NASTY FUMES FROM THAT BUS

When Maryjane the Cannabus arrived in Invercargill for a protest
rally on Tuesday, police made at least one interesting call. They
didn't collar any puffing protesters -- instead taking the "run
along, sonny" approach -- and they chose not to seize a cannabis
plant conspicuously placed inside the bus, writes The Southland Times
in an editorial.

By contrast, police in Palmerston North had made two arrests for
cannabis use, and in Picton a plant was seized. Generally, the public
takes the view that what's illegal at one end of the country should
be equally illegal at the other; or that what's of insufficient
consequence here should be equally so there.

Invercargill police say they decided "for operational reasons" not to
undertake a search of the bus. Search? In this case it would have
amounted to reaching in and grabbing it. And the rather pompous term
"operational reasons" invites a three-worded translation, the first
two words being "couldn't" and "be" ...

The inconsistency of the police approach is, in a small way,
testament to an uneven but widening sense of exasperated tolerance
for the widely used drug.

It is misplaced. The Maryjane tour spokesman Dakta Green (actually
Ken Morgan) disregards research saying cannabis has harmful effects.
Those reports, he says, were written by opponents of cannabis use.
Well so much, then, for the study published less than a year ago in
The Lancet medical journal, analysing the world's best and most
recent studies linking cannabis use and psychotic illnesses such as
schizophrenia and manic depressive illness. It concluded that
cannabis smokers were 40 percent more likely to develop psychosis
later in life, with the most frequent smokers between 50 percent and
200 percent more vulnerable to these conditions.

All written by opponents, see? If anything, all that's really in
doubt is the point at which Mr Green's description becomes true,
because if they weren't opponents when they started the research, it
seems great numbers of them were by the end.

In truth, we shouldn't lightly dismiss the view in documents released
in March showing health authorities support the use of cannabis on
compassionate grounds under tightly controlled conditions.

Or that statistics suggest almost 20 percent of New Zealanders aged
15 to 45 have used cannabis during the past year -- a figure that can
legitimately be seized by those who argue that a controlled system of
harm minimisation, as with the also-damaging alcohol and tobacco, is
the way to go.

But Dakta Green and his jolly band of stoners are rather too
celebratory about a hideously damaging substance that peer-reviewed
science strongly connects to memory damage and decline in other
intellectual skills, increased risk of cancers of the aerodigestive
tract, increased risk of leukaemia and birth defects in offspring
exposed while in the womb, and an impaired immune system, ovulation,
sperm production and libido. Socially, evidence shows a marked
decline in occupational performance in adults, and more educational
under-achievement in children.

Nostalgists should note, too, that the careful attentions of the
growing industry present us with dope that is much, much more potent
than it was in the supposedly hazy 1960s.

By all means, debate on harm minimisation should be undertaken.

But the celebratory, wa-hey approach of the Norml (National
Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) protesters isn't helping.