PRO-DOPE VOTE DIVIDED, SAY REFORMERS

The "dope vote" this election could be the biggest yet, but cannabis
law-change proponents suspect supporters' loyalties are divided.

The single-issue Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party (ALCP) has lost some
of its leading lights to the Green Party and the Greens are, so to
speak, on a roll.

Thanks largely to National's anti-cannabis scare tactics in Coromandel
in the past week, the Greens are now widely recognised as being in
favour of a law change.

Legalise Cannabis Party leader Michael Appleby still hopes to increase
the 1.66 per cent party vote won at the 1996 election, but concedes
his hopes are fading of cracking the 5 per cent threshold for seats.

Mr Appleby, a Wellington-based lawyer and law teacher, said his party
was divided at a conference in Napier last year over whether to join
the Greens.

Some key members, such as Nandor Tanczos (No 5 on the Greens' list),
had moved over anyway but the majority supported keeping the party
intact.

"We have members who come from all sides of the political spectrum,"
says the 52-year-old father of four.

"We have people who say they are going to give their electorate vote
to Act, but they're giving their party vote to ALCP."

Neither they nor the Greens, who were seeking to stake out an identity
separate from the Alliance, wanted a marriage.

Mr Appleby regards the 35,000 party votes gained in the last election
as an achievement. The campaign slogan this year is "You, plus two,"
in reference to the fact that 105,000 votes would deliver the vital 5
per cent.

"We got more votes than all the other minor parties behind us
combined, including the United Party, which was 0.8 per cent, and if
MMP were truly representative we'd have at least two MPs in there as
opposed to United's Peter Dunne, who of course was given the seat by
National."

But others in the party were less than jubilant at the 1996 result.
Founder Mike Finlayson was "shattered" that so many marijuana smokers
cast their votes elsewhere. He quit the party and the campaign.

Mr Tanczos, 33, who was five on the Legalise Cannabis Party list, also
left after the election, then joined the Greens when they split from
the Alliance in 1997.

He said: "I think support for cannabis law reform is very widespread
and a lot of people didn't vote for ALCP because it's a single-issue
party. The Greens have policy on a range of issues and I think we'll
pick up some ALCP vote because people will see us as having more
chance of getting something done."

That view is shared by a former Legalise Cannabis president, Chris
Fowlie, a partner in Auckland's Hemp Store and spokesman for the
National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Norml).

Mr Fowlie, aged 26, says Norml members fall into both camps - they
simply want a law change - and he says the Green policy is similar to
the ALCP's.

"We're not going to get anything through unless we've got 61
sympathetic MPs. At the moment there are about 40, so we need another
20 and I think we're going to do it. Realistically the Green Party is
the way to go."