GROSS DEFICIENCIES IN CANNABIS LAWS - PROFESSOR

Cannabis should be treated the same as alcohol and tobacco - controlled but
legal, Emeritus Professor Frederick Fastier told the health select
committee cannabis inquiry on Thursday night.

Speaking before the committee in Dunedin, Prof Fastier said while he did
not advocate cannabis use, current legislation had gross deficiencies.

He recommended the first line of defence against the abuse of cannabis
should be non-legal sanctions based on sound drug education, and legal
sanctions to supplement other measures should be modelled on those for the
abuse of alcohol.

Prof Fastier, foundation professor of pharmacology at the University of
Otago, said prohibition did not work because cannabis was too easy to grow
and intoxication by cannabis was too difficult to detect.

He was a proponent of accurate education and information about the drug,
which he believed was not currently available to most young people.

Such education had worked well in the case of tobacco, where there was a
substantial decline due mainly to accurate information and other sanctions.

There should be one organisation to deal with tobacco, alcohol and cannabis
and the three should be treated equally.

He noted that tobacco and alcohol caused more harm in New Zealand than all
the banned drugs put together, and said the pair were "clearly more
poisonous" than cannabis.

Also speaking to the select committee was Richie Poulton, of the Dunedin
multi-disciplinary health and development study, who gave committee members
information on cannabis from the study.

The study showed 70 percent of the 1000 26-year-olds in the study had used
cannabis in the last 12 months, and of those users, 18 percent were addicted.

The select committee continues to hear submissions at the Southern Cross
Hotel on Friday.