Cottage grows reduces the bill on Pharmac….

As the uptake of Sativex increases, the use of other medicines would reduce.

Is the National Party made up of drongos or what….

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Comment from Tony on NORML:

The Nats blocked voted as per Tues Caucus.
Why,
not that they were all told. but although they became aware medpot al la natural was effective and safe they could not figure out supply.. It had a major fish hook , although the support for medpot was there they could not bring them selves to agree to cottage grows .. so it meant Sativex or Pharmac distributed imported medpot.. The HURDLE WAS they once made aware of the potential up take , and they realized it would very quickly be an approved medicine that would attract subside. The predicted Pharmac budget blow out scared them shitless.

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kahikatea – yes hence the other private member’s bill that was debated last night.

Nobody from National was smart enough to realise that the two seemingly contradictory bills were actually pulling both issues towards the same endpoint. My word they’re stupid.

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jarbury Says:
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:35 pm

> Greengeek, that’s exactly the issue. Cannabis is not regulated, it is simply outlawed. The Greens simply want to bring it in line with alcohol & tobacco.

well, not quite. we don’t want to saturate the airwaves with cannabis advertising like is currently done for alcohol.

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Greengeek, that’s exactly the issue. Cannabis is not regulated, it is simply outlawed. The Greens simply want to bring it in line with alcohol & tobacco.

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I think you guys are viewing this issue from the perspective of outsiders. The green party represents the views of less than 10% of society. You are definitely on the outside on this issue.

While you may think you have cannabis use under control in your own lives (chuckle) the rest of society realises that cannabis use needs regulation just as alcohol, bad driving and child porn do.

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The comment was made of radio Live news, that many MPs failed to support the bill because the list of maladies cannabis was purported to be effective for, was too long to be easily ‘swallowed’ and they felt that more was being pushed for than was necessary. A shorter list might have helped a good deal, As with any delivery that is intended to convince, with the public or with politicians, short and to the point is the winner.

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Weedeater,
Indeed, prohibition is more dangerous than helpful. A point I make an effort to argue whenever I have a community or health related essay possibility, one of my hobby-horses infact.
I would agree that weed does bring out underlying characteristics, as do all drugs. I would say that, as per my previous statement, it would seem to decrease cognitive capacity.
In the many times I have used this drug I have only once or twice felt mentally impaired, but that is because I myself am under the influence and thus the base-line shifts. Regardless of the person, they will be effected negativly, same goes for alcohol and tabacco; its just a case of susceptability to the phenomina.
I agree that the idiot grass can be wonderful for releiving pain, works better than the pills i am often seen popping, and i do love the effect when you lie down and close your eyes but, like alcohol and tabbaco, I just cant stand the feeling of impairment. lol. or the price. Being stoned all the time, seems to me almost as hell like as all the pain. But then again its not my place to make choices for others.
I wonder how effective a full on legalisation campeign would be.

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As posted on g.blog,

Green policy would see you “free” to grow your own medicine, but not “free” to bring up your kids in a manner that follows your own beliefs.

Selective socialism?

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Also the current method of obtaining Sativex means it is basically unobtainable for many.

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Currently the only people able to afford Sativex are those on ACC where ACC pays for it. At a cost of approx. $900 a month what beneficiary or low income worker can afford it? Considering an oz of cannabis is approx. $350 would last me 4 months, guess which option I choose.
If politicians insist we use Sativex then subsidise it for heavens sake!

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If you use prescription versions of cannabis based medicine its ok, if you use raw leaf for relief we will send you to jail.

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‘National MP Jonathan Coleman, a doctor, said it would bring cannabis
into mainstream society.

“You can’t make out it is a good thing, we need less drugs in society,”
he said.

“We would be sending a signal that it’s okay.”

He said doctors would be swamped with demands for cannabis cards from
people insisting they were seriously ill and needed it for pain relief.

Dr Coleman, and other MPs, said there were prescription drugs available
which used THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.’

re-read: Yes you can have cannabis but only in the pharma form we got paid off for saying

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‘idiot prohibition’ i think you mean, sapient.

cannabis tends to draw out and amplify whatever is in a persons mind, whether logical or stupid (in my case mainly logical of course LOL). Dont blame cannabis for stupidity, it was there already.

However whichever way you look at it prohibition is an dysfunctional, invasive, unsafe and costly social control (or lack thereof)- idiocy / deceit in the guise of ‘common sense’…

the med pot case tends to loose sight of the big picture in that prohibition is a law and order farce which protects no one. cannabis is already freely available in NZ, is number one with teens (but behind your backs) and prisons are the biggest growth industry…

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Greenfly,
Lol, i was wondering how long it would take for someone to comment on that.
I have decided as of 8:32 am that that is what I shall now refer to it as. This is because it is oft held that ‘weed is for philosophy’. But from my observations and personal experience weed doesint so much assist in philosophical discussion as make you so stupid that everything you say seems really profound. Thus the ‘idiot leaf’.
Looking at it from that perspective Phil becomes so much easier to understand.

On the subject of the idiot leaf, I recently saw for the first time evidence of meth-doping in palmy, though maybe thats due to my very selective exposure rather than any actual shift. I find that scary. Interesting but scary.

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Sapient – ‘idiot leaf’ – care to expand? My question: Could Rodin have carved ‘The Thinker’ if he were a smoker? (‘He’ being Rodin)

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My flatmate raised an interesting point the other day that I had failed to consider; “allowing medpot has the potential to be a beurocratic nightmare” and would be if users were allowed to grow their own supply under a otherwise unchanged framework. The only ways it could be made practical would be to eaither keep the production and distribution by individuals illegal and have the state provide it in a similar meathod to most otherwise illegal drugs or to completly decriminalise, or legalise, the consumption and distribution of the drug. Using the first method most of the medpotters will be rather unhappy, while the second method is alittle too controversal judging by how strongly the medpot bill was defeated.
That said; im all for decriminalisation and even legalisation Not that I would smoke the idiot leaf any more frequently than I do at present.

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nine years of green party non-activism/neglect on this issue..

..whimpers to a close..

phil(whoar.co.nz)

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If this were the plan, why were we not informed? Maybe the cannabis voters are keeping their party afloat….

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I just heard Metiria Turei on telly saying that she was planning to rewrite the bill and put it into the member’s ballot again. Has this been her intention all along? Is this why she didn’t try to whip up public support for it before the vote?

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