannabis-use researcher says the Greens’ bill to partially decriminalise the drug is “thoughtful and reasonable”.
Professor David Fergusson, director of the 27-year-long Christchurch Health and Development Study, said he strongly supported the bill, introduced as a private member’s bill by MP Nandor Tanczos.
The bill would remove criminal sanctions for possession of cannabis and replace them with a misdemeanour-style $100 fine. Those smoking or cultivating cannabis near a school would get a $500 fine, and those selling cannabis or found with large amounts would be subject to current laws and penalties.
Fergusson, who studies the effects of cannabis use, said the bill was a pragmatic response to the fact that 80 per cent of New Zealanders had used cannabis on at least one occasion by age 25.
“The frequency with which it’s being used makes it unrealistic to continue with prohibition,” he said.
“On the other hand, free and available supply is not realistic as it is a psychoactive substance. The middle ground that the Greens have proposed is probably the best compromise.”
Fergusson’s research has followed the lives of more than 1000 people born in Christchurch in 1977. The research has shown risks of cannabis use, particularly for heavy users.
Increasingly, frequent use of cannabis among young people was linked to increased risk of school drop-out, depression, suicidal thoughts and psychotic symptoms, Fergusson said.
Fergusson said the Government should liberalise cannabis laws and then study the consequences. Liberalisation in South Australia and Canberra had not resulted in higher use of cannabis. “What the Greens are proposing is a thoughtful, mainstream bill,” he said.
So, who is this Fergusson guy? Some eccentric, fringe-dwelling Greenie? Well, no. When Fergusson released research in March about the links between cannabis use and psychosis, United Future trumpeted it as evidence to back up its “prohibition is the only way!” hysteria.
Now, presumably, United will be distancing itself from what Fergusson has to say about Nandor’s Bill. I’d be interested to know, though, Peter: how do you like them apples?
Published in Health & Wellbeing by frog on Thu, July 21st, 2005
Tags: environment
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Lets be clear about this bill, it is cannabis decriminalisation and its aim is to soften us up to the eventual normalisation on the use of cannabis. I do not see anything reasonable or moderate about it when you look into the multitude of studies on the negative effects of cannabis use. I just cannot believe that a political party with 9 MP’s are promoting such a socially destructive substance. There are absolute clear links in youth suicide, psychosis, mental illness and it just defies all logic to be supporting it. By proposing this legislation I believe that the Greens are abusing their position of power in parliament.
What the Greens should be legislating for are harsher penalties for drug dealers. They should also be pressuring the government for more Police resources to combat drugs, more counselling services for users and more education for the youth. In fact it makes me really angry because areas like South Auckland (where I live) will always suffer the most when poor legislation like this is passed (eg Liquor Purchase Age, Prostitution Reform Act, Gaming Machines).
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Does anyone really know why Peter Dunne is so rabid against cannabis?
Ok, so I am one of a few who has never puffed the darn stuff and I do not even know what it smells like, but to me Dunne’s public rant seems almost Tamaki-like.
As a long term chronic pain sufferer I am keenly interested in the medicinal trials. At least a select committee did look at that aspect. Joy.
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Dear Toa, so I presume that you have looked into the “multitude of studies on the negative effects of cannabis use”? Or is this just your impression of what the research would show you if you did look, based on popular opinion and the pronouncements of people like Jim Anderton or Peter Dunhil?
I think you’ll find that if you did actually look at some of the research, you would find that the negative effects of cannabis have been overstated in the media and hence in the public consiousness. That is certainly what every government inquiry has found when they looked at the evidence, and what the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs finds.
A starting point for the real health effects, (i.e. not the dodgy science, limited purpose studies that prohibitionists gleefully seize on and misrepresent while conveniently ignoring the vast amount of evidence that shows cannabis has only minor health effects on most people and that it also has a wide range of beneficial health effects on suffers of a wide range of illnesses), is the government Ministry of Health pamphlet on the health effects of cannabis (PDF)
http://www.ndp.govt.nz/cannabis/NDPCannabisPamphlet.pdf
Don’t agree with my analysis? Well I challenge you to come up with some evidence of your own instead of just parroting received wisdom. Try and think for yourself eh?
And, anyway, even if cannabis were highly dangerous, prohibition is an ineffective method of controlling it, not only ineffective but it adds to the harm. A much better way of controlling it would be a system of licensing and regulation.
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Joy, I can only assume that Dunhill is so rabidly against cannabis because he is funded by the alcohol, tobacco lobby. Did you know that In 1997, Dunne was the only Member of Parliament to vote against legislation that proposed raising the age at which young people could be sold tobacco from 16 to 18 years.
http://www.norml.org.nz/page62.html
Maybe he is even funded by the pharmacuetical industry – their profits will be severely cut if people can just self-medicate with cannabis, which when you look at the evidence, really is a “wonder drug”.
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Toa,
I like to imagine we all think speeding is bad and wrong, but it’s only punished by fines – people don’t gain a criminal record by travelling at 80km/h along my street (tho some days I think they should
.
I don’t think that decriminalising marijuana necessarily normalises it – it just makes the punishment fit the crime a little better. Or do you really think that having one joint is so much worse than driving way too fast along a suburban street with two kindies and a playground on it?
Anita
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Toa
There’s a lot of ways that the marijuana problem is presented, and researched, and first hand knowledge is not exactly scarce. My Brother was addicted to Heroin for a while…. among other things he commented (after kicking both habits) that it was harder to quit smoking cigarettes.
The problem with criminalization is that it makes behaviour that is NOT dangerous to others, nor particularly harmful, criminal. I know a fair few people who smoked a bit and went to med school and graduated with honors. I know my brother who was pretty well balanced as long as he knew where his next fix was coming from, and most people couldn’t tell he was using. Making this stuff illegal as it is, actually makes it more lucrative and more dangerous and LESS controlled than if it is available in a controlled manner. It robs the government of another tax stream and provides a steady income for the mobs.
Since I know from my experiences, that the damage and risk is more than a little overstated. If you simply look CLOSELY at Fergusson’s work you’ll see that the link he’s making requires a hell of a lot of weed… and not everyone is “susceptible”. In other words, it isn’t a BIG problem you’re solving by your prohibition and your prohibition IS making a BIG problem.
Mountains from Molehills, and if you’ve never paid attention to the politics behind the US prohibition you should. It isn’t pretty, it is merely pretty stupid. I know better. So does the Lancet, so does Fergusson, so does everybody who’s ever actually studied the problem instead of kicked out a knee-jerk response to it.
I hope to heck this is not going to be a BIG green campaign program, but I see the point of bringing it up to clarify our position rather than letting the other parties try to define us.
respectfully
BJ
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Despite my opinion that Nandor’s Bill is not unreasonable, I think the use of the term “crisis” is by some margin over the top. In the scale of things, people smoking dope isn’t big on the Richter scale.
I also find the timing of this bill odd.
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Dunhill’s got a bit of a cheek hasn’t he, making a week-long media event out of a challenge to Nandor to debate the evidence, e.g. his latest PR
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0507/S00444.htm
when of course it was Dunhill who was too chicken to front up to the public meetings that Nandor had with the progressives, infamously saying “I wouldn’t have Nandor in my electorate – it would lower the house values,”
Dunhill BTW, was particularly offensive in those PRs e.g. calling the Progressive Coalition “mentally deranged”,
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0310/S00640.htm
See the NORML What has he Dunne now? page for the full story down at 28th Oct 2003
http://www.norml.org.nz/page62.html
Presumably this time around Dunhill only wants to debate Nandor via the medium of PRs!
2. BTW Joy, neither of the recent Health Select Committee inquiries were asked to look at the medicinal effects of cannabis. The first one was to only look at the mental health effects of cannabis (conclusion: not that many), the second was “To inquire into the most effective public health and health promotion strategies to minimise the use of and the harm associated with cannabis and consequently the most appropriate legal status of cannabis.” That one did make a few minor references to medical cannabis but clearly there is a need for a proper look at medical cannabis, but of course Dunhill has vetoed that. It really is an outrage that prohibitionists are stopping people from using a safe and effective treatment for a wide variety of conditions.
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OK, so I have not read the select committee papers, but I speak from some degree of personal (family) experience in respect of mental health. It seems to us, (our family) that most mental health illness just happens, (biochemical, genetic) and is NOT CAUSED by cannabis. Perhaps if an ill person, maybe someone not receiving good professional treatment, may choose to smoke cannabis or drink alcohol, then yes, they may aggravate their illness. The aggravation may have tragic consequences, but then our family person has also attempted suicide when prescribed medication went wrong! Joy.
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bj..i think you will find your brother had a brief flirtation with heroin..( the first honeymoon period can last up to two years for some people..)
and coming off that first little habit you could just feel a bit fluey for a week..so maybe that’s how your brother came to be supporting that myth..(usually uttered with tones reeking of self-pity and by smokers..ha!..)
y’see, the thing with heroin is..that every habit has an accumulative effect..with every successive period of using your honeymoon period is shorter..the addiction is heavier and more complex..and the withdrawals get worse and more complex every time..
and believe me..comparing withdrawing from a grown up heroin habit cannot even be spoken of in the same breath as withdrawing from tobacco..(i could get quite graphic here to make my point..but i won’t..except maybe to ask you to contemplate all orifices on overdrive..and every cell in your body having to literally kick that habit, that addiction to opiates..the kicking actually happens and is involuntary spasms reacting against the cramps crawling/rippling underneath your school….(as you might have guessed i’ve also given up both..tobacco twice..and heroin a few more times…:)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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anyone seen trainspotting?
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Phil U
My Brother was an addict for 15 years. He went to prison at one point for armed robbery cause he couldn’t support the habit. He is CURRENTLY a Registered Nurse in the US. He appears to have survived and outgrown it, he found a religion the B’ahai faith, he married, he has kids.
I can’t speak of the experience first hand, but I did observe that he always had an “addictive personality”. So he MAY never have been to the levels you’ve reached, never needed to go there. I wouldn’t call it a honeymoon though. He was addicted to booze, cigarettes, heroin, a religion and his kids. He’s been addicted to everything that came along.
We may be talking about two different things here because he was also referring to the ease of bumming a smoke, not merely the pain of doing without. I don’t KNOW which pain is worse, as I didn’t ask the question so closely. but I watched him scraping bits of cigarette butts into a piece of newspaper so he could get a smoke and he told me it was HARDER to quit. Not that it was more painful to quit, just harder. He’s been my brother a long time, I know that if he’d meant more painful he’d have said it differently.
One other thing I am pretty sure of, and that is that the effects are not identical from person to person. There are differences that people take into an addiction that may well influence how they experience it. He has a high threshold of pain… runs in the family, how might this affect the experience? We won’t see any decent research anytime soon, that’s for sure.
respectfully
BJ
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chipper, yous lucky you didn’t get the dependent genes, i think we better engineer, splice them out of human soon, what you say;
dope doesn’t really treat chronic pain, it treats craving and withdrawal symptoms, feel better already,
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er dope does treat chronic pain and it treats it so well that it was the second condition that GW pharmacueticals tried to get their cannabis medicine Sativex approved for, the first being MS.
BTW neither application was successful in the UK, purely due to blocking and delaying tactics from the UK medical establishment including some kafkaesque goalpost shifting in the requirements for the applications. Sativex has been approved in Canada though.
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To all of you,
re: medicinal cannabis.
I believe that it is only those who suffer chronic, disabling pain, and their caregivers, who truly undersatnd how very difficult it can be to get an effective, affordable regime of pain relief from prescription medicines, and ones that do not in themselves have disabling side effects. Joy.
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