CANNABIS GROUP TO APPROACH BILLIONAIRE

A new group formed to advocate for cannabis law reform is to seek funding
from the American billionaire who smuggled the drug into New Zealand during
the America's Cup in January.

The Coalition for Cannabis Law Reform (CCLR) will be launched in Wellington
on Sunday, bringing together MPs, doctors, students, Maori leaders and
other pro-reform groups as parliament prepares to review the law.

Sarah Porter of the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
(NORML) said the CCLR would approach the American billionaire caught
bringing the drug into Auckland, to assist with funding. The 66-year-old
businessman, whose name is suppressed, has previously backed a campaign to
legalise marijuana for medical use.

Labour's Christchurch Central MP Tim Barnett, who as a former lobbyist in
Britain is advising CCLR on funding, said it was up to the group who it
approached but its sources were largely irrelevant as long as they were not
seen as corrupt.

Barnett said the group aimed to provide a rational source of information
and advocacy while the emotive issue was debated.

"You need an informed organisation to be working with MPs on complex issues
and I think what this debate has lacked is . . . rational information and
this group is aiming to provide that," Barnett said.

"I don't think this will settle until the basic unfairness and injustice of
different treatment for people who use cannabis and who use alcohol and
tobacco are actually dealt with."

Barnett will attend the launch with Green MP Nandor Tanczos and former
Youth Affairs Minister Deborah Morris.

Other supporters include the Drug Policy Forum Trust, a group of
professionals with legal, medical and police backgrounds, the New Zealand
University Students Association, and the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party.

Clinical psychologist Professor Max Abbott, the Dean of the Faculty of
Health at Auckland University of Technology, and Peter Love of the
Wellington Tenths Trust will also attend.

The spokesman for the group will be educational psychologist Les Gray who
was infamously arrested for cannabis possession after appearing on
Television New Zealand's Holmes show in 1989 to debate marijuana laws.

The CCLR says its aims include reducing the harm associated with cannabis
use, ending the criminalisation of users, increasing spending on drug
education and controlling the economic power of the marijuana black market.

Morris said the group would sharpen debate on the issue.

"It provides a new momentum, a new focus and our objective is to stimulate
the debate and ensure it is high quality debate," she said.

"We will work with other organisations which feel strongly about the need
for better controls on drugs in our society, people who have got concerns
about the wellbeing of young New Zealanders. Our objective is to ensure
there is a debate which is able to deliver in terms of getting drugs out of
schools and ensuring any harm associated with cannabis is minimised."

The group has been formed as a review of cannabis laws, pledged by the
Labour-Alliance government has been delayed as MPs play party politics with
the issue. The laws are to be reviewed by parliament's health select committee.

National MPs have called on the government to stop the review and have
joined with the School Trustees Association in running a petition against
the law reform.