CANNABIS REFORM GROUP UNVEILED

A high-powered Coalition for Cannabis Law Reform was unveiled in Wellington yesterday, as MPs, Maori leadership and academia combined to push for the decriminalisation of cannabis.

The Government is expected to announce the shape of its cannabis law reform inquiry in the coming week, after a political battle over whether it would be conducted by the justice and law reform select committee, the health select committee, or an external body such as the Law Commission.

Justice and law reform select committee chairman Tim Barnett, speaking at the launch, said he was a "control freak" who had never tried cannabis and had never wanted to ­ but he believed strongly that the present regime of prohibition was unjust and unhealthy.

Mr Barnett, who is gay, compared the difficulties of lobbying for cannabis decriminalisation to those faced by homosexual law reformers in the 1980s. "I am someone who came into politics because I've seen injustice and I want to fight it," he said. "I believe that cannabis policy should be about harm reduction, like most of the rest of our policy."

Joining him in signing a new Cannabis Law Reform and Education Accord were Green MP Nandor Tanczos, former youth affairs minister Deborah Morris, Auckland University of Technology dean of health studies Max Abbott, Wellington Tenths Trust spokesman and former Maori health adviser Peter Love, and the leaders of the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, the Drug Policy Forum and the National Organisation for Reform of Marijuana Laws.