by Holly Walker
For some reason, when you become an MP, people think you are important. You suddenly get access to a whole lot of things that the general public don’t have – you can visit schools, factories, and businesses; you get to go on study attachments to certain companies (as I did recently with Radio New Zealand); I haven’t tested this theory yet, but supposedly you can show up to any prison at any time and demand to be shown around; you can ask to spend a night observing the carnage in the A&E department of your local hospital (if you have the stomach for it). It still weirds me out that I can suddenly demand all this time and attention that other people can’t, but it is incredibly insightful and interesting, so as long as I’m here, I’ve resolved to make the most of it.
Which is how I found myself on patrol with the Lower Hutt Police last Saturday night, searching the streets of Naenae for two suspects carrying a machete, with a loaded Glock 17 pistol on the hip of the officer in the drivers’ seat.
“Should I stay in the car when we find them?” I quavered from the back seat.
“Just play it by ear,” said my driver. “It could be a great learning experience.”
I held my breath.
Earlier in the night, I had – amazingly, considering I committed the cardinal sin of failing to bring donuts – been graciously welcomed and shown around by the Shift Commander and his team at the station. I saw the banks of screens showing live CCTV camera footage from around the city. I got a tour of the cells – not somewhere I recommend spending any time if you can possibly avoid it. I was shown the gun safe, containing tasers, pistols, and rifles. I got to hold the guns, and wondered whether I should have declined. Then I headed out in a patrol car with two friendly officers, one very experienced, one two months out of Police College.
It was a quiet night, so I’m told. We attended to a young man who had been injured in a fight out the back of a panel beaters’ shop in Wainuiomata (he called us, though it transpires that he “may” have kicked things off by smashing a bottle over the back of his host’s head). He was drunk, and so were they. We attended a domestic call out in Taita after a shouting match between ex-partners, one of whom wouldn’t go home; we gave her a ride. Both were in their late 50s and extremely intoxicated. We helped the community patrol check the premises of a local bowling club that had been found with a door open: the verdict, not robbed, but left open by drunk bar staff/members.
Back at the station several very drunk people were brought in for disorderly behaviour, processed, and left to sober up in the cells.
Every single call or case was alcohol-related.
And then there were those guys with the machete.
I had a good chat with the Shift Commander before I left about Police policy and the reality for frontline staff. They feel like there are fewer than ever. They have a major focus on prevention, but there’s only so much they can do.
The Greens were very opposed to the introduction of tasers and increased access to firearms for frontline police, out of concerns about both civil liberties and safety. I still have these concerns. And yet.
We didn’t find the men with the machete. We pulled over and my driver disarmed his gun and put it back in the safe.
I let out my breath.
Published in Justice & Democracy by Holly Walker on Tue, September 4th, 2012
Tags: alcohol, firearms, Holly Walker, Lower Hutt, police, tasers
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Make being drunk in public an unacceptable behaviour, binge drinking, and drinking games have always been unacceptable to me. Arrest them, lock them up for the night, 30 to a cell, plus a fine, they will soon get the message. The trouble is, it is all so “macho” to be a drunk man -the yard glass at the 21st, now the 21st shots for women. Bring in some European culture where we bring our children up, having a drink and conversation with a meal in a civilized fashion.
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This would allow bars and clubs to screen patrons at the door using a breathalyser. This would enable an objective means for blocking pre loaders. Similarly those on the premises a while could also be screened at the bar when trying to buy more drinks. That the level detected could be at a level defined in law as drunk for purposes of being in a public place – they could be asked to leave.
To support the police managing disorderly behaviour on the streets, they could be allowed to test for drunkennes and thus be able to ask people to leave or be arrested and later fined.
Such measures would do more to prevent or manage excessive drinking than the legislation before the house.
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It good to hear the focus seems to have moved towards reducing ALL drug-related harm (including Alcohol) but the out-of-date Mis-use of Drugs act still stands.
Kia-ora
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Its interesting that Alcohol is obviously the cause of most of the drug-related harm & yet society still demonizes & criminalises those who use Cocaine/LSD/Ketamine/Ecstasy/Pschobilin/Methodone etc. DOUBLE-STANDARD or what?
Suddenly that statement doesn’t seem so sensible.
A case for better control of alcohol is not ipso facto a case for removing or reducing restrictions placed on any other prohibited substance.
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Wanting to get blitzed on a frequent basis seems to be a good indicator of deep dissatisfaction with life.
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I am not promoting ‘Drug Use’ all I say is its time for a level playing field & IF Alcohol & Tobacco are at least as harmful as Cannabis, why are they treated so diffrently by the LAW ? ‘Double-standard’
Then again I feel adults should have a ‘Freedom OF Choice’ NOT ‘Freedom FROM choice’
The focus should be on Education, Regulation & Harm Minimization NOT Alienation & Criminalisation of ADULTS who prefer to alter their conscientiousness with ‘other drugs’.. Oh dear !
Kia-ora
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Are there any real studies on why some societies seem to use alcohol to excess? New Zealand seems to figure fairly low in international studies of stress and high in satisfaction of life, but I wonder if that is just a consequence of the Kiwi tendency to not admit to problems or weaknesses?
Or it’s because we live in an absolute paradise and have a high standard of living (in real terms) and a low population to land mass.
Wanting to get blitzed on a frequent basis seems to be a good indicator of deep dissatisfaction with life.
Nope, insecurity.
Insecurity in who we are, what we have, and the loss of an excuse to not enjoy it.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink, the problem with NZers is that they don’t drink enough of what would really make them happy.
We are always gazing on foreign shores and not content to enjoy our own.
I would suggest that Kiwis that have traveled and then returned to NZ are some of the most contented people on earth.
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@ zedd
I’m not at all suggesting you are promoting drug use. You made that clear in your first statement around harm reduction.
What I am saying is that the same logic wrt any double standard can also be reasonably applied to a whole bunch of other drugs that we probably don’t want legalised, particularly if we are taking aggregate social harm as a measure.
So while personally while I completely agree with your position in an abstract sense of freedom of choice, I don’t agree with framing the argument for cannabis legalization in terms of alcohol = terrible, cannabis = not so terrible. I just don’t think it’s realistic or sensible as a comparative measure. Both drugs do a lot of harm. I personally support a much stronger regulatory stance around alcohol sale, consumption and abuse as opposed to a ‘race to the bottom’ approach.
Maybe it’s just the paternalist in me but seeing what a hash we make of our society with an extremely relaxed regulatory and enforcement regime wrt to alcohol (and a complete lack of willingness to address it by Parliament), I can’t imagine what sort of basket case we would produce with the legalisation of pot as well.
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I’m sympathetic to your concern that Parliament is quite able to screw anything up, but given how we currently persecute cannabis and other drug users, I hardly think we’re in danger of jumping suddenly to the opposite extreme.
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The problem seems to be that many New Zealanders are not friendly drunks.
Maybe they would be better smoking dope?
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So I go back to my counter-factual, Valis.
Do we treat cocaine and heroin along the same lines (i.e. wholesale decriminalisation) or follow the Dutch model and take a different approach to “hard” and “soft” drugs?
If we follow this path, how do we ensure that Parliament doesn’t drop the ball after making changes, such as we have seen with alcohol reform?
Do we re-class alcohol as a “soft” drug but punish anti-social offending more severely?
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Kerry says “Societies that have decriminalised drug use, and treat it as a health problem, have a lower rate of addiction, less problems with drug financed criminals…”
Sorry to bust that often repeated myth. It’s not quite that simple. There have been increases as well.
After decriminalisation in Portugal, deaths initially decreased but are now at previous levels. “Reported lifetime use of “all illicit drugs” increased from 7.8% to 12%, lifetime use of cannabis increased from 7.6% to 11.7%, cocaine use more than doubled, from 0.9% to 1.9%, ecstasy nearly doubled from 0.7% to 1.3%, and heroin increased from 0.7% to 1.1%”
There’s certainly been some positives, but it’s not all one-way traffic.
Quote above from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
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I visited Amsterdam a few years ago. The dutch are over it, the novelty has worn off. The majority of people in their cofeeshops were foreign tourists.. go figure !
If authorities want to reduce drug related harm.. Alcohol & Tobacco have the highest rates of death (according to official stats). The budget should go from Police, customs & corrections to the Health & Education Depts.
Kia-ora.. enough said
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In reality the ‘drug crazed nutter’ is almost always an angry irrational drunk and they fill up our police stations, our hospitals and our prisons. National have been a disgrace with the graft and ‘lobbying’ they have accepted from the booze industry and they have protected the liquor pushers and profiteers from effective regulation or even having to pay enough tax on their alcohol to pick up the tab for things like booze crime and booze violence. The police and others bear the brunt.
Holly also seem’s to have been given pause to think about taser’s and the police having them. As she may have seen when riding with the police, people under the influence of the drug alcohol can be angry, irrational and violent, they are often beyond being reasoned with and I can understand the police wanting tasers when they deal with violent drunks.
In essence with our present booze laws the police are entitled to be protected from the violent alcohol psychosis which they encounter in a huge amount of their work.
Both National police ministers have been derelict in not addressing the alcohol and crime problem. Judith Collins now as justice minister sounds like a liquor industry mouthpiece when she talks.
And that is the present state of affairs ………
P.s Here’s another police officers withering assessment of the drug alcohol http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHI-4NWB8n0
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@ zedd
I don’t think cannabis prohibition is working in NZ. But I’m also not convinced decriminalisation will work either. I agree with you that the focus should be on the health issues. Where I disagree is that it should necessarily be at the expense of prohibition.
Managed together, harsh prohibition AND sensible health policy has been extremely effective in countries such as Singapore. From an article in the Guardian:
“According to the 2008 World Drug Report by the United Nations office on drugs and crime 8.2% of the UK population are cannabis abusers; in Singapore it is 0.005%.”
“Over two decades, the number of drug abusers arrested each year has declined by two-thirds, from over 6,000 in the early 1990s to about 2,000 last year. Fewer than two in 10 abusers released from prison or drug rehabilitation centres relapse within two years.”
Note: Singapore also has an extremely punitive policy towards public drunkenness.
I am not suggesting emulating Singapore in dishing out death sentences to dealers, merely making the point that a nuanced and mixed policy might suit NZ better than a carte blanche approach.
Ultimately though, we are neither the Netherlands nor Singapore.
I think we have a number of massive and immediate socio-economic issues to deal with in order to create the healthy, happy, well adjusted civic society we all want to live in that are far more important than tweaking drug laws.
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zedd says “If prohibition is working in Aotearoa/NZ (some of the most punitive laws) then why have we got, reportedly the highest usage rate for cannabis in the world ?”
Again – not that simple.
We have relatively low rates of use of many other prohibited drugs – considerably lower than countries where they are decriminailised.
Look at when Kronic came out and before it was made illegal – we had an epidemic of drug use through our high schools.
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Alcohol = Number One drug.
Alcohol also is the leading crime causing drug which seemed to be the point of Hollys post.
The Liqour industry ( and the Nats ) dont like it being called a drug because we spend roughly $85 MILLION per week on it so some people are getting very rich pushing and selling this drug.
A by product of this legal drug pushing is a lot of violent and other crime.
The Liqour industry and the National party are a good example of how not to legalize a drug and why drug producers should be banned from donating to political parties.
Legalized bribery ( lobbying ) is corrupting and we can see it with the Nats.
The drug Alcohol is certainly a lot worse at causing violence and crime than most if not all of the illegal ones.
But the booze idustry pays the money out and the nats look after them ……
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I cant speak for her and say that was the point of her post.
But one of my points is the deceit and legal corruption that the liquor industry and National party get away with.
To quote Sgt Alastair Lawn …. “We spend about $85 million per week on alcohol, thats why they don’t want you to understand its a drug”.
The National party and all their police and justice ministers pretend to be ‘tough on drugs’, yet they receive money and perks from the booze producers and write the regulations accordingly.
Alcohol as a drug would be the biggest single cause of violent and serious crime.
Don’t expect any sensible or honest Alcohol or other drug legislation from the National party ……
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Yet neither the Law Commission or the National government have seen fit to move in this area.
It is some irony that it was police who opposed “policing drunkenness” before the Law Commission. Their reasoning on this is very flawed and possibly because they were unable to appreciate that their concerns could be mitigated by the sort of legislation that was developed – simply defining a level of blood alcohol to determine drunkenness enables hosts at licensed premises to screen “drunk” people at the door and later at the bar. This objective method suits the hospitality industry and encourages patrons to moderate their drinking.
Police could have the power to ask people to take a breathalyser test when in public places – like urban streets – to test for drunk status. It would not be a criminal offence to be drunk in such a place (or in bars and clubs) – just to then refuse to move on when asked to by hosts or police. The police would be empowered to ask drunk people to move on or be arrested and fined. This would ensure people in public places would not seek to draw attention to themselves if they were drunk – people would behave themselves or be required to leave. This would better manage under 18 youth (and some preloaders) who drink in cars or car parks then walk the urban centre streets (where they cannot drink).
None of this requires the police to spend more time on those who get drunk and behave well or are on the way home, or to desist from a priority on helping those drunks who need it.
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There is simply no justification for it’s continued prohibition.
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